Hi John You wrote: "...was wondering what it was that you and Richard Bandler were doing early on that allowed you to get such good results without making it explicit." The distinction is that we were explicit at the level of behavior - that is, we had (through the processes describied in the five phases of modeling - especially phases two and three) acquired the ability to develop and sustain a relationship with the client's unconscious that made it possible for us to read the signals that are explicitly represented in step two in the 6 step reframing patterning. The flaw was in our failure to explicitly represent that portion of our behavior when we did the coding (phase 4) - that is, the failure occurred in the mapping from tacit (systemtatic) knowledge (behavior, in other words) to an explicit representation (the model). 2. you wrote, "You might be waiting for a finger signal, but instead the subject's skin may redden in a particular part of his or her body.  These may often be signals the subject is unaware of, so I guess it's up to the practitioner to decide whether they want to involve the subject's conscious mind." My personal perception of such signals - those obvious to the facilitator but opaque to the client him  or herself - is that they constitute a priviledged channels of communication between the facilitator and the unconscious of the client. I reason that if the unconscious wanted the client's conscious mind to know about the signals being offered, it would. Reading these additional signals allows me to verify the reports being offered by the client. This is minimal usage. There are many other applications. In the event that the client is unable to detect other signals, I will sometimes (after validating and verifying the signals available to me) invite the unconscious to intensifying the signals being offered to me to the point where they become available consciously to the client. For me, the ethics of the application of NLP patterning includes (as Carmen and I wrote extensively in Whispering) a continuously rapprochement between conscious and unconscious processes - thus, the decision is already made, the practitioner will involve the conscious processes of the client - the question is how and when. All the best, John Grinder