Articles by Andy

ChangeCamp is a one day low cost event in the North East for professionals and interested laypeople who want to change their inner and outer worlds for the better.

It can be about changing yourself if you want to explore your inner life and further develop your skills and resources.

It can also be about helping others if you work with other people to help them change, or it can be about changing groups if you work with groups and teams.

There will be a wide choice of presentations and workshops for professionals and the public including:

• Taking your life in your hands: Iain Mackenzie, Gestalt psychotherapist and coach. This is a taster session for anyone interested in exploring and sharing a range of strategies to enhance inner strength. (Counsellors and therapists may also find this useful for personal development and for use with your clients.)
• Quick Start EFT: Andy Hunt, NLP & EFT therapist and trainer. A brief introduction to EFT that will give you an introduction to the basic skills and strategies of Emotional Freedom Techniques
• How to get well and stay well: Lyn White, Reverse Therapist. Come and learn how you can listen to your body to get rid of symptoms and keep yourself well.
• Compassion, self awareness and the paradoxical nature of change: Iain Mackenzie, Gestalt psychotherapist and coach. An experiential introduction to gestalt therapy
• The Good Feeling of Practice Well Done!: Andy Hunt, NLP & EFT therapist and trainer. Using NLP to enhance mental rehearsal so you can improve your performance at work, at home or at play.
• Bring More Laughter into Your Life: Keith Adams, accredited life coach and training manager who specialises in the science of happiness and laughter as a coach and laughter facilitator. The workshop explores the psychological and physiological benefits of laughter. Its aim is help you to generate more fun and humour into your life and uses NLP techniques to get you smiling and laughing.
• The Gulliver Club: Andy Hunt, NLP & EFT therapist and trainer. Using EFT in a gentle way to bring relief and relaxation and to work on long term issues that restrict our inner freedom.
• Resolving Your Inner Conflict: Alan Scott, NLP Trainer, this workshop introduces you to tools and techniques to resolve inner conflicts, allowing you to feel strong calm and in control
• Feeling Good and Loving Yourself: Alan Scott, NLP Trainer, workshop presenting tools for helping yourself feel good and appreciate yourself even in difficult circumstances.
• Laughter workshop: Keith Adams accredited life coach and training manager who specialises in the science of happiness and laughter as a coach and laughter facilitator. This is the Laughter workshop – 45 minutes of serious laughing – this is the workshop that will leave you smiling for days and is a perfect way to round of the ChangeCamp experience.
• There’s more: More workshops are being added as we get closer to the event ….

Who can attend? Anyone who is interested in this kind of work: therapists, trainers, teachers, social workers, doctors, nurses, anyone who works in the helping professions.

Where and when is it on? Spring ChangeCamp 2010 will be held in Gosforth High School, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne on Saturday March 20th 2010 from 9:30 – 6:00

How much does it cost? The cost for the whole conference is just £10 (that’s right, just £10) and a contribution to a shared lunch.

To find out more and book your place go to  www.changecamp.co.uk

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It’s that time of year when we start to think about those New Year’s Resolutions. All the things we want to do, have and be in this New Year - new car, exotic holiday, lose weight, a new career, etc.

Often we don’t realise consciously that what we want to have or achieve are just a means to an end. What we really want from our possessions and experiences is the feeling or emotion that it gives us.

Perhaps you want to have an exotic holiday. As you imagine the holiday of your dreams what feelings and emotions arise for you? Maybe you imagine feeling relaxed, excited, enthusiastic and happy. Have you ever spent time day dreaming about what your holiday is going to be like - enjoying the feelings you’ll have before you even get there. Or perhaps you want to lose weight. That might make you feel fit, healthy and attractive.

Advertisers figured this out a long time ago. It’s obvious from all the sofa adverts at this time of year that having a deluxe leather sofa with recliner options will give you a happy contented family or an appreciative and attractive partner. Or you could join an exclusive health club and become fit and attractive like the lithe young people in the advert (who obviously don’t need it).

The seductive voices of advertising tell us “just get this thing or take part in this activity and you will be rewarded with these feelings”. I think a sofa is not the only way to have a happy family. Joining a health club is not the only way to feel fit.

I think there is a more useful way to think about New Year resolutions that gives us a better chance of getting what we want and many more choices in how we get there.

How do you want to feel in 2010? What feelings, or emotions, would you like to feel more of?

How would your New Year resolutions be different if started by choosing the emotional states you wanted to experience?

Read the rest of this entry »

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There are only two weeks now until ChangeCamp 2 the number of presentations is now up to 12 with more to follow.

For just £10 and a contribution to a shared meal you can choose from (just click on the link to find out more*):

• Quick Start EFT
• Gestalt Experiential Workshops
• Creating Confidence with NLP
• Solution Focused Brief Therapy
• Life Club
• Self Image & Esteem Building
• Stop Feeling Sh*t and Feel Good
• The Delights of Meta-Modelling
• The Happiness Workshop
• EFT for Cancer Patients
• Hypnosis To Stop The Stress And Begin Deep Relaxation
• Feel better with tapping

Last but by no means least there will also be a Laughter Workshop at the end of the day.

To sign up for ChangeCamp all you need to do is book your place online with Paypal or your credit card. It only costs £10 for the whole day’s presentations and the Laughter Workshop. It’s a bargain!

Look forward to seeing you there.

*If you are not already a member of the ChangeCamp website you will need to sign on, it doesn’t cost anything and it gives you full access to the details of the sessions and other parts of the website.

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Most people don’t like the idea of having surgery. Even if it’s essential most people would probably rather be somewhere else doing something else. In many people’s minds being in hospital counts as an ordeal.

What is the state of mind that goes with having an ordeal? Usually it is one of apprehension or dread.

Does feeling apprehension or dread help?

Probably not. Being stressed is not very conducive to healing.

Recently, a client of mine went into hospital for some surgery, rather than being upset or apprehensive she was treating it as a short holiday! In her mind, this stay in hospital was a rest, lying in bed, being looked after and free from cooking or washing up duties - a holiday!

Not only did she choose her frame of mind, but to enhance the effect she took her holiday bag complete with her holiday kit: trashy magazines, an easy read novel, a serious book, mp3 player and supply of chocolate. All the things she would have taken on a real holiday (except for sun screen of course).

At first I found this a strange way of thinking about a visit to hospital. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to apply a holiday attitude to a hospital stay, but as I thought about it, I began to see that this point of view has a lot to recommend it.

If you are having a good holiday you will probably feel relaxed and comfortable, enjoying a break from the usual ritual, perhaps enjoying the chance to rest. Being able to be relaxed and comfortable in hospital is probably going to be conducive to your treatment and recovery.

Not only did my client frame the experience as a holiday she took props (her holiday bag) to elicit those holiday feelings or state while she was in the hospital.

Afterwards I asked my client how well her plan had worked. She said it had been enormously helpful by allowing her to be in an internal world separate from the physical world of the ward around her. She was able to get lost in her fiction and her music. She even conjured up memories of lying on beaches from previous holidays to develop her feelings of rest, relaxation and escape.

Would it be the only thing you would need to do to have a comfortable stay in hospital?

Probably not, but it’s a very good start.

If you think about it, all the people in my client’s ward were in similar situations all there to recover from surgery of one sort or another. How they approach the experience has an effect on the experience. As a patient you don’t have that much control over what happens to you, that’s in the hands of the medical team. You do have control (if you know how) over your responses.

Framing the experience or giving the experience a meaning of your choice is one way to exert a little control. Setting the frame alters the experience.

Which would you prefer an ordeal or a holiday?

Framing and eliciting helpful states (or feelings) are parts of NLP. My client had been spontaneously using the skills of an NLP Practitioner without knowing about it.

What would it be like if you knew these skills consciously then you could use them at will to change the quality of many of your experiences?

To learn about framing, states and far more, you might like to think about attending an NLP Practitioner training.

Click on the link to learn more about IntegrityNLP NLP Practitioner trainings.

Image courtesy of dMap Travel Guide

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“What I found really refreshing was that fact that the three trainers were constantly rotating in the teaching and this kept me very interested and alert.” Lisa

My first NLP Practitioner training as a novice student of NLP was a twenty day course for 140 people run by a single trainer (with helpers). That was very impressive to me, I thought that I had received a ‘true’ NLP training.

However when I attended my next NLP Practitioner training with a different company I found the style and set up were completely different - four trainers on a rotating schedule for 24 students. A very different atmosphere and a very different style of training and interpretation of NLP.

On my third Master Practitioner training (with yet another training organisation) I was introduced to some new trainers with yet another style of training.

The change from the first NLP Practitioner to the second was quite surprising. I thought I knew how NLP was done, I thought there was just the one right way to do things. By the time I had started my third NLP Master Practitioner training I realised that there are lots of approaches to NLP and I welcomed the difference.

Now I find the variety of perspectives helpful in the development of my own unique understanding of NLP.

If you look around at adverts for NLP courses you will see that some of the courses almost advertise themselves as ‘The True NLP’ from the mouths of one or other of the early developers or their students. Wouldn’t it be best to get the story straight from the horse’s mouth? That might be true if there was only one horse! Even the co-creators of NLP disagree about how best to do NLP.

Wouldn’t it be better to get the training from one person so you have a consistent demonstration of what NLP is? That might be the case if NLP was a prophetic revelation of ‘The Truth’.

Fortunately NLP is not a cult, it’s a methodology for modelling human skills. The more skills there are on display the more there is to model. Originally NLP was modelled on the skills of three therapists, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erikson, people with very different ways of working, many more people have been modelled since.

Here are three reasons to have three trainers on a training:

1. You get more than one point of view.

If you attend a ’solo provider’ on your first NLP training it’s very easy to believe what the trainer tells you is chapter and verse on NLP only to be surprised by the variety of opinions within NLP. It is refreshing and reassuring to find that NLP is hotly debated between NLPers that new processes and approaches are being developed all the time and there is much to be learned from each other. Having three trainers gives you three points of view from the beginning.

2. You learn different ways of approaching the same situation.

Each trainer will tackle an issue differently. Each approach is one way, of many ways, of using NLP to get a result. Since the basis of NLP is modelling successful strategies - the more strategies on view the better.

One of the four pillars of NLP is behavioural flexibility, the ability to do things differently when required. The more exposure you have to doing things differently the more likely you are to be able to develop your own flexibility.

3. You get much more for your money.

Just from simple economics having three trainers on one course is going to cost you less than attending three practitioner trainings in a row.

The three principal trainers at IntegrityNLP for both the NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner trainings have very different approaches and backgrounds in NLP. Nigel Hetherington has trained with one of the co-founders of NLP and has a strong interest in trancework and hypnosis, Andy Hunt blends NLP with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Harry Knox has an extensive background in training and mental health work within the NHS. As well as our different backgrounds and professional inclinations we have very different training and personal styles.

Special Offer

If you want to find out more about the experience of some of our practitioners you might like to check out the book “So, what is it you are doing? An Insider’s Guide to an NLP Practitioner Training“.

If you choose to buy a printed copy of the book you will be eligible for a £75 discount on IntegrityNLP NLP Practitioner Trainings held in Newcastle upon Tyne. (If you download the electronic version of the book you will eligible for a £35 discount.)

Photo courtesy of  Anderson Mancini

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When I did my first NLP Practitioner training, people asked me what I was doing and I told them as best I could. If they hadn’t heard of NLP they would have an air of puzzlement or disbelief. “What are you doing that for?” seemed to be the unspoken question. At that time I found it a very hard question to answer.

I’d first been introduced to NLP about 20 years earlier on a teacher training course and had been intrigued. It kept surfacing from time to time down the years but it took me until 1999 to attend my first NLP training. I attended a weekend introduction to NLP (a lot like the IntegrityNLP Introducing NLP course) in London to find out at first hand what it was all about.

I was astonished. Up until then I thought the furniture of my mind was fixed in place and I was stuck with it. After two days I realised that a lot of the limiting and negative thoughts I experienced were optional not obligatory. I had to find out more.

If you think all the thoughts, feelings, ideas, memories that rattle around in your body and mind are fixed this is probably difficult to imagine. If you have not attended an NLP training take a moment to imagine that you can quickly and easily change the way that you think and feel, that old hurts can be healed and old reactions dissolved. It’s a very different way of thinking about the world.

I think that contributed to my difficulty in explaining what the training was all about and what it meant to me. This experience prompted me to start the “So, what is it you are doing?” book project, where participants of past and present NLP Practitioner trainings share their thoughts on what it means to attend an IntegrityNLP NLP Practitioner Training.

Here are some of their thoughts about why they chose to do an NLP Practitioner Training

Actually   ‘doing’   something   concretes  my   learning. Books have their place, however it is only when I practice and experience skills that I find true value in them. Having considered a certain missing something  from my Humanistic  counselling approach  I  decided  that   this  was the next  step  for  me,   to sign up  for   the NLP course and learn new skills.In a nut shell experiential  learning floats my boat and for me  NLP is all about jumping into the deep end and immersing myself in valuable learning and personal development

Rob

So   I enrolled on a weekend training course, the results of which shifted my perceptions of  how to deal  with people,   I  was suddenly provided with a framework in which I could fit my years of observing peoples behaviour and use of language.This  led me  in to doing the full  practitioner course,  and  I will   never   look   back   as   it   compliments   all   of  my   other interests and has woven itself into my life journey, allowing me to develop the confidence in myself that I have always felt was lacking, through the key thing that I have needed, which is understanding.

Huw

Over the past 15 years or so I  have heard the term ‘NLP’  bandied about,  it  must  be said,  with some derision and suspicion  from various colleagues.  Then about  eight years ago  I  met someone,  who has since become a good friend   who   had   trained   with   Bill   O’Hanlon,   and   who appeared  to achieve dramatic  results  with his clients.   (I work for the Probation Service,  incidentally) In my pursuit of   delivering   the   best   service   possible  I  asked   many questions and sometimes received straight  answers.  And, slowly, the door to the power of  language was delicately unlocked and allowed to glide open…

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Are you a worrier?

It’s not quite the happiest of New Years. Financial difficulties. Looming recession. The flu bug that’s going around. Wars and disasters on the TV.

Lots of challenging situations for all of us, but if you are a worrier it’s just so much worse. As if the reality of the situation wasn’t bad enough you can’t stop worrying about it.

Do these statements apply to you?

• You’re not able to calm down
• You imagine the worse
• You feel anxious far more than you should
• You just can’t stop worrying
• You feel out of control

If they do then we have a short course in Newcastle that will help you:

• Feel calm
• Stop worry in it’s tracks
• Get back control of your mind.
• Gain greater peace of mind.

The course will be held at St Oswald’s Hospice Teaching Centre, Regent Ave, Gosforth on Saturday 7th February from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm.

The full cost for the full day workshop is just £69.00.

To find out more click on Coping With Worry - A Short Course In Newcastle

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There’s an interesting article in the New Scientist about Daniel Tammet a young man with autism and a number of other gifts.

Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he’s able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities by getting inside the savant mind, he tells Celeste Biever

If you are interested in other models of the world, and which NLPer isn’t? You might find it a very interesting read.

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On the night of October 30th 1938 tens of thousands of Americans listening to the radio were convinced that they were being invaded by Martians. Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s production of War of the Worlds caused panic.By clever juxtaposition of the commonplace and cuts to ‘newsflashes about strange eruptions of gas from Mars and mysterious objects landing in Grover’s Mill the play drew people into a convincing story about interstellar invaders.

In a 70th year anniversary edition WYNC Radio Lab’s presented an hour long program analysing the hows and whys of that broadcast. It’s brilliantly done and fascinating listening.

If you are interested in NLP or Hypnotherapy it is a classic example of the skillful use of many processes and ideas familiar to NLPers including Model of the World, pacing and leading, state elicitation, trance induction and more. The program demonstrates the same skill in examining the program as the original broadcast did itself.

The War of the Worlds was an excellent example of how to manipulate public feelings, but you might think that was 70 years ago surely no one could pull it off again. After creating panic very well in 1938, a radio broadcast in Quito, Equador in 1949 created a similar panic much too well with horrific results (but you will have to listen to the program to find out about that).

Then again a variation on a theme in Buffalo, NY in the USA in 1968 pulled off a similar stunt using the same pattern as Orson Wells 30 years earlier.

The program is great and if you are interested in the business of influencing people very instructive.

It’s funny but last night I noticed through my telescope plumes of gas erupting from Mars … of course, it’s probably just a coincidence … probably …

Originally posted on Practical Wellbeing

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On Saturday November 22nd we are holding our second NLP Practice day, an opportunity to meet up with other NLPers and practice new stuff and develop your skills.

The day will be structured into four separate sessions, running from 9:30am to 5pm in a new venue in North Shields. Although we haven’t yet confirmed all the topics and presenter’s for the day Andy Hunt will be running a session called ‘What do you want for Christmas?’

If you are on, or have been on, one of IntegrityNLP’s courses the day is FREE of charge otherwise it will cost just £10. You will need to have had some experience of NLP, if you’ve attended an NLP Practitioner Training or one of our Introducing NLP trainings that’s fine, if you’re not sure drop us a line and we can discuss it.

As a special attraction (!) the venue is just a few hundred yards from the Royal Quays retail outlet centre and we’ll be allowing an extra half hour at lunch if you care to do a bit of Christmas shopping.

For more information contact andy@integritynlp.co.uk

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