  We present a new approach to the problem of enumerating permutations of
length n that avoid a fixed consecutive pattern of length m. We use this idea
to give explicit upper and lower bounds on the number of permutations avoiding
a pattern of length m. As a corollary, we obtain a simple proof of the CMP
conjecture, regarding the most avoided pattern, recently shown by Elizalde.
Finally, we also show that most of the patterns behave similar to the least
avoided one.
