What is NLP?  (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

NLP is a unique set of perspectives on human behavior, and a set of models for communicating clearly and effectively.  The original developers modeled some of the best therapists and communicators in the world, watching and listening to them with different filters until they found ways to categorize human thinking styles and behavior patterns into specific "units." These units then could be very strategically manipulated to produce consistent results in different contexts. 

One of the first areas in which the original developers worked was manipulating these "mental units" in order to produce therapeutic change incredibly quickly.  They applied these classifications of behaviors or "units" to various contexts, producing incredible techniques for alleviating grief, creating motivation, reducing phobias and fears, concentrating on and accomplishing goals, and helping people to feel comfortable during a conversation or public speaking.  While these skills sound like just a list of techniques, the impact such changes have on people's individual lives is incredible.

One of the most powerful examples you can have of this change happened to our corporate president, Mr. Larry Westenberg, during his NLP training. By working with other students, he made strategic changes in his thinking and the sequences of his "mental units." After learning how to be happier, more content with his life and more motivated to achieve his goals and aspirations, he began pursuing a career as a full-time professional therapist, with the intent of sharing the incredible information he learned while studying NLP with others. He went on to obtain two Masters degrees, both aimed at assuring that he would be able to share NLP effectively with others. (One as an M.S.W. and Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and then another in Education, an M.S.Ed.)

Regarding his NLP training, Mr. Westenberg writes:

"On the third day of a twenty-eight day intensive training in NLP (with NLP Comprehensive in Colorado), the class watched a tape of Dr. Richard Bandler (one of the original developers of NLP) working with a woman who had severe panic attacks when people were late.  I mean late for anything - late getting back from lunch, late for a date, late showing up at her house - anything!  It appeared as if Dr. Bandler were almost teasing the woman, and sometimes even making fun of her symptoms.  The "patient" looked quite calm and in no distress, and Dr. Bandler asked her some totally off-the-wall questions.  (I had done psychiatric assessments for almost ten years when I saw the tape.  I KNEW the RIGHT questions you were supposed to ask to assess someone's phobias and panic attacks, and he had pretty much skipped that whole series of questions!)  He then had her move some pictures around and imagine some things, and then announced she was cured.   The really weird part was the lady didn't even "notice it."  But in her follow up interview, she told of how the panic attacks just "suddenly disappeared."  She had sort of forgotten them, then almost expected them - but they never came back.  It seemed like a "fluke" thing to me.  I mean, he hadn't really done anything, right?

Twenty-four-days later, the class watched the tape again.  By that time, I had spent four weeks learning these "simple, yet complicated" ways of watching and categorizing patterns in people's thinking and behavior.  Once you knew HOW to spot the right sequences in people's words and behavior, you could even figure out how they would tend to have little "brain short-circuits" like phobias and "panic from nowhere."  And once you could spot the sequence, you could help them change it, and change their thinking.  And then, BOOM!  Their thinking would change, feelings would change, and their behavior would change.  Seriously and massively change!  

Watching the tape after the additional training days, the rest of the class and I sat with our jaws dropped.  Dr. Bandler was asking incredibly strategic interview questions.  Some of them were asked via jokes, some of them were answered non-verbally.  But every move of his hand, every shift of the images in the patient's "picture world" was absolutely strategic.  And to any graduate of the training, it was a powerful way to encapsulate and capitulate our learning.  I was amazed.  Having seen "talk therapy" done for a decade, I now watched this guy named Bandler literally make getting rid of your phobia and panic attacks an enjoyable and comfortable experience.  All the patient had to do was just sit and relax and describe the difficulty in response to some VERY strategic questions.  You could even laugh during the process, and Lordy, that appealed to me!!!! 

In the training, we also learned how to carefully sequence or "program" our thinking, and "BOOM,' our thinking would change, create different feelings, and thus produce different behavior in a huge variety of contexts!  About a hundred of us had it happen to ourselves and each other over and over in the training program.  And it became easy to make those same mental and emotional shifts happen in other people's thinking.  It is done by very simple but extremely carefully "packaged" questions and statements.  All of them are carefully sequenced and strategic.  (Later, in Master NLP Practitioner Training, we learned to also see and hear how incredibly carefully the word emphasis and word sequences are chosen!) 

In any type of traditional therapy, there may be many sessions of "digging" into the problem.  And hopefully, at some point, there is a particular session where things REALLY begin to shift, and the client has some kind of "Ah-ha!" experience.  What NLP does is strategically create these shifts MUCH more quickly.

I find NLP amazing.  I love teaching it to people, and watching them use it to make their lives better, and make life better for the people around them.  And I usually do this without anybody knowing I am being strategic.  Every conversation becomes an opportunity to support people on their goals or help them solve their problems, and it hardly takes any effort - well, once you master the distinctions and techniques involved!"

A few years later I learned from Charles Faulker in an incredible training entitled, "Perceptual Cybernetics™ that NLP is based on five main models.  Charles suggested thinking of the models as four walls, plus one roof on a house.  Each wall has a window in it.  Inside the house is a family.  There is mom, dad and two young children living inside the house.  As people in a life, they exhibit a million different behaviors and thoughts throughout the day.  Just as we can learn to look through a filter or colored lens, we can look at their behavior and thinking through five possible filters or models.

The first model is called Anchoring.  Anchoring has been used extensively by success guru Tony Robbins, and is the main NLP model he used to build his empire.  We strongly recommend that this be your beginning point for learning all later NLP, as it includes some basic and fundamental distinctions that are crucial to applying ANY NLP techniques effectively.  This is because NLP training usually begins with learning how to shift people's feelings. This is taught in our "Natural Emotional Control Techniques" training, as well as, "The Role of Influence in Therapy and Counseling."  Almost all of our skill trainings teach skills that generalize easily to other contexts, and so we teach these same skills in a different context when we offer the training as, "The Role of Influence in Sales."  Since this skill is so useful in so many contexts, it is also taught in several other training programs we offer, including "Learning to Enjoy Life More - A Brain Owner's Manual" and, "Learning to Relax- Quickly!"  Using our metaphor of a family in a house, this "window" or view on the world of human behavior would be watching how the family feels, and learning to notice sequences in their feelings or "states." 

After you learn to categorize and recognize different types of feelings shifts, you can move on to study how to categorize a set of patterns in thinking.  By using this second model in NLP called strategies, you will learn to recognize and utilize patterns in people's thinking that create motivation, make decisions and selections, and help them to learn and remember.  These skills are taught in our training entitled "Cognitive Strategies for Competence," and also in our "Making Goals More Achievable."  So this second window through which you can filter the family's behavior and thinking is called Strategies. The focus is on internal sequences, and this skill and set of distinctions is at the heart of modeling the skills of others.   

Many very advanced therapy techniques stem from the "Parts Model."  This section is also one of my specialties, and is the root of all of my work with beliefs and changing values and beliefs.  Using this third filter or window, we would be looking at the family and their similarities and differences in values and beliefs.  We would be watching the "politics" of the family.  Within ourselves, and always in interactions with others, there is a certain amount of "give and take."  What action you do when give and take are out of balance makes the difference between suffering or changing, coping or adapting.  Negotiating, whining, fighting - they all take place here.  How to deal with each is the subject of this view on the life of the family.  We utilize the parts processes in several of our training programs, including, "Making Goals More Achievable," or "Treating Ambivalence and Incongruence."  They are also the foundation of, "Resolving Conflicts - Inside and Out." 

The fourth model in NLP is called submodalities, and it has been extensively explored by Dr. Richard Bandler to an absolutely amazing degree.  Some of his earliest and most "obvious" work was in this model.  Submodalities involves helping people make very strategic moves and changes to pictures and pieces of experiences in their head/mind.  You can work with an absolutely amazingly powerful model when you learn to play with submodalities in yourself and others.  We teach the basics of this training in a class called, "The Fast Phobia/Trauma Treatment Method."  We also utilize and teach submodality techniques in our classes such as, "Stress Prevention and Preparation," and, "Dealing With Overwhelm," and even, "Grief and Stress."  When you learn this perspective, you watch the family with a filter on their thinking - exploring the STRUCTURE of what the individual family members picture in their heads, say to themselves inside, and how they feel in their bodies.  While strategies explores the sequences of internal processes, submodalities explores the "richness" of the pieces of those sequences.  It is making some pictures brighter and closer and larger, and making others fade off into the distance.   

A similar but unique way of categorizing patterns in people's thinking comes from another model in NLP, Meta-Programs.  This fifth and final set of filters is extremely useful in learning how to make your communications have the most impact and clarity.  This is taught in our trainings called, "Understanding Cognitive Filters," and also applied from a different perspective in the training entitled, "Job Profiling."  When you know the filters through which people view the world, you can match their filters so they pay careful attention to your communications.  This level of influence offers you a method for helping people feel you are attending carefully to their communication, and teaches you to deliver messages with impact and precision in return.  Watching the family in the house through this filter, you would notice what types of information are most valued by each family member.

An interesting sixth window or view or perspective on the family inside the house is best exemplified by bringing to your attention that we have been explaining these models using the metaphor of a house with four windows, and that viewing a family's behavior through attention filters is being described metaphorically as looking through a window.  But NLP is not a house, and there are no windows to look through at this non-existent family.  But this "story" helps you "get the idea."  Metaphors is another model utilized in NLP.  Everybody has to have values, and our life metaphor helps us know what to make important in our life.  Metaphors is incredibly rich learning territory, especially in the hands of experts like Dr. Milton Erickson and Charles Faulkner.  In our attempt to keep up with offering this delightful information, we offer a training called, "Metaphor Therapy."    

In addition to the five (or six) models in NLP, the field also offers some pretty amazing tools for personal growth and change.  One of these tools is a set of language and questioning skills called, "The Meta-Model."  Originally developed by Dr. Richard Bandler as part of his doctoral dissertation, it is available through a book known as, "The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II."  by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. (Science and Behavior Books, Palo Alto, CA  94306  1975)  I do not recommend you go race out and buy a copy yet.  Instead, I recommend that you take the training from us entitled, "Inquiry and Interviewing Skills" which features business and management applications, or "Assessment and Interviewing Skills," which focuses on therapy and assessment applications of the Meta-Model. I suggest you learn how to USE the tool first.  THEN go buy "The Structure of Magic I & II."  It can make sense and be useful then.  But that book is tricky!  C'mon...  It's somebody's (Bandler's) dissertation.  The tool is fantastic.  It helps you clarify communications coming from others, and to hone your own communications to help others get your point exactly and peacefully.  I find the tool so useful I developed a set of practice cards that are included with the class, or you can purchase them separately.  I think Bandler has gone on light years ahead from The Meta-Model, and yet I still find it a very useful tool for people to learn. 

Another delightful tool that grew out of working in NLP is called, "Perceptual Position."  This very powerful set of techniques is taught in the training entitled, "Maintaining Healthy Boundaries in Treatment and Therapy."  It helps parents, therapists, lovers, and divorcing parents the opportunity to develop and strengthen boundaries between themselves and others.  It teaches techniques and concepts you will find useful for the remainder of your life. You do not have to be a therapist to benefit from this training program - or any of the others!

Most of the available training programs from Expanding Enterprises, Inc. utilize or teach NLP techniques.  The class, "Introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming," is described by it's own title.  It is a "cherry pick" of techniques for quick, powerful changes on the spot.  "Anger Management" classes teach several techniques taken from several of the above listed NLP models, specifically designed to work as a "cluster" to help reduce anger inside and out.  "Executive Stress Management" is also a smattering of techniques applied to stress that work easily and quickly.  The "Beliefs and The Structure of Prejudice" training is a three-day "cram" of NLP techniques, with a focus on beliefs and influence.  The five-day Master Class called, "Ethical Influence" is our flagship training, carefully crafted to teach you NLP techniques and have you master their application in a five-day blitz of information. 

Ok, now, "Executive Meditation" simply teaches meditation without religious overtones (as an exercise in cognitive therapy), and, "Basic Massage Techniques doesn't need much explanation.  Our goal in that class is to help you avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, and to learn to do some very basic massage techniques and avoid hurting anyone while doing them. Neither of them teaches NLP methods or tools.  Bet you figured that out already... 

Finally, there are several applications of an NLP skill called, "Influential Language." It is an amazing set of methods for making your communications have more impact and "fit" the receiver so that your message is well received - or "nudged" into the receiver. These skills are applied to therapy in the training entitled, "Using Influential Language in Therapy," and applied to sales in, "The Role of Influence in Sales."

We take great pride in offering the absolute best training.  We appreciate any feedback you would offer, and we  hope to dazzle you with our products and usefulness soon!

Larry Westenberg, for
The Expanding Enterprises' staff

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