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The brain stores memories using a combination of our 5 senses - Seeing, Hearing, Touching, Smelling, and Tasting. In NLP these are called Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory and are represented by the initials VAKOG.

The major senses are Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic, although smell and taste are very powerful senses they are used to a lesser extent than the others. Kinaesthetic has two parts, the physical sensation of touch, is something rough or smooth? And the emotional aspects of feeling

for example:

happy,

confident,

sad,

nervous.

The ways we use to describe our emotional states have become labels that we use to describe the physical sensations that we experience at any time, although we may find it difficult to identify them precisely. They are usually a complex combination of changes in pulse rate, breathing, muscular tension, temperature, adrenalin effects, etc.

We also seem to have a preference, or bias, to one of the major senses - most people (about 70%) have  a visual bias. This means that they will process information using more pictures than sounds or feelings. When asked to remember something they will usually get a pictorial representation of the event first and attached to it will be the sounds and feelings that went with that memory.

For example, when asked "What time did you get up this morning?" a visual person will probably "see", in their mind's eye, a picture of their alarm clock and maybe mentally "hear" the alarm sound, and even, for an instant, feel that they have just woken up! An auditory person would probably hear the sound of the alarm first and then see a picture of the clock........

This is the way we access, recall or imagine   the data that is stored and even created in and by our brain processes and, as we will see in a later article, this can be detected by studying somebody's Eye Accessing Cues.