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A BRIEF HISTORY AND EXPLANATION OF NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING Barry J. Robinson HUMAN EXCELLENCE - Christy Brown, the Irish Novelist, could only move his left foot. Born with cerebral palsy, unable to speak, walk or even feed himself, he eventually taught himself to read, paint and type. Against all odds he became a major literary figure and succeeded in transcending his disability. He describes the emancipation his efforts brought this way: "I wrote and wrote without pause, without consciousness of my surroundings, hour after hour. I felt a different person. I wasn't unhappy anymore. I didn't feel frustrated or shut up anymore. I was free, I could think, I could create, I could be myself . . . And if I couldn't know the joy of dancing, I could know the ecstasy of creating." Whenever we see such excellence in other human beings, it is almost impossible not to be deeply attracted to whatever it is they possess. We want to believe that we are seeing in them a little bit of ourselves, the best and deepest part that we have yet to become. What we often fail to realize is that those, like Christy Brown, who have succeeded in becoming their best, have done so precisely because they refused to be limited by the choices life seemed to give them. Quite simply, they chose to be more. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is both the art and science of personal excellence. It is the attempt to provide more choice to others in their attempts to be the best that they can be. ~ THE EARLY BEGINNINGS OF NLP - It began in the 1970's when John Grinder, a linguist, and Richard Bandler, a mathematician, psychotherapist and computer expert decided to study three magicians or, to be more precise, three outstanding therapists: Fritz Perls, the innovative psychotherapist and originator of the school of therapy known as Gestalt, Virginia Satir, the extraordinary family therapist who consistently was able to resolve difficult family relationships that many other therapists found intractable, and Milton Erickson, who has widely been described as the greatest hypnotherapist of all time. Grinder and Bandler did not intend to start a new school of therapy. They simply wanted to try to find out how these three extraordinary human beings did things so magically. To their surprise, they discovered that all three of these people made use of remarkably similar patterns in the way they worked with people. Bandler and Grinder identified these patterns, refined them and eventually built an elegant model for them which can be used for more effective communication, behavioural change, accelerated learning, and, of course, greater enjoyment of life. They put down their initial discoveries in four books - The Structure of Magic I and II, and Patterns I and II. Then, in a 1976, in a log cabin high in the hills above Santa Cruz, they pulled all their insights together and, with a bottle of red wine between them, asked themselves, "What shall we call this?" Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the, admittedly, cumbersome phrase they came up with. It attempts to encapsulate three simple ideas:
In other words, the structure of human subjective experience - how we organize what we see, hear and feel, how we edit and filter the outside world through our senses, how we describe our experience in language, and how we act, both intentionally and unintentionally to produce results. Those who manage to achieve personal excellence in their behaviour do so in ways that are entirely observable and available to virtually anyone. Magic has a structure, in other words, that is observable and available to all of us. SOME PRACTICAL EXAMPLES What if you could learn some practical skills to assist children and teenagers who have difficulty reading and writing and who have been "official diagnosed as learning disabled"? What if you could learn some elegant patterns with which to establish rapport quickly and easily with those "difficult" people in your life? What if you could learn to identify when you were in the best possible state to make a decision about anything and how to know when you were also in a very vulnerable state? What if you could learn some enjoyable and highly effective tools that would help you change unwanted patterns of behaviour into which you continually slip? What if you could find a way to overcome phobias and to reduce the power of painful memories? These are just some of the outcomes that people have been able to accomplish for themselves and others using the skills and patterns of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. ~ THE PRACTICE OF NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING Neuro-Linguistic Practitioners are required to take a certification course in the patterns of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, both the Old Code methods first developed by Grinder and Bandler, and the New Code Patterns that have been added to the evolving understanding of how this system of personal excellence works. It is a system of behavioural management and communication that has helped millions of people overcome fears, transform unwanted patterns of behaviour, increase self-confidence and to transcend the limiting choices that life seems to have given them. It is a system of powerful and elegant tools that virtually anyone can learn in order to live more fully and deeply. As a Pastoral Practitioner of NLP, Barry Robinson has trained under the founder of NLP Canada, Training and Consulting, Dr. Derek Balmer, who was trained by and was a good friend of one of the founders of NLP, John Grinder. Barry is a member of the Association of NLP Practitioners in association with Grinder, DeLozier & associates. Our hope is that through your exposure to the patterns of NLP, offered through our counselling service and educational workshops, that you will begin to experience new choices for yourself in your efforts to become the best that you are. - Barry and Susan Robinson
CONTACT US AT: E-mail: fernstone@fernstone.org Tel: (519) 376-9439/592-4551
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