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.

Jeff has given me the lead on this event that will be the first of it’s kind in Asia where you will be able to learn not just more advanced NLP techniques, but NLP Modeling. We’ll cover more advanced NLP techniques of course. Though more than just a collection of techniques, what most attracted me to NLP in the first place is how NLP provides a mechanism to get access to genius by absorbing their skills.

If you’ve looked at an infant – like our son Alexander – you’ll notice how they can have their eyes wide open as they look out at the world, absorbing whatever lies before them. They don’t ‘analyse’ or ‘think through’ what they are doing; instead they just absorb the behaviours of those around them. At the dawn of NLP, Grinder modeled Bandler to as they developed the Meta Model, and they did it together to develop the Milton Model and so much else. Learning to model deliberately helps us take NLP to an entirely new level.

We are looking to run this over four weekends, currently:

• March 26-28,
• April 24-25,
• May 8-9, then
• May 28-30.

So, all up, 8-10 days of training where you can learn to:

• Identify, apply and use advanced language patterns to influence and persuade,
• Connect with that state where you are at your very best whenever you want,
• Learn to apply NLP Modeling (those skills that Bandler and Grinder applied when they founded NLP) to learn whatever you want to learn,
• Get more clear about what is most important to you than ever before,
• Build rapport and understanding from those around you,
• Connect with the metaphors, questions and beliefs that drive your life,

More generally, you can walk away enjoying experiencing more excellence, more often.

For more information, on how to become a Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming with Dan Smith, click here.

Indentify your personal Vision in 2010 and remove the obstacles you Believe are in the way

John Dorris is leading the South China NLP Society is back to kick off the New Year and help you identify your vision for 2010 and give you the techniques to achieve it.

Have you or someone you know ever started the year with a vision to create a change to make a better life but given up before really getting started? What happened that kept you from achieving your vision for a better life that year? We will be looking at what you can do to make this year different.

If you want to find a way to move past the problems from last year, or to take a new path full adventure in 2010 then the good news is that there are techniques that you can use to get the life that you want. These tech­niques are simple to learn and easy to apply and can have a dramatic impact on your ability to achieve your vision in 2010.

John Dorris, South China NLP’s organizer will share the techniques he uses in coaching and facilitation as well as the techniques of NLP co-founder Richard Bandler in his book Get the Life You Want. We will look at how to identify the feelings and beliefs that empower you to take the next steps into your vision for 2010!

With a  new day and a new time to kick off this special session, we will be having brunch in Hooley’s in Guangzhou’s Tina He district on Saturday from 11:30 until about 2pm.

Hooley’s Irish Pub & Restaurant – Ground floor Bing Hua Hotel, 2 Tian He Bei Lu, Guangzhou

John Dorris: Be the Change that You Want to See
23 January from 11:30am in Guangzhou

To register, please email John directly or just complete the form below:

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.

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

Since founded by Mark Julien, China NLP brings together a community of individuals interested in exploring and developing their NLP skills. Our speakers and trainers volunteer their time to share their ideas and insights. We look to cover a wide range of subjects across the NLP domain without attachment to any particular school of thought.

In a session, we might have someone who trained with NLP University (Robert Dilts), another who trained with Tad James, a Richard Bandler-trained Executive Coach, and others who have taken their NLP training with local training companies. We welcome and value everyone.

And if you would like to contribute something to China NLP, please do contact us…

I just came across a set of classic Richard Bandler videos. 11-and-a-half-hours of Richard actually, recorded in a training with NLP Comprehensive in Colorado. With an array of topics covering layering responses, propulsion systems, attitudes, perceptual grids, nonverbal amplifications, playing with problems and weaving complexes, I really appreciate Bandler’s insights and the sheer entertainment value of his style.

One of the things that always stands out to me when I spend time watching or listening to Richard is the deep similarities to John Grinder. It’s easy to get lost in the wonderful techniques, but despite their overt differences, Bandler and Grinder’s approach and focus on the underlying technology rather than the superficial techniques is remarkably similar.