Before my first son was born, my wife and I attended Lamaze classes.  Here's what they taught women and their "labor partners."

1. Breathe in specific rhythmic patterns.
2. Your breathe changes depending upon stage of labor.
3. Move your hands on your abdomen in a specific pattern.
4. Count your breaths.
5. Your partner rubs your shoulders in time with your breath.
6. Your partner counts as well.

Not surprisingly, couples who practice Lamaze report lesser pain in child birth.  People speak of Lamaze in mystic tones of awe. 

Here's what's really going on...And Pay Extra Attention Here

At any given moment of time, your mind is processing numerous pieces of information.  Right now while I'm typing this, my fingers are on the keyboard, my eyes see the monitor, my wife is sitting next to me, Meet Joe Black is on in the background, the air conditioning in the room is quite cool, there are children outside in the pool playing, there is music playing outdoors, I can feel my back against the couch, and I can feel my socks on the floor.

That is nine different things filtering in and out of my conscious awareness.

But at any given moment in time, your brain has the ability to process seven plus or minus two pieces of information.  So your brain can process from five to nine pieces of information at one time. 

If your brain gets more than this amount of information, it overloads and shuts down. If your brain gets less than this amount of information, it literally starves for information.

The more pathways to the brain that are taken, the fewer pathways remain free.

So in the case of Lamaze, at least six pathways to the brain are taken.  And once they are taken, unless they are released - they remain taken.

That leaves almost no pathways for pain.  Now you know why Lamaze works.

When the channels to the brain are full, the mind is fully open to suggestion.  Keep this concept in the forefront of your brain...

Now, let's connect it to copy...

If we can take up multiple pathways to the brain, the reader will be highly suggestible and they will be more likely to respond to your pitch.

Now research shows if you use presuppositions, the magic number goes down from 7 + or - 2 to 5 + or - 2.

So if you can take up three pathways to the brain, you are tilting the odds in the favor of your copy.

And the more pathways you take up, the more responsive the readers will be and far more likely to purchase from the copy you have written.

Care to break up the sentence above and see how many chunks of information I've taken?

And when sentence after sentence takes up all available pathways, your copy connects.

So if you thought NLP was say one little line and people start drooling over your copy, you're dead wrong.  It takes at least two lines... :-)

And when you design your copy using these patterns and move your readers step by step by taking up all of the pathways to the brain - including their critical part - your copy operates at full throttle with nothing holding it back.

The Magic Bullet

 Most copywriters learn how to write a bullet.  Better copywriters learn how to write what my teacher and friend John Carlton calls - A/B bullets.  These bullets have benefits on top of benefits.  But...

what if your bullets not only had benefits in them, but were so fully loaded with linguistic mastery each bullet scored a direct hit...

and as you consider the power and the elegance of NLP copywriting, I wonder if you are beginning to understand how important it is for you to master these concepts.

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