What is NLP?

"NLP is about freedom"  - Richard Bandler

"No matter who you think you are, you are always, and in all ways more than that!" - John Overdurf & Julie Silverthorn

NLP is like a roadmap, helping you discover pathways towards the life of your dreams. Unlike many talking therapies, it is more interested in the question of "HOW" we do what we do rather than "WHY", focusing more on solutions than on the problem. To see many of the key features and benefits of NLP you can click here.

  NLP offers an impressive array of techniques to overcome personal limitations and create new and empowered patterns of behaviour. 

Key Applications of NLP

• Enhancing Communication:  By offering many insights into how we use language, NLP holds many of the keys to becoming a master of influence, negotiation and communication as well as a better listener.
• Boosting Motivation:  Our values are what drive our motivation, and yet they are usually unconscious. NLP offers a structured approach to aligning values within a person or organisation, clarifying goals and making them appear irresistible.
• Modelling Excellence:  NLP offers structures and methodologies to replicate excellence in any field by understanding of strategies and beliefs.
• Achieving Emotional Mastery:  NLP has a series of core techniques designed to lead to greater control of one's emotional states so that you drive your life rather than being at the mercy of old behaviour patterns or convention. 
• Supporting Outstanding Health:  NLP and hypnosis can have a profound influence on health by engaging the unconscious mind in the mind-body healing process. For example in aligning people with their goals on physical appearance. Richard's Hypnotic Slimming Seminar  is an excellent example of this.
• Accelerating Personal Change:  NLP offers a wide range of techniques to transform unwanted beliefs or behaviour patterns in order to enhance an individual's effectiveness or enjoyment of life.
• Creating Outstanding Sports Performance: NLP offers proven ways of ensuring athletes are in top mental condition to excel at their chosen sport.
• Curing Phobias: The NLP fast phobia cure is a highly effective and fast way to eradicate phobias of virtually any kind.

NLP stands for "Neuro Linguistic Programming (or Psychology)". 

• Neuro refers to the fact that our nervous system is the instrument through which we interpret what is represented as reality. It is the instrument through which consciousness flows and it can only be played as precisely as the instrument is tuned.
• Linguistic: Language is one of the fundamental building blocks for creating material reality. By using language we are creating reality by making meaning of our experience and communicating this to others. 
• Programming (or Psychology): refers to our ability to organize our communication and neurological systems to achieve outcomes. By using the word psychology rather than programming we are emphasizing the fact that people are dynamic organisms, not reductionist machines waiting to be programmed.

The key presuppositions of NLP (listed below) emphasizes how each of us is responsible for  (and eminently capable of) creating our future:

• People have all the resources (internal states and emotions) they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcomes.
• The Map is not the Territory - the words we use are not the experience itself but they provide clues to the way we experience life
• The meaning of your communication is the response you get - we are each responsible for our communication and need to be flexible when we don't get our point across
• There is no failure, only feedback
• Every behaviour is motivated by a positive intent. (Note: the results may not be positive, but the intent always is!

How did NLP Develop?
NLP was co-developed by Richard Bandler (a mathematician) and John Grinder (an Associate Professor of Linguistics) working together at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the early 1970s.

They asked the question: "What is the difference that makes the difference between somebody who is merely competent and someone who excels at the same skill?"

It just so happened that 3 of the people they chose to model were the outstanding  therapists, Fritz Perls (Gestalt Therapy), Virginia Satir (Family Therapy) and Milton Erickson (world-renowned hypnotherapist). Bandler and Grinder modelled their language, physiology and mental processes and then identified patterns (rather than theories) which could be coded and explicitly taught and duplicated. NLP also drew on many existing fields of study including the work of Chomsky in linquistics, of Korsybski in general semantics, Ashby in systems thinking and many, many others.

Time Based Techniques
Your "Time Line" is how you unconsciously store your memories or how you unconsciously know the difference between a memory from the past and a future projection. Time-based techniques  such as "Time Line Therapy"®, designed by Tad James release the effects of past negative experiences and changes "inappropriate" emotional links in minutes rather than days, months or years. The resulting behavioural change in an individual takes place at the unconscious level and is therefore effortless to implement and takes immediate effect.