The low-down on Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Taken From Here

"Whether or not you think you can 

  or you can't...you're probably right" 

  Henry Ford

I've been really really excited about writing this post, as NLP is an approach to psychotherapy, personal development, and communication which absolutely fascinates me, and after reading this it may fascinate you more!

So, what is "Neuro-Linguistic Programming"?

NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is the art and science of excellence, derived from studying how top people in different fields obtain their outstanding results. These communication skills can be learned by anyone to improve their effectiveness both personally and professionally. It is directly applicable to a diverse spectrum of fields such as communications, business, sales, education and therapy

Beginnings of NeuroLinguistic Programming
NLP began in the early 70's as a thesis project in California. Richard Bandler and his professor, John Grinder, wanted to develop models of human behavior to understand why certain people seemed to be excellent at what they did, while others found the same tasks challenging or nearly impossible to do.

Inspired by pioneers in fields of therapy, personal growth and development, Bandler and Grinder began to develop systematic procedures and theories that formed the basis of NLP. They studied three top therapists: Virginia Satir, the extraordinary family therapist, the innovative psychotherapist Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, the world-famous hypnotherapist.

Their goal was to develop models of how it was that these people got the results they did. They sought to identify and model the patterns that produced these results. These three gifted therapists were quite different personalities, yet Grinder and Bandler discovered some underlying patterns that were quite similar. These patterns became the underlying structure of NLP, with names like: meta-model, submodalities, reframing, language patterns, well formedness conditions and eye accessing clues.

The phrase "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" describes the process of how personality creates and expresses itself. Put simply, we are all made up of a neurology that conveys information about our environment to our central neurvous systems and brains. Since we are also meaning creating creatures, we translate theseperceptions in our brains into meanings, beliefs and expectations. As we continue to grow from a rather "critter brain" baby into a more complex adult human, we tend to filter,distort and magnify the input we get from our environment such that it matches the elaborate program we evolve to explain our life experience.

NLP in other Therapies

Taken From Here

Today, NLP has grown in a myriad of directions - hypnosis and behavioral personal change work, structures of beliefs, modeling personal success and systems of excelence and expertise, business coaching and sales training.  In fact, in my last job in advertising at Starcom MediaVest Group, the company ran a 4-day NLP course which offered managers and directors useful tools to improve their communication, confidence, and management skills. Some have taken it in spiritual directions, assisting in alignment of personal behaviours and beliefs with a "higher purpose" and connection to the Divine. 

It is rapidly growing in the field of personal health (the area I want to go into!) with its strong foundation in how the mind influences behaviours and feelings in the body.   Public speaking, stage fright, parenting skills, allergies, phobias, trauma...the list of areas where training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and individual therapeutic work with NLP practitioners is endless.

In the next few posts I'll be walking through some tools common in NLP to improve performance at work and in your own personal health and wellbeing.  

If you're interested in using NLP in a practical sense, this is a great place to start 

Until next time...