NLP

Changing lives through the spoken word

Web by Paul B

Web Site By Paul Berkin

NLP

NLP, sometimes described by the Americans as “The study of excellence” (which it can be), is a package of applied psychology techniques.

In Tony’s view, what the co-founders have done is to make accessible to the public what was the preserve of the academics and the medical profession. NLP processes are simple, FUN, and anything but academic!

As Richard Bandler, one of the two co-founders asks us:-

“How much pleasure can you stand?”

Tony feels that if NLP isn’t enjoyable, then we’re not doing it right!

HOWEVER, when the time is appropriate for an individual, NLP can be a very sudden and life changing experience…

NLP started as a child of the seventies, even down to having its birth in California. John Grinder was then an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of California. Richard Bandler was a student of psychology at the university, and also very interested in psychotherapy. The two joined forces and decided to study selected people who were extremely successful in their field. The idea was that such people think differently, presumably, from the rest of the population. If the method of that thinking could be discovered and made into an easily used process, then others might copy the techniques and make more effective use of their own resources. In NLP this is known as modeling.

Bandler and Grinder studied three top therapists; Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt, Virginia Satir, a highly successful family therapist, and Milton Erickson, a renown hypnotherapist practicing his own new techniques. Common patterns of excellence in their methods of therapy were identified with a view to making them repeatable and useable by others.

One of the beauties of NLP is that it is process based, not content based. When a person helps another using NLP, then the “client” does not have to disclose the details of the concern, just confirm that the process is being followed.

The “Neuro” part of the title stands for the brain’s use of the neurological systems of sight, hearing, feeling, taste and touch. The mind uses combinations of these to recall the past and imagine the future. “Linguistic” refers to the fact that language is used internally to order thoughts and, of course, externally to communicate with others. The precise use of words is very important in NLP. “Programming” signifies the way people organize ideas and actions for results, sometimes represented by the word “habit”.

NLP believes that we can’t know what’s impossible, we can only find out what’s possible.