This is the third chapter of the Neurolinguistic Programming Made Easy: How to Master Your Mind and Achieve Your Goals by Pat Tokuyama. Best for: NLP beginners and self-development readers who want a clear, practical guide to understanding and changing how their mind internally represents experiences.
Last updated: April 2026
Guide to the Good Stuff
Have you ever noticed that some sensory experiences have more impact on you than others? For example, some memories make you feel more happy or sad than others. Some images make you feel more excited or bored than others. Some sounds make you feel more relaxed or tense than others.
These differences are due to submodalities — the fine distinctions or qualities of your sensory experiences.
📌 Key Takeaways
- Submodalities are the fine-grained sensory qualities — such as brightness, volume, or temperature — that your brain uses to code the emotional meaning of any experience.
- You can elicit submodalities by asking specific, structured questions about the qualities of a mental image, internal sound, or body sensation.
- Contrasting submodalities between a positive and a negative experience reveals the precise differences that drive their different emotional impact.
- NLP offers four core manipulation techniques — Swish, Mapping Across, Change History, and Future Pacing — to deliberately shift how you think and feel about any experience.
- Submodality work is a foundational skill in Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), applicable to reframing memories, building confidence, and mentally rehearsing desired outcomes.
What are submodalities?
Submodalities are the fine-grained qualities that exist within each sensory modality — the internal distinctions your brain uses when it builds a mental image, replays a sound, or generates a physical sensation. In Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) — a framework for modeling and modifying human experience developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s — submodalities are understood as the fundamental coding system of subjective experience: the variables your mind adjusts to decide how much emotional weight any given memory or imagination carries.
Submodalities affect how you perceive the world, how you learn, how you remember, and how you relate to others. They operate across the five senses: visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), kinesthetic (feeling), olfactory (smelling), and gustatory (tasting). Knowing your submodalities and how to change them can help you change how you feel and think.
How to elicit submodalities
To elicit submodalities, pay focused attention to the specific sensory qualities of an experience as you recall or imagine it — then systematically question each dimension. One way to do this is to pay attention to the details of your sensory experiences when you recall or imagine something. For example, if you remember or imagine a happy memory, you can ask yourself structured questions. Here are a few examples for each sensory channel:
1. Visual submodalities
Is the image in color or black and white? Is it bright or dim? Is it clear or blurry? Is it big or small? Is it close or far? Is it moving or still? Is it framed or panoramic? Are you associated (seeing through your own eyes) or dissociated (seeing yourself from outside)?
2. Auditory submodalities
Is the sound loud or quiet? Is it clear or muffled? Is it high-pitched or low-pitched? Is it fast or slow? Is it rhythmic or erratic? Is it continuous or intermittent? Is it internal (in your head) or external (in your ears)? Is it mono or stereo?
3. Kinesthetic submodalities
Is the feeling warm or cold? Is it light or heavy? Is it soft or hard? Is it smooth or rough? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? Is it intense or mild? Is it constant or changing? Is it localized (in one part of your body) or global (in your whole body)?
You can also elicit submodalities for other senses, such as olfactory and gustatory, by asking similar questions about the smell and taste of something.
Submodality Quick-Reference: Visual vs. Auditory vs. Kinesthetic
| Dimension | Visual | Auditory | Kinesthetic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intensity | Bright / Dim | Loud / Quiet | Intense / Mild |
| Clarity | Clear / Blurry | Clear / Muffled | Sharp / Vague |
| Scale | Big / Small | Wide / Narrow stereo field | Global / Localized |
| Distance / Origin | Close / Far | Internal / External | Surface / Deep |
| Movement | Moving / Still | Fast / Slow; Rhythmic / Erratic | Constant / Changing |
| Color / Tone / Temperature | Color / Black & White | High-pitched / Low-pitched | Warm / Cold |
| Perspective / Channel | Associated / Dissociated; Framed / Panoramic | Mono / Stereo; Continuous / Intermittent | Smooth / Rough; Pleasant / Unpleasant |
How to contrast submodalities
Contrasting submodalities means comparing the specific sensory qualities of two different experiences — one positive and one negative — to pinpoint exactly which differences drive their contrasting emotional impact. Another way to elicit submodalities is to set them against the submodalities of another sensory experience that impacts you differently.
For example, suppose you want to evoke the submodalities of a happy memory. In that case, you can contrast them with the submodalities of a sad memory. You can ask yourself questions like:
- What's different about the image of the happy memory and the image of the sad memory?
- What's different about the sound of the happy memory and the sound of the sad memory?
- What's different about the feeling of the happy memory and the feeling of the sad memory?
By contrasting submodalities, you can identify the key differences that make one experience more positive or negative than another.
How to manipulate submodalities
Manipulating submodalities means deliberately changing the specific sensory qualities of an internal experience — such as the brightness of a mental image, the volume of an internal voice, or the intensity of a body sensation — in order to shift how you feel and think about it. Using submodalities can help you enhance or diminish the impact of a memory, belief, or emotion. According to Barbara Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001, American Psychologist), positive emotions don't just feel good in the moment — they also help build psychological and social resources over time, which speaks to why shifting internal representations toward more positive submodality configurations can have meaningful, lasting effects.
To manipulate submodalities, you need to use your imagination and creativity. You need to experiment with changing different aspects of your sensory experiences and notice how they affect your state. You need to use the following techniques:
1. Swish
A technique that helps you replace an unwanted state with a desired state by rapidly switching between two images representing them. The Swish pattern creates a strong associative link between a trigger image (the unwanted state) and a resource image (the desired state), then trains the brain to automatically transition toward the resource whenever the trigger arises.
For example, suppose you want to replace fear with confidence. In that case, you can swish between an image of yourself being fearful and an image of yourself being confident.
2. Mapping across
A technique that helps you transfer one experience's submodalities to another to change its impact. By systematically applying the submodalities of a neutral or positive experience onto a negative one, you effectively recode the emotional weight your brain attaches to it. For instance, if you want to make a sad memory less sad, you can use cognitive strategies to map across the submodalities of a neutral memory to the sad memory.
3. Change history
A technique that helps you change your past experiences by changing their submodalities. Change History lets you revisit past events and reduce their emotional charge by altering qualities like distance, brightness, size, or perspective. Research supports the idea that your beliefs about your own capacity to change and grow can actually influence your outcomes (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007, Child Development) — and changing how you internally represent past events is one concrete way of reshaping the beliefs those events created.
For example, suppose you want to change a difficult memory. In that case, you can adjust its submodalities to make it feel less intense and more distant.
4. Future pacing
A technique that helps you create your future experiences by constructing their submodalities in advance. Rather than passively hoping for a result, Future Pacing has you actively build a vivid, detailed internal representation of the desired outcome — making it feel real and achievable before it has occurred. According to research published in American Psychologist, mental simulation works because it helps your brain rehearse the actions and decisions needed to reach your goals — and process-focused visualization, not just picturing the end result, is associated with better preparation and follow-through (Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998, American Psychologist).
For example, suppose you want to create a successful outcome. In that case, you can construct its submodalities to make it more vivid and realistic.
By manipulating submodalities, you can change how you feel and think about anything.
Frequently Asked Questions About Submodalities
What are submodalities in NLP?
Submodalities are the fine-grained qualities within each sensory modality — such as the brightness or size of a mental image, the pitch or volume of an internal sound, or the temperature and intensity of a body sensation — that your brain uses to assign emotional meaning to any experience. In Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), submodalities are considered the fundamental coding system of subjective experience: the variables your mind adjusts to determine how impactful any memory, belief, or imagining feels.
What is the difference between eliciting and contrasting submodalities?
Eliciting submodalities means identifying the specific sensory qualities of a single experience — asking yourself detailed sensory questions about one memory or feeling in isolation. Contrasting submodalities means comparing the qualities of two different experiences side by side (for example, a happy memory versus a sad memory) in order to identify which specific differences account for their differing emotional impact.
What is the Swish technique and when is it used?
The Swish is an NLP submodality pattern that rapidly replaces an unwanted internal state with a desired one. You hold a clear image representing the unwanted state, then instantly “swish” it to a vivid image of the desired state, repeating the process until the transition becomes automatic. It is most commonly used to interrupt habitual thought patterns or replace recurring states — such as anxiety or self-doubt — with more resourceful alternatives like confidence or calm.
How does mapping across work in NLP?
Mapping across involves taking the submodalities from an experience that carries a neutral or positive emotional charge and systematically applying them to an experience that carries a negative charge. For example, if a difficult memory is represented as a dark, large, close image, you would gradually replace those qualities with the brighter, smaller, more distant qualities of a neutral memory — effectively changing how your brain codes the emotional weight of the difficult event.
Can submodality techniques be used for goal-setting and performance?
Yes — Future Pacing uses submodalities specifically for this purpose. By constructing a rich, detailed internal representation of a desired outcome (including what you see, hear, and feel at the moment of success), you prime your brain to recognize and move toward that outcome. This aligns with process visualization research showing that mentally simulating the steps toward a goal is associated with better preparation and follow-through than simply imagining the end result.
Summary
In this chapter, you learned about submodalities — the fine distinctions or qualities of your sensory experiences as understood within Neurolinguistic Programming. You learned how to elicit submodalities by paying careful attention to the specific sensory details of an experience, and how to contrast them against a differently charged experience to isolate the key differences. You also learned four practical techniques — Swish, Mapping Across, Change History, and Future Pacing — for manipulating submodalities to change how you feel and think about any memory, belief, or imagined outcome.
In the next chapter, you'll learn about strategies, which are sequences of internal and external representations that lead to a specific outcome.
