Accessing the deepest states of being through the intention chain
nlparts.comCore Transformation, developed by Connirae Andreas, is one of the deepest processes in NLP. It works by following the chain of positive intentions behind any behavior, feeling, or internal response all the way down to a “core state”, a fundamental state of being that the behavior was ultimately trying to reach. Common core states include peace, love, oneness, being, and a profound sense of okayness.
The insight behind Core Transformation is radical: every behavior, no matter how problematic, is an attempt to reach one of these core states. Anger is an attempt to reach peace (through control). Addiction is an attempt to reach oneness (through the substance). People-pleasing is an attempt to reach love (through approval). The strategies are often terrible. But the destination they’re seeking is always profound.
Core Transformation doesn’t fix the behavior directly. It gives you the core state first, directly, without the behavior, and then lets the behavior reorganize itself around a person who already has what they were seeking. When you already have peace, the anger that was seeking peace becomes unnecessary. When you already have oneness, the compulsion that was seeking oneness loses its pull.
The process begins the same way as Parts Integration: by identifying a part associated with an unwanted behavior, feeling, or response. But instead of looking for a shared intention between two parts, Core Transformation follows a single part’s intention chain all the way to its deepest level.
The chain sounds like this:
You have a behavior: procrastination.
The part responsible for procrastination, what does it want? “Safety.”
If you had safety, what would that give you that’s even more important? “Relaxation.”
If you had relaxation, what would that give you that’s even more important? “Freedom.”
If you had freedom, what would that give you that’s even more important? “Peace.”
If you had peace, what would that give you that’s even more important? “...nothing. Peace is what I want. That’s it.”
Peace is the core state. It’s where the chain stops, not because you ran out of answers, but because you’ve reached something that is desired for its own sake, not as a means to something else. Core states have a specific quality: they feel whole. They feel like enough. There’s nothing beyond them that’s “more important.”
While the specific word varies from person to person, core states tend to cluster into a small number of categories:
Being / Beingness: A sense of simply existing, of pure presence without needing to do or achieve anything.
Peace / Stillness: Deep inner quiet. The absence of internal conflict. A felt sense that everything is okay.
Love: Not romantic love or conditional love, unconditional love that doesn’t depend on receiving love from others.
Oneness / Connection: A sense of being connected to everything, of not being separate. The dissolution of boundaries.
Okayness: A fundamental sense that you are okay, that you’ve always been okay, and that you will always be okay. A ground of being.
These are not emotions. They’re states of being, deeper than emotion, more fundamental than any specific feeling. They’re the experiential ground that emotions arise from. When you’re in a core state, emotions still happen, but they arise and pass against a background of deep okayness. Nothing is fundamentally threatened.
Choose a behavior, feeling, or response you want to work with. It can be anything, a habit, an emotion, a reaction, a block. Locate the part responsible for it. Where do you feel it in your body? What does it look like or feel like?
Thank the part for its intention. Even if you don’t know the intention yet, the part is trying to do something for you. Acknowledging that creates cooperation rather than resistance.
This is not a formality. Parts that feel attacked or judged become rigid. Parts that feel appreciated become flexible and communicative.
Ask the part: “What do you want?” or “What is your positive intention for me?”
Whatever the answer: “If you had [that], fully and completely, what would that give you that’s even more important?”
Keep asking. Each answer becomes the input for the next question. The chain moves from surface-level outcomes (safety, control, approval) through intermediate outcomes (freedom, relaxation, worthiness) to core states (peace, being, love, oneness, okayness).
You’ll know you’ve reached the core state when the answer feels complete, when the part doesn’t want anything beyond what it just named. When the question “what would that give you that’s even more important?” feels answered by the state itself.
Once you’ve reached the core state, don’t rush past it. Invite the part to experience this state fully. Let it expand. Let it fill your body. Let it become not just a concept but a felt, embodied experience.
This is the transformative moment. The part has been trying to reach this state through the problematic behavior. Now it has the state directly, without the behavior. Let it soak.
Think of a behavior or feeling you struggle with. If you followed the chain of intentions behind it, what does it want, and what would that give you that’s even more important, where do you end up? Most people are surprised by two things: how quickly the chain reaches profound territory, and how every chain, no matter where it starts, arrives at one of the same few core states.
Part 2 covers the second half of the process: once you have the core state, how do you reverse it back through the chain so that every level transforms? The “reversing the outcome chain” step is where the real change happens, the core state flows backward through the chain, transforming each level, until the original behavior reorganizes itself around a person who already has what they were seeking.
NLP arts, Core Transformation, Part 1 of 3
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In Part 1, you reached the core state, the fundamental state of being that the part was ultimately seeking through its problematic behavior. Now the real transformation begins: you reverse the outcome chain, bringing the core state backward through each level, and you grow up the part so it operates with the maturity and resources of your present self.
This is the central mechanism of Core Transformation. You take the core state and flow it backward through each level of the outcome chain, allowing the core state to transform each level from the inside.
Start from the core state. Let yourself experience it fully, the peace, or love, or oneness, or being.
Now bring this state to the next level up in the chain. If your chain was: procrastination → safety → relaxation → freedom → peace, then bring peace into your experience of freedom.
Ask: “When I already have this core state of peace, how does that transform my experience of freedom?” Freedom is no longer something you’re desperate for, it’s something you already have as a quality of the peace. Notice how the experience of freedom changes.
Continue backward: “With this peace and this transformed freedom, how does that transform my experience of relaxation?” Then: “How does that transform my experience of safety?” Then: “How does that transform the original behavior of procrastination?”
At each level, pause. Let the transformation register. The experience at each level changes, often dramatically, because it’s now infused with the core state rather than seeking it.
When the core state reaches the original behavior, something remarkable happens. The behavior doesn’t necessarily disappear, but its quality changes completely. Procrastination driven by a desperate search for safety feels completely different from rest that arises from a ground of peace. The external action might look similar in some cases. The internal experience is transformed.
Many parts were created in childhood. The part that drives anxiety may have been formed at age five, when it made perfect sense to be vigilant about danger. The part that people-pleases may have been formed at age seven, when approval was genuinely necessary for survival. These parts are frozen at the developmental stage where they were created, running a child’s strategy in an adult’s world.
Ask the part: “How old are you?” or simply sense it. Most problematic parts are much younger than the person’s chronological age. A part might be five, or eight, or twelve. The age usually corresponds to the event or period when the part was formed.
Invite the part to grow up from its current age to your present age, bringing the core state with it at every stage of development.
“With this core state of peace fully present, let the part begin to grow, from age five to six, seven, eight, each year having the peace, each year developing with this state as its foundation rather than the fear that originally shaped it.”
Let the part move through each developmental stage at its own pace. Some stages may need more time, particularly ages where significant events occurred. The core state provides the resource the part needed but didn’t have at each stage.
When the part reaches your current age, it’s no longer a five-year-old running a survival strategy. It’s an adult part with the full resources of your present self, and the core state as its foundation.
A five-year-old part operating in an adult’s life produces primitive, rigid responses. Fight or flight. All or nothing. Black and white. When that part grows up, with the core state at its foundation, it develops the nuance, flexibility, and resource access of a mature adult. The part’s intention doesn’t change. Its capability transforms.
A grown-up safety part doesn’t eliminate caution. It applies intelligent, contextual caution. A grown-up approval-seeking part doesn’t eliminate the desire for connection. It pursues connection through authentic relationship rather than compulsive accommodation. The core function is preserved. The strategy evolves.
With the part grown up and the core state flowing through the entire outcome chain, invite the experience to spread through your whole body. Let the core state and the transformed part integrate into every cell.
Notice where in your body you feel the core state most strongly. Let it radiate from there. This isn’t visualization, it’s allowing the felt sense of the core state to permeate your physical experience.
Some people describe this as a warmth, a lightness, a solidity, or a deep quiet that fills the body. Whatever form it takes, let it complete.
At this point, you have:
• Identified the part and its behavior
• Followed the outcome chain to the core state
• Experienced the core state fully
• Reversed the chain, transforming each level with the core state
• Grown up the part from its original age to your current age
• Integrated the transformed experience into the body
Part 3 completes the process: the timeline generalization (extending the core state through your entire personal history and into the future) and the ecology check that ensures the transformation integrates with the rest of your system.
Using the outcome chain you started in Part 1:
1. Access the core state fully. Let it build for thirty seconds.
2. Bring it to the next level up in the chain. How does it transform that level?
3. Continue backward through each level. Pause at each one.
4. When you reach the original behavior, notice what’s different.
5. Ask the part how old it is.
6. Grow the part up to your current age with the core state present at every stage.
7. Let the experience integrate into your body.
The reversal and growing-up process typically takes ten to twenty minutes. Don’t rush it. The depth of transformation corresponds to the depth of experiencing at each stage.
NLP arts, Core Transformation, Part 2 of 3
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Parts 1 and 2 gave you the core state, reversed it through the outcome chain, and grew the part up to your present age. The transformation is real, but it exists in the present moment. Timeline generalization extends it across your entire personal history and into the future, so the core state becomes not just a current experience but a lifelong foundation.
With the core state fully present in your body, let your awareness travel back through time, not to specific events, but through the flow of your life, all the way back to your birth. Imagine the core state was present from the very beginning. From your first breath, this state of peace (or love, or being, or oneness) was there as the foundation.
This isn’t rewriting history. The events of your life still happened. But you’re adding a layer that was missing: the core state as a ground of being underneath all of it. The difficult moments still occurred, but they occurred to a person who had the core state as their foundation.
Now move forward through your life from birth to the present, bringing the core state with you at every stage. Infancy with the core state. Childhood with the core state. Adolescence. Young adulthood. Each period of your life, re-experienced, not in detail, but in quality, with the core state present as the foundation.
As you move through each stage, notice how the core state would have changed your experience. Not the events, but your relationship to the events. How would childhood have felt with a ground of peace? How would the difficult years have felt with a foundation of okayness?
Let this re-encoding happen naturally. Don’t force specific memories to change. Let the core state permeate each period and notice what shifts on its own.
Don’t stop at the present. Continue forward into the future, next week, next month, next year, five years from now, with the core state as your foundation. See your future self living from this state. Making decisions from this state. Handling challenges from this state. Connecting with people from this state.
The timeline generalization is now complete: from birth through the present and into the future, the core state is the ground of your experience.
Ask internally: “Is there any part of me that objects to having this core state as my foundation?”
If no objection arises, the process is complete.
If an objection arises, it’s another part with its own concern. This part may need its own Core Transformation process. Run the outcome chain on the objecting part, it will likely arrive at the same or a complementary core state. Once it has its own core state, the objection typically dissolves.
Sometimes the objecting part simply needs reassurance that its function will be preserved. The core state doesn’t eliminate the part. It gives the part a better foundation to operate from.
Core Transformation is not a one-time fix for everything. It’s a process you can run on any part, any behavior, any internal response. Each time you run it, you access the core state from a different entry point and deepen the foundation.
People who practice Core Transformation regularly report a cumulative effect: the core state becomes more and more accessible as a baseline, and the parts that once drove problematic behaviors become quieter, not suppressed, but satisfied. They have what they were looking for. The desperate seeking that produced the problematic behavior softens because the destination has been reached.
What Changes
The original behavior may diminish, change form, or disappear, not because you fought it, but because the need driving it has been met.
Emotional reactivity often decreases. Emotions still arise, but against the background of the core state, they don’t overwhelm.
Decision-making becomes clearer. When you’re operating from a ground of peace or okayness, decisions aren’t driven by desperation.
Relationships shift. When you’re not unconsciously seeking the core state from others, you relate from wholeness rather than need.
What Doesn’t Change
You still have preferences, goals, and desires. The core state doesn’t flatten you into passivity. It gives you a foundation from which to pursue what matters, without the desperate quality that comes from trying to fill a void.
You still experience negative emotions. Pain, grief, frustration, anger, these are part of being human. But they arise and pass against the background of the core state rather than threatening your fundamental sense of self.
Part 1: Identify the part. Thank it. Run the outcome chain to the core state. Experience the core state fully.
Part 2: Reverse the chain, flow the core state backward through each level. Grow up the part to your present age. Integrate into the body.
Part 3: Timeline generalization, extend the core state from birth through the present and into the future. Ecology check.
Total time: thirty to sixty minutes for a full process. The depth of transformation often corresponds to the time invested in experiencing (not rushing through) each step.
Core Transformation connects to every major NLP skill: submodality awareness (tracking the shifts at each level), rapport with yourself (the self-pacing required for internal work), the presupposition that every behavior has a positive intention (the foundation of the outcome chain), and the ecology principle (ensuring the transformation serves the whole system).
Choose a behavior, feeling, or response that has been persistent in your life. Something you’ve tried to change before without lasting success.
Run the complete twelve-step Core Transformation process:
Steps 1–4: Identify, thank, chain to core state, experience it (Part 1)
Steps 5–8: Reverse the chain, grow up the part, body integration (Part 2)
Steps 9–12: Timeline generalization, ecology check (Part 3)
Set aside forty-five minutes to an hour. Find a quiet space. Don’t rush. The most common feedback from first-time practitioners is that the process goes deeper than expected, and that the core state, once accessed, feels remarkably familiar. As if it was always there, underneath everything, waiting to be noticed.
NLP arts, Core Transformation, Part 3 of 3
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