Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 2; April 1999

NLP - IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Bonnie Tsai, Pilgrims

Page 1 of 2

In the spring of 1997, I got a look at N.L.P. through a new pair of glasses when I did a course with Richard Bandler. This was a course about "feeling better." And it was truly effective. The atmosphere in the large, impersonal lecture room was incredible. Never have I seen over 250 people create such a warm, secure environment so quickly. I remember we spent a lot of time the first day just laughing and smiling and then laughing some more. I was having fun! There was definitly a "WOW" factor here.

Of course as someone trained in Suggestopedia I was on home ground. Richard Bandler understands only too well that by using the right metaphoric side of the brain, he could communicate suggestions, messages that often seemed very personal, (how did he know that I needed to hear that), and bring about a shift in an embedded negative belief in the twinkling of the eye. This was a course taylor-made for me. I could just sit back and relax. Let my sub-concious do the work of listening in a timeless state as Richard spun his magic web through that most ancient of teaching...telling stories.

Watching Richard Bandler at work was like seeing a model of N.L.P. in action. He didn't need to talk about accessing cues, you could see him using them as he spoke, it was clear what his belief system was, because every sentence he uttered expressed it. And whatever stories I had heard about him and they are legion, I could really understand that the past is not the future and that change is possible. Obviously, he wasn't letting his past get in the way of his future. As an English trainer, I was delighted when Richard announced on the first day, that he was a "word junky." I thought, "oh yes more language less therapy." The influence of Milton Erickson was also apparent. He is able to use his voice in an incredibly hypnotic way. I found I was able to listen and respond while at the same time watch myself listening and responding to Richard. So, I was both a participant and an observer at the same time.

I think the thing that I found the most remarkable was that as I got to know people in the group I realized that we were really a mixed bag ranging from people very experienced in N.L.P. to real novices. There was also a wide age range. But because of the elegant way Richard teaches N.L.P. this was no problem at all. In fact the younger least experienced in "traditional" N.L.P. techniques people seemed to "get it" faster. This is because Richard has been able to streamline N.L.P. to make it much more natural and easier to apply. The short term memory is not overburdened with trying to remember how the technique works and the content of what is to be communicated at the same time. If anyone wants to know how to work with mixed ability groups, I suggest watching how Richard Bandler does it.

Now that I think about it, change was a big theme during the course. We were encouraged to experiement a lot during the practical work where we were surrounded by groups of assistants, who seemed to know when to be invisible and when to intervene. Richard said that N.L.P. was a "made up" word so that people could do whatever they wanted. This was certainly true on this course. One of the first things we were asked to do was to get into contact with that inner critic we all know so well. You know the one I mean. The one that keeps telling us what we aren't able to do. We worked on how it would sound if it had a different voice..for example a "sexy voice" or a high-pitched squeaky voice. We worked at the same time on changing the tonality of the vowels used by the inner critic when it speaks.. In the end as Richard says, you are able to just tell that silly critic "to shut the fuck up." It is perhaps important to remark that putting in some often quite earthy humour was a significant part of the way Richard works. For me bringing my own sense of humour into working with my own inner critic has empowered me to do things both in my personal and professional life that I would never have tackled before. And..this is important..if things I do try don't work out..well it's not the end of the world.

Much of the work we did together during that magical eight days was intrapersonal. We were required to get in touch with ourselves. Find out what was working well and why and what was not working well and how we could change it. We went looking for the places of positive beliefs and then the places of unbelief. So, at least for me, there was a lot of "clean up" work to do. Much trying out how things would be if we switched them around and put them in a different place. In other words, again in Richard's words, we leanrned to see through "the bull shit." It's like being able to say to yourself, "Do you really believe that? Are certain of it enough to be uncertain?"

Along with feeling better about oneself, the concept of pleaure was introduced into the course. We were asked to go inside ourselves and find memories during which we felt intense pleasure. Along with this we recalled memories of decisions made in the past which made us feel good. This was powerful stuff for me, because I always considered myself a poor decision maker. Coming to the realization that in the past on many occaisons I had not only been a "decision-maker", but a "happy decision-maker" was a revelation. There came the realization that we are all doing the best we can at all times with the resources we have at our disposal. Finding not only positive but truly happy decision-making experiences provided me with a real sense of being a successful decison-maker. Thus the emphasis was strongly on finding positive resources inside ourselves which we could call upon in time of need.

Whenever we associated with past experiences we were given great freedom of choice as to how we wanted to do it. We were advised to associate each image with one feeling at a time so as not to become confused, we moved images around trying them out in different places, making them smaller and smaller or larger and larger as the case required. We could get rid of disabiliating past experiences by using a mental sling shot or a fisbee. We could always say what we wanted more of. We talked to ourselves using our voices in amusing ways. What if you move your voice so that you talk from your shoulder, or your elbow, or even the tip of your finger? We could create future fantasy situations and then associate or dis-associate ourselves from the fantasy to see how it would be if the fantasy was the reality. This was a "cool" way of finding out what we wanted or...didn't want. It was a way of "floating our metaphoric boat" to see what would happen. It was like going to the movies to see the previews of coming attractions. Only we could control how we wanted it to be: bigger, brighter, bolder. I, a confirmed kinesthetic who always said I couldn't "see pictures" was dazzled by what I was now able to see.

One of the mini-projects we worked on during the course was to make a blueprint of ourselves now and how we would like to be. This is like thinking of where we are now and where we would like to be. The pattern was very much the here...there model. Before we started, Richard told us, "If it's in your head you can do something with it." We started by thinking of the resources we had to enable us to get from the here to the there. Mine are motivation, a sense of excitement and anticipation for the unknown, my inner critic who had now become my cheerleader telling me that I could do anything I really wanted to, and a sense of unconditional love and unconcious trust in people. It came home to me how important it is to know who you want to be and where you want to be. As soon as I became aware of this it's amazing how easy it was to take the first step or to recognize the sign posts along the way that would get me there in the end. Also there was a sense of not being impatient with the time it would take me.

One thing I feel I must say at this point is that this was not a "recipe" type course. We were asked only to experiement, to find out what would work for each of us. There were no rules or do's and don't's. This made the course seem unstructured at the time. I was learning but on a sub-concious level and so I didn't know what I was learning . I was changing, doing things differently and what I could see around me were people acquiring a large dose of self-confidence, sometimes maybe too much. But still largely, hughly positive. After the course ended, I remember clearly colleagues asking me, "But what did you learn? What could you show me?" The only honest answer was NOTHING. And hey you know what? That didn't bother me one bit.

I knew it was there inside of me and it was working, but I couldn't say how. Even my notes which are in the form of little mind maps are only now making sense to me. For me that is what real learning should be..unconcious. The proof of the understanding of what has been learned is in how you can apply it in your own way to enhance the quality of your life. That is what happened to me. It is only now that I can reflect on how it happened.

Surely, Richard teaches through stories which send messages or suggestions to the sub-concious. This is the same way Milton Erickson was able to work with his patients. Shortly after completing the course with Richard Bandler, I discovered, My Voice Will Go With You The Teaching Tales of Milton Erickson, edited by Sidney Rosen (W.W. Norton ans Company 1982) While reading it, I could understand exactly where Richard was coming from; Like Erickson, he often weaves his own experiences as well as thoes of his family and friends into his stories. Except that these are much more then just stories. In fact he keeps our concious mind busy or if you like entertained with his stories, while on the sub-concious level he is imparting valuable information. And he is the master at doing this, because he is totally congruent.