This article is © Copyright 1999 Pilgrims Ltd.  The copyright owners reserve all rights to its reproduction.

N.L.P. - IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

By Bonnie Tsai, Pilgrims

"One thing that people really need to get about my life's work is that
it's not about therapy or business or "networking" organizations - it's about freedom"
		Richard Bandler

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.

How Do You Know the Sun Is Going to Come Up?

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?"

How Much Pleasure Can You Stand?

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.

We All Have Different Footprints so the Earth Knows Where We Are.

There is a saying in N.L.P. that goes like this, "The map is not the territory."  Some people find this rather puzzling, no doubt because they've never reflected on the fact that everyone doesn't share their own perception of reality.  Reality is based on what the brain has experienced and translated into a complex pattern of meaning.

This idea of different realities opens up lots of possibilities for work in the classroom.  One which, Jane Revell and Susan Norman use in their book, In Your Hands (Saffire Press) is the timeline.  In N.L.P. terms , a timeline is a map of your past, present and future.  To find your own timeline, you need to go inside yourself and find out where you preceive your past, your present and your future to be in spatial terms.  A timeline can take any shape or form.  Mine for example is crocked and winding with the past coming from my left side going through me and continuing into my present and future which is on my right side.  To make a timeline you need to think about what are the important events in your life.  You will no doubt discover that out of these events , you have gained positive qualities or in N.L.P. terms "resources" which will help you make your dreams come true, make changes in your life, and really build up a belief system which will allow you to accomplish anything you desire.  
Timelines can be done on paper or in a more kinesthetic-spatial way by "walking through" your timeline.  Besides gaining insight into your own life, comparing timelines can give you a peak into someone else's reality.  It goes a long way towards making us all more tolerant of other people when they don't act or react as we do.  It's just a different map of reality.

A lot of this course was about building self-esteem, about constructing a positive belief system, and about providing support for other people.  The approach is totally non-threatening.  We did lots of practice in small groups, which I, personally would not hesitate to take into the classroom.  One was, The Sunny Side of the Street.  In groups of 5, we took turns throwing out problems we felt we had. eg. problems learning a language or arriving for appointments on time.  Others in the group would then re-frame the problem in a positive way.  While participating in a activity like this, I guarantee you that you'll be too busy to feel sorry for yourself.

Another activity which goes along strongly with the idea of learning how to learn was thinking about something we had been able to learn successfully and how we did it.  Then thinking about something we felt we hadn't been able to learn successfully.  Working in small groups we shared with each other our successful or least successful learning processes.  Then in a relaxed state we took turns taking each other through our successful processes.  In my group we were first of all amazed at the variety of different learning strategies we had.  Through being able to mentally "try them out" on something we felt unsuccessful at learning, there was a real feeling expressed by people in my group of, "Yes!  I'll try that.  That might just work for me."  This was mind blowing for me.  I feel that the biggest difficulty my English learners have in learning English is knowing how to learn.  Here was something positive I could use with my students so that they could think about their own learning and thinking process.

We also did what Richard called a Quick Step Re-framing exercise.  We were asked to find something we would like to change in our lives.  Next we were asked to find three positive ways we could achieve this change.  We were advised to concentrate on what we wanted to happen and not what we didn't want to happen.  We were encouraged to do an "ecology" check on our work to make sure that we had come up with was morally, mentally, and physically acceptable to us.  This gave a chance to see if there was any objection from any part of us.

We created metaphors in story form with an aim to generating change.  This is a heathly and peaceful way of handling classroom management and discipline problems, because it avoids direct confrontation which usually only increases or acceterates the problem.

We were encouraged to create metaphoric, multi-sensory stories going through the sub-modalities.  This is an exciting way to get students to create their own stories which are vibrant, living, and meaningful, while at the same time teaching some useful vocabulary.

We did some fascinating work on collecting resources.  I call it, Someone I'd like to be.  We worked in pairs using an induction which consisted of three presuppositions in a row to set the direction.  Our partner then ask us to recall a person who we admired.  We built up a multi-sensory image of the person that centered around their  positive qualities.  Next we went through them carefully one by one.  It was like "trying each one on" to see if it fit us.  We could choose the one's we wanted to keep for ourselves after doing an "ecology" check for each one to make sure it was alright.
There was, I think for me a sense of "wonderment" in being able to choose my own resources.  To discover that I already had some I wasn't aware of and at the same time being able to collect some new ones.

On the last day of the course, Richard ask us to go through our experiences over the last eight days and write down what we had acquired we had acquired during the course and felt able to use.  In a sense this became at least a big part of own personal N.L.P. kit.

So what do I think about my expereinces two years down the line?

Now, I feel that one of the primary aims of this course was to build up a positive attitude and belief system about oneself.  When I realized how Richard was going to work, I thought, "oh, the people who know little or nothing about N.L.P. are going to be completely lost."  But no.  The reason they were able to "catch-on" so quickly was because the had acquired the belief early on in the course that they COULD do it.  As I mentioned earlier they had an easier time doing the practical work, because they weren't bogged down by the "received wisdom" (Richard calls it dinosaur shit) of prervious N.L.P. training.

When I went on the course I had already done quite a bit of N.L.P.  I wanted, however, to get the message from the "horse's mouth."  I was also wildly curious about this man-Richard Bandler-I had heard so much about-mostly negative.  I completely changed my opinion which afterall had been based on what other people had told me.  For people who find themselves in the same position, I can only say check him out.

When I saw the manual that went with the course, "I thought, oh no."  It was very "traditional" N.L.P.  Things I had known about and used for years.  However, we never used the manual.  It was there for people who felt they needed to have something concrete to read.  This was actually a very clever move, because it must have reasured people who weren't aware on a concious level of what they were learning.

At the end of the course, I felt extremely positive about myself, my capabilities, and was absolutely "fearless" to try anything.  Almost two years have gone by since the end of the course.  My initial exuberant feelings have mellowed with time.  The experience has led me to reflect a lot on how I think and learn.  Today, I like myself much better than two years ago and I have certainly acquired skills I didn't have two years ago.  That's a pretty positive, I think.