NLP

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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The Fast Phobia Cure is one of the best known and often least understood NLP processes for changing the meaning of traumatic or debilitating experiences from a persons past personal history.

Our Newcastle and Northumberland NLP Practitioner training and Clinical Hypnotherapy training course teaches practitioners and clinical hypnotherapists to use this process in a variety of ways to assist clients and yourself to be able to become free from unwanted and limiting past experiences.

NLP therapeutic interventions essentially take two forms. It is possible to change the problem state by either changing the internal representations that accompany the state or we can change the physiology, the body positions and breathing that accompany the state.

This video demonstration with Nigel Hetherington on a NLP Practitioner training in Newcastle of the Fast Phobia Cure uses both changing physiology and changing internal representations.

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Image by The Veiled Chamber [Gone Once More] via Flickr

Our next NLP Practitioner training begins September 12th.You can become a fully qualified and competent NLP Practitioner by June 2010.

The ten month fully certified training begins September. Training is certified by The Professional Guild Of NLP with optional additional Society of NLP certification.

If you want to embark on this Life changing journey beginning Saturday 12th September…

Look here and see the full course details

Are you ready to book your place yet?

If you would like to read the stories from previous NLP Practitioners, why they chose to do an NLP Practitioner training, what the got out of it and their own unique insights, you can!

The book is called “An Insiders Guide To An NLP Practitioner Training“

Click here to look at a sample of this new book. If you choose to purchase this book, when you join our NLP Practitioner course you can get an additional discount of either £75 ( paper copy) or £35 ( pdf).

Warmest wishes

Nigel Hetherington

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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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There has been some very good weather recently in Newcastle upon Tyne and like myself, I hope you have made and taken the opportunities to enjoy it while it lasts. While away enjoying this summer sun and balmy heat I have been out in the city centre.

And like any other day in Newcastle, I saw one or two street entertainers playing things from what looked like a cup with a rubber band, a one stringed guitar, a drum, a flute, you know, the usual mixture of good and bad. But one man playing an accordion really caught my eye.

During a pause from his playing, this very skilled, tanned and silver haired accordion player started to fumble in his pocket and pulled out a very new looking iPhone. With fingers seemingly as dexterous on his iPhone as his accordion, he looked to be checking email or texts or perhaps just surfing the web.

So how come I noticed his iPhone? Meta Programs.

Some people say meta programs can be described as the generalised repetitive patterns of thought, perception and behaviour that people seem to have. Another way to describe meta programs is where you focus your attention.

Please, these patterns are mostly unconscious, unless you know about them. You see, if you have completed an NLP Practitioner you will already know quite a bit about meta programs … but just in case you yet don’t, let me share a short example …

One of my friends, I remember like it was just yesterday, once told me he had started dating someone and the first time he went to her house he was in the kitchen. Looking around the kitchen out of all the things he saw there he noticed a cup. Now this cup was the same as one his ex-partner has.

Out of everything there to be see in the kitchen his focus of attention noticed the one thing that was similar. This perception of noticing ’sameness’ is called in meta program language ‘Sort for Similarity’. He then, not his best move, continued to tell his new girlfriend his new discovery.

One thing to understand about meta programs is that they are neither good not bad in and of themselves, they are simply repetitive patterns of thought and behaviour. So sorting for similarity will be valuable in some context and sorting for difference will be valuable in some context.

For example, sometimes, some specific meta program(s) may be responsible for a person having a string of failed relationships, they pick the same kind of partner and they have the same kind of experiences which massively contribute to an unhappy and then terminal relationship.

Perhaps in such cases noticing what is different in a fairly specific way could … and I stress could … clear the way for a much healthier more loving and mutually supportive relationships.

This is about not only recognising the language and behaviour of other and ourselves but even more so about being able to change our language and behaviour to ethically realise more of our desires and dreams. To be able to change meta programs for positive applications and purpose.

I don’t want you to take my word for this, just simply consider the possibility that, it is possible to alter, change and influence our own meta programs depending on what we want to achieve or even what someone else wants to achieve.

I am sure you are aware and now getting the bigger picture that the unconscious meta programs you run are to a large extent your patterns that determine your successes and failures in life.

All right, now, so how useful do you believe it is to coaches, therapists, personal developers and any one in the business of change to have a really deep understanding of the application of meta programs?

Our Newcastle NLP Master Practitioner explores and unpacks meta programs in terms of language and behaviour patterns in even deeper and more sophisticated ways than our NLP Practitioner training covers.

And here is an additional invite for NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioners, re-read this article and look out for all of the meta programs. Notice anything you find yourself agreeing with and the ideas and concepts that see to appeal to you but also look out for things that you don’t agree with or sentences that do not entirely grip you.

Our NLP Newcastle based Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner courses begin this coming September and if you already have an NLP qualification and wish to to it again for all the additional benefits you can for half the usual course price. Now which meta programs does this great offer appeal to?

And while the sun is still out and shining I want to finish my story, and you might be wondering, so how come I noticed this highly skilled accordion players iPhone? Well no mystery there, I have one too!

The weather forecast is suggesting that this coming week the UK will this week experience a week long heat wave. So if you are out walking practising noticing NLP Meta Programs in Newcastle upon Tyne, you might like to keep your eyes peeled to see not just accordion players but one with an iPhone.

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Image via Wikipedia

Here is a fun little pastime for the NLP Anoraks amongst us ( me included )

NLP Word Search - Find all of the words

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Introducing NLP

Perhaps you have seen Paul McKenna demonstrating some NLP on TV, maybe you’ve read about NLP in a book or magazine, it could be that someone you know has shown you some. You know NLP seems kind of interesting and it looks like it could be very useful but it’s difficult to make sense of it from what you’ve experienced so far.

Image via Wikipedia

You could have heard all sorts of claims for it. That it’s a way of developing advanced communicating skills, influencing people, achieving your goals, managing individuals and groups, avoiding the things that you don’t want and getting much more of what you do and so on. But you are not yet ready to invest in a full NLP Practitioner training to verify these claims for yourself but you clearly are curious about NLP.

Unfortunately you can’t learn NLP from a book! NLP is a very practical set of tools and techniques, reading about it is not the same as doing it, you will find out about NLP by doing NLP.

An excellent way to find out about NLP for yourself is to attend a complete two day Introduction to NLP. During this workshop you will be able to try on NLP for size, get an inside perspective on it and be able to talk it over with experienced NLP Trainers and Master Practitioners.

“This has been a dynamic course that has allowed me to feel empowered, in that I feel like I have more control over emotional forces that have driven me in the past. There is now the beginning of making decisions that I want in a more confident manner. Thanks Nigel, Andy and Harry.”

Huw - Student

You will develop and enhance your communication skills, learn ways to better manage yourself as well others and influence with integrity. Over this comprehensive two day training you will learn:

• How to connect on a deep level with other people.
• How we all use a hidden language of the senses.
• How to notice what’s going on in other people.
• About certain repetitive behavioural traits and how to use them.
• How to quickly change the way you feel.
• How to choose your outcome for yourself that work.
• Simple techniques to see your world from different perspectives.

“My expectations were all met extremely well. All of the exercises were extremely well delivered. I found it helpful the way the training was delivered with fun and enthusiasm.”

Donna - Project Co-Ordinator

Because NLP is a practical set of skills and attitudes most of the two days will be spent in supervised practice sessions where you’ll be learning NLP by doing it. Get the experience and skills of what NLP can do for you and how you can start applying NLP by attending this course.

“What has been beneficial is learning about the foundations of NLP and having the opportunity to learn and practice a variety of techniques.”

Jane - Outreach Co-Ordinator

The next course will be held at The Coleman Teaching Centre, St Oswald’s Hospice, Regent Avenue, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Saturday 7th March & Sunday 8th March 2009 The cost for this two day training is only £95.

Get the experience and skills of what NLP can do for you and how you can start applying NLP to start getting more of what you want. Integrity NLP offer exceptional value and the highest quality training, so come and try it on for size and get first hand training from highly skilled and experienced NLP facilitators.

Special Bonus
Having completed this Introduction to NLP course,you are entitled to a £95.00 discount off the advertised price of our full NLP Practitioner Training. To book a place Click Here or email andy@integritynlp.co.uk or phone 0191 478 2726

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The NLP Cafe is back in the new year and taking one of the real true essences of life very seriously! Laughter!

This laughter workshop is hosted by Keith Adams of Voluntary Aspirations.

The event will be fun, stimulating and you will laugh out loud a lot.  There are a maximum of 18 places so be sure to book in advance to make sure you get in for the laughs.

“Life today is very stressful. More than 70% of all illnesses have some relationship to stress. The best way to reduce stress is through laughter - its the best medicine and the least expensive. Research shows that laughter decreases stress hormones. Epinephrine is lowered both in anticipation of and doing laughter.

There is more. Laughter therapy helps to increase antibodies - its good for the immune system. Laughter stimulates heart and blood circulation. It is claimed that one minute of laughter is equal to ten minutes on the rowing machine. It also tones facial muscles and expressions - people look younger and are more fun when they laugh.

Laughter is socially bonding. It stimulates the creative side of the brain and leads to clear thinking. ”

Keith Adams

7-9 pm with all refreshments provided for just £10.00

St. Oswald’s Teaching Centre
Regent Avenue, Gosforth,
Newcastle upon Tyne, NE3 1EE

Click here for map

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