It has often been said that the eyes are the window to the soul. Did you know that the way that we move our eyes reflects our thinking?

The picture above shows how the way we move our eyes reflects the type of thing we are thinking about. The picture illustrates a person's face as we look at them. For example if are looking at someone and their eyes move up and right (as we look at them), they are accessing an image of something they are remembering. If their eyes move up and left as we watch them, they are creating a visual image. The way we move our eyes is neurologically linked to the part of the brain we use to access different types of information.

These are the standard eye pattern movements for most people (which in NLP jargon is termed 'normally organised'). A small amount of people, often people who are left handed, may be reverse organised, which means that all of the eye patterns are reversed.

This information can be very useful when working with people. For example, if you were working with a business client and discussing a proposal and they were considering the plan, and as they do this they moved their eyes to visual followed by auditory, you might say to them something like 'As you look at the proposal, you may see that it rings true to you...' - so you use language that reflects their thought processes, which is a great way of building strong rapport.

In more advanced levels of NLP we also can use eye patterns to elicit a person's strategy for doing something, for example making a decision. They can also be used successfully to help install a new strategy, for example the well known spelling strategy which is how good spellers spell words.