Daniel Smith

New Code NLP offers simplicity, understanding and powerfully elegant methods for creating excellence.

After founding NLP in the 1970s, Bandler and Grinder went their separate ways, offering different styles of NLP in their trainings.

Along the way, many people missed the point of NLP. They got lost in techniques and ‘magic phrases’ instead of continuing to explore the structure of magic. New Code NLP brings together the work of Dr John Grinder in directing NLP to where it belongs – the most powerful tool in the pursuit of excellence in the world today.

In two hours with Daniel Smith, you can learn some fun basics of New Code NLP, experience some “New Code Games” and the “New Code Change Format”.

Quick summary: In this session, we explored the Breath of Life, the Rhythm of Life and applied them to the New Code Change Format. We also spoke about the origins of NLP, and how New Code NLP focuses upon modelling, unconscious signals, state manipulations (rather than behavioural manipulations), using New Code Games and working content free.
Thanks for a wonderful night!

The same thing happens when we want him to open his mouth to eat – we open our mouth nice and wide, and he responds by opening his mouth. It’s like magic

A few weeks back, I taught my son to blow raspberries. It’s a simple thing – you just stick your tongue out and blow, but he’s really mastered it now. Though he hasn’t yet figured out that he shouldn’t do it when he’s feeding…

I’m in Hangzhou assisting with the New Code Coaching training led by Dr John Grinder and Carmen Bostic St Clair, and one of the topics that just came up was ‘mirror neurons’ (or ‘镜神经元’). According to wikipedia, a mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Mirror neurons offer the neurological basis for rapport and explain why we can connect with people by mirroring their body language, gestures, words and rhythm.

Another website describes them this way:

“Mirror neurons are active when the monkeys perform certain tasks, but they also fire when the monkeys watch someone else perform the same specific task. There is evidence that a similar observation/action matching system exists in humans. The mirror system is sometimes considered to represent a primitive version, or possibly a precursor in phylogeny, of a simulation heuristic that might underlie mindreading.”

If you’re interested in how to build stronger connections with the people around you, you might want to check out how our brains are wired to help us learn from other people, just by watching them.

Over the five days (14-18 May 2010), the students were sensational – full of energy, insight and a willingness to jump right into the experiences and adventures.

Here's a photo of the group on the last day. If you look carefully, you can see me there on the right of Carmen in about the middle of the second row...

In the past two weeks, I watched my four-month-old son learn to blow raspberries. Inspired by reading that this would be good for his language development (seriously!), and knowing that his mother can’t blow raspberries, I made the sacrifice and regularly blew raspberries at him. He was surprised at the start, then he started laughing. Then he started trying it out for himself. It took a while, and he ‘fell over’ a bunch of times. Even now, his raspberries are particularly sloppy. But he watched me and he did it – today, he can reliably exit a room and blow me a raspberry!

Interesting skills are usually the most difficult to transfer. We can learn Newton’s Laws, but it’s another story entirely to learn to think as Newton thought. Those tacit and almost invisible skills that sometimes leave behind traces of brilliance are the ones where we lack the language to teach the skills. Often we lack the explicit knowledge as to what is being done at all. Yet an infant can learn without language. They just look out at the world with eyes wide open and a willingness to explore, experiment and experience.

In NLP terms, we could call this modeling. Modeling is how Dr John Grinder learned to do Gestalt Therapy from Richard Bandler and Frank Pucelik, the process yielding what we now know as the “Meta Model”. Modeling was then applied by them, and the original study circle, to learn from Virginia Satir, Milton Erickson, Frank Farrelly and others, thereby creating the original foundations of NLP.

NLP Modeling (or NLP^Modeling) is more than just Strategies, and seems mostly taught explicitly and comprehensively as part of New Code NLP trainings.

Take advantage of this very special opportunity to learn from the co-founder of NLP how to apply New Code NLP into coaching.

¥13800 before 22 April, then ¥14800…

I personally discovered NLP by picking up Tony’s Unlimited Power, a book that some consider to be something of a stylized version of an NLP training.

Earlier today, I found out that Tony has just launched his new website.
Something that I found as I explored it was that you can now take his Personal Strengths Profile free of charge.

It’ll take about half-an-hour to run through it, but I just did it and thought it was good enough to suggest that you consider it too. It has a bit of Disc, but also a very interesting values assessment.

FYI I (Dan) have just finished the Graduate Certificate of NLP, and been certified as a Trainer of New Code NLP. As the first person in China to complete this, I’m pretty pleased about it. The GradCertNLP was 40 days of training, roughly equivalent to an advanced Master Practitioner training. It was a big commitment in time and energy, but I am really pleased with the results.

We are looking to having the first weekend of our Master Practitioner training at the end of March. This will be a great adventure for us, taking up some advanced NLP patterns, NLP Modeling, language patterns and an in-depth exploration of virtual questions, values and the core of what drives us. I am contemplating offering a Practitioner of New Code NLP training but we haven’t set any dates yet.

There are three basic levels of NLP training.

The first basic level of training is “Practitioner”. An NLP Practitioner will typically have been exposed to between 7 and 18 days of NLP training, focused on learning the fundamental patterns, techniques and attitudes.

The second basic level is “Master Practitioner”. Building on the Practitioner, Master Practitioner usually involves an extra 6-18 days of training. Sometimes this is focused on learning additional “advanced” patterns, while other trainers will focus Master Practitioner on Modeling.

The third basic level is “Trainer”. NLP Trainers Trainings are usually conducted over about three weeks, and is less focused on improving “NLP skills” and more focused on how to present NLP material.

In a sense, the fourth level would be the Graduate Certificate of NLP. The GradCertNLP is government accredited as equivalent to a third of a Masters degree and so there is a much higher standard of quality control. This incorporates Practitioner and Master Practitioner trainings into a 40-day period of training. To me, the Graduate Certificate of NLP sounds great, though it is still very new… Nobody in China has completed this level of training yet.

Some NLP trainers call themselves “Master Trainers”. The term was first coined by Richard Bandler when he and John Grinder split up, some might say as a way to position some trainers as “better” (others might suggest to ‘recognize seniority or skill’). There are a few other fancy titles floating around too.

Now: Not all trainings are equal.

There are different lengths of training, different styles of training and vastly different content. In general:

• A longer training will be better.
  You’ll learn more, experience greater personal shifts and develop better skills.
• A smaller group of participants will be better.
  You’ll get more attention from the trainer, your peers will help you more since they’ll know you better, and the training can move along faster.
• A more highly trained trainer is better.
  There is so much more to being the right NLP Trainer for you than just whether the person is calling themselves one. How many days have they spent learning and growing in the past year? How are they applying their skills? What are they best at?

There are also different streams of NLP. There is the “Robert Dilts/NLPU” and “Richard Bandler” and “ABNLP/Tad James” or “Tony Robbins” and even a few with “John Grinder/New Code”. And more spin off and brand themselves each year. Some trainers will be stuck in one ‘way’ while others will have explored a number of streams in depth and be focused on communicating their own or a combination.

Perhaps the biggest difference between my NLP training and my time at university is that you can keep redoing your NLP training. The best practitioners and trainers that I have seen are those that have jumped back into the arena and remained perpetual students, never getting too attached to what they know to learn something new. So wherever you are at now, I hope that you can start moving towards where you want to be in NLP.

You can’t see the light without the dust in the air.

Next Wednesday night, we will be having a session on New Code NLP

You will learn the New Code change format. This simple, elegant and generative strategy will be something that you can use immediately.

After all: What if you could take your best state of mind and resources with you where you need them the most?

You will also learn how to work “Content Free” – so you don’t have to spend so much time talking about the challenge and move your focus instead onto dealing with things and moving forward.

New Code NLP describes the recent work of Dr John Grinder. Much of what is taught as “NLP” these days is focused on the techniques produced through modeling genius. They found eye accessing, submodalities, anchoring, the Milton Model, the Meta Model and patterns like the Swish, Collapse Anchors and Reframing – amazingly powerful techniques. Yet the techniques that NLP leaves behind are not NLP any more than the dust in the air is the light itself.

You can learn more about New Code NLP in our session next Wednesday night.

Learn about “Content Free” processes. Learn the New Code change format. Enjoy a great evening.

New Code NLP with Dan Smith – 23 September – 7:15pm start – 100RMB

We’ll be in a convenient central venue just north of West Nanjing Road subway station, the REV office. That’s Unit 15B Ladoll International Hotel, 831 Xinzha Lu at Shimen Er Lu.

We can only hold 12 people, but if you’d like to come, please let me know to hold a place for you.

Richard and John worked together or “ran together” (as John phrases it) for about seven years at the start of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

More recently, Richard has branded his work as Design Human Engineering™ and Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning™, while John has channeled his focus into New Code NLP. While both might appear to be superficially different, each is in the pursuit of modeling excellence.

And if you look beyond the surface, they are remarkably similar. Let me give you an example…

Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning: In one exercise, you take a situation that isn’t working for you. A “problem state” if you will. Then you identify the feeling, noticing how the feelings move and change. After a short break, you then create a more resourceful state – a state of mind that feels better and that you believe helps you perform better. A “resource state”. Finally, you take the resourceful state with you while remembering the problem state.

New Code NLP: Take a “problem state”. Associate and connect with that state without trying to change anything: Just notice what happens in the situation. Then create a “content free high performance state” – while there are elaborate rituals within the New Code, this is basically a “resource state”. Finally, you take the “high performance state” into the “problem state”.

Of course, perhaps I am just confused and don’t understand all the subtleties…

Dan Smith

Dr John Grinder and Dr Richard Bandler developed NLP together through the 1970s. They discovered (and created?) many fantastic skills and opportunities for change, learning and growth.

After Grinder and Bandler started working independently from each other, each explored the field further in their own way. Bandler created Design Human Engineering and more recently Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning. Grinder developed New Code NLP, first with Judith DeLozier in Turtles All the Way Down and more recently with Carmen Bostic St Clair in Whispering in the Wind.

New Code NLP brings together the latest developments from NLP co-creator, Dr John Grinder, and his partner, Carmen Bostic St Clair, and includes powerful yet easy-to-use processes for NLP change work and personal evolution. Even if you are familiar with “NLP” as a field, you will likely want to experience the latest and best through New Code NLP.

Inspiritive quote Grinder and Bostic (2000) to say that New Code is:

A description of NLP which uses a systemic approach to demonstrate and teach the patterns by providing a series of contexts in which they manifest spontaneously. In the New Code of NLP the unconscious of the client is explicitly assigned the responsibility for the selection of the critical elements-the desired state, the resource, or new behaviour. The unconscious is explicitly involved in all steps. There are precise constraints placed upon the selection of new behaviour, more specifically, the new behaviour must satisfy the original positive intention(s) of the behaviour to be changed. The manipulation occurs at the level of state and intention as opposed to that of behaviour.

You can read more about New Code NLP at Inspiritive and at ITANLP.