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What is NLP?

We experience the world through our five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting things. This information is coded, ordered and given meaning in our mind by pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, smells and words. This constitutes the language of the mind. NLP is how to use this language to enable you to achieve the goals that you want in life.

Many of the NLP techniques were developed from studying masters in their fields and analyzing how they achieved their results.

Within NLP there is a multitude of different techniques and models, which include the expert use of language, story telling (Metaphors), techniques for re-experiencing feelings at will (anchoring), methods for eliminating unwanted emotions and techniques that enable the person to remove emotion from a memory (Quick Phobia Cure), etc. NLP techniques can bring about change very quickly, sometimes within minutes because the mind can learn very quickly when you communicate in the right way.

History of NLP

The origins of NLP lie in the 70’s with Dr John Grinder and Richard Bandler. Richard Bandler had studied mathematics and computing, whilst Dr John Grinder was a well-known authority on linguistics.

Richard Bandler was employed to work on audio and video recordings of two well-known psychotherapists, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls.

Virginia Satir was a well-known therapist who worked in family therapy. Whilst helping to record her work, he identified different patterns of speech she used in her therapy. He later went on to work on recordings of the renowned originator of Gestalt Therapy, Dr Fritz Perls, and noticed certain things about the way he worked, as well as developing an interest in Gestalt Therapy. It was at this time that Dr John Grinder became involved, adding his skills in language to Richards’s knowledge of psychotherapy and ability to copy people’s behavior.

Together they began to model human excellence by breaking behavior and language into its basic components and analyzing what made it work. Their work formed the foundations for NLP.

They went on to study Milton Erickson, M.D., a renowned American Hypnotherapist, and the works of linguists Alfred Korzybski and Noam Chomsky, the ideas of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson and the psychoanalyst Paul Watzlawick, amongst many others, incorporating their ideas and patterns of working into NLP.

Although even now the term Neuro-Linguistic Programming is not familiar to most of the general public, they may have been exposed to it in some form, as NLP is used extensively in business, sports, education and therapy.

Uses of NLP

NLP can be and is used in every sector of society, since NLP is about effective communication. Communication is a fundamental part of life.

Many politicians, are prime examples of accomplished NLP'ers. Subtly managing to communicate the message that they want to communicate no matter what the question posed.

NLP in business

	Effective Communication
	Rapport Skills
	Identifying decision making strategies (Often used in sales trainings)
	Motivational Skills
	Goal Setting

Teaching

	Spelling strategies
	Effective communication
	Utilizing optimal mental state for learning
	Beliefs that improve performance
	Motivation

Therapy

	Eliminating negative emotions
	Accessing positive emotions at will
	Goal setting
	Changing negative beliefs

Sports Performance

	Modeling excellence in Others
	Optimizing mental states
	Developing the beliefs that lead to
	Eliminating performance anxiety