Michael Yeah, interesting stuff. Your examples are excellent examples of submodality shifts, both passively - that is, the person (following the contrastive elicitation you did) noticed the submodality shifts and then (under your coaching) learned to use them actively to shift state. Please note that submodality manipulations have no ecology to them. I would hesitate, for example, to wire an automatic with a client such that when the initial indicators of a state that they would prefer not to experience begin, there is a shunt that kicks them into some preferred state. The problem here is that the conscious mind (either yours or the two of you in collusion) is making a decision about the utility of a state - this state could be key, for example, in keeping the person from falling asleep in their life - remember, I am uncomfortable about being too comfortable. Removing it could have dire conssequences. Also, I have little confidence in conscious minds making decisions about unconscious processes. There is one statment that you offer that puzzles us greatly: "So, what I’m saying is that I find that submodality distinctions most definitely occur externally as well as internally." What could it possibly mean for a f1 filter to occur externally. If you are saying that the client's experience (FA) of the environment shifts, well, of course. However, that has nothing to do with external events, only the filters (f1) through which those events are perceived. All the best, John