March 9th, 2010
In this NLP blog, we are going to talk about the power of the mind body connection.
Don’t tell the pharmacy companies, but NLP could improve your health!
Most people have heard about the mind-body connection, however how many people have really experienced it.
As a quick experiment, try this out.
Ask someone to stand up and hold one of their arms out straight to the side. Tell them you are going to try to push their arm down and they have to resist. Before you do this, ask them to think about someone they really like and keep thinking about that person as they resist you.
Then get them to relax their arms and once more put their arm out to the side. Now ask them to think about someone they really dislike and try to resist you as you push their arm down.
Which was more difficult? Pushing down the arm when the person was thinking about the person they dislike, or the person they like?
For most people when they think about someone they dislike, the arm becomes easier to push down.
Whatever we think about has an effect on our physiology. That is a powerful learning for many people on an NLP training. When we are thinking about things we do not like, we have more tension in our bodies and even different chemicals produced internally. When we do not like something and we have more tension in our bodies, it will drain energy more quickly.
When people learn NLP they learn to be more in control of their emotions. Of course, even an NLP Master Practitioner will not just turn off emotions with the click of a finger – when things happen we all respond emotionally. But if we are left with emotions for too long, it is useful to be able to do something about them – that is where NLP can help – the things people learn on an NLP training will have a major influence on the mind-body connection.
So learning NLP could make you healthier and also happier!
We have an NLP training starting in June – join us and experience change at the deepest level!
Tags: NLP, NLP Training, personal development, self-talk
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March 4th, 2010
NLP Blog / Personal Development Blog
Have you ever listened to an old fashioned record player when a record has a scratch on it? When the same bit of music gets played again and again and again? It can even happen with cds – I remember being at a restaurant once where the same 30 seconds of music was played endlessly – a great way to get clients to hurry up and get out!
We could think of phobias in a similar way – you get into a certain situation and the same bit of music gets played again and again.
In the NLP technique for dealing with phobias, we look at how to deal with the ‘glitch’. Although there are many methods for dealing with phobias, in NLP we have techniques that seem to be some of the most powerful available, all of which students learn on our NLP trainings or hypnotherapy courses.
The classic NLP fast phobias technique (continued from an earlier NLP blog) gets the person to totally scratch the record in their mind that holds the phobic response until it won’t play any more. If we think about the response as being the recording in the mind held by the neurological pathways that always get activated in the specific situation, we get the person to totally scramble the pathways until they won’t play any more. We do this by getting the person to play the first event where they learn the phobic response backwards lots of times until the original response will not run any more. Some people add some silly music in the background also to make it even more ridiculous and scrambled.
On an NLP training I have seem the most dramatic phobias disappear in a matter of minutes – things that have been causing the person a problem for year.
NLP techniques were developed by modeling what ‘works’ from all different areas. Phobias are just one area that NLP is exceedingly effective for.
Our next NLP Practitioner training is between March 14 – 20 in London – if you haven’t signed up yet, join now to learn some incredible techniques and principles you can use in all areas of life
Tags: NLP, NLP Training
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March 1st, 2010
In the last NLP blog we talked about the classic psychological technique of flooding. In this NLP blog we will continue talking about dealing with phobias – this time with the classic technique of progressive desensitization – not an NLP technique, but a well practiced psychotherapeutic technique for working with phobias. I first learned this back in about 1990 when I was first training as a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist, where this was one of the main techniques we were taught for dealing with phobias. Together with the NLP fast phobia technique, it is a valuable tool for any therapist, and much more pleasant than flooding!
Basically it involves exposing the client to things that they are progressively more frightened about. So if it was a fear of heights, you would find the thing that the client was most frightened of, and then the thing that they are least frightened of and then make a hierarchy of things that are progressively more and more frightening.
So for heights, say the thing they were most afraid of is being on the top floor of a high building, you would then find out what they are least afraid of, for example standing on a stool. You then would make a list of things they are progressively more afraid of, for example standing on a table, standing on a small ladder, then a bigger ladder etc.
You would then get the person to start with the thing they are least afraid of and stay there as you talk with them and help them relax. After a little while they would feel fine doing that and you would progress to the next thing on the list, which you would get them to continue until they felt comfortable. You then continue with each step on the list until they could work up to the thing they are most afraid of, which is often a surprisingly short time.
In the nest NLP blog we will explore some more details about the NLP fast phobia technique.
Tags: NLP, personal development
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February 25th, 2010
In the NLP Blog last week, I was talking about phobias. On any NLP Practitioner training students will learn the NLP technique for working with phobias. I outlined how important it is to do double dissociation in the last personal development blog – another part of the phobia technique is to break the pattern that leads to the phobia. A phobia is an example of a pattern. In neurological terms, we could see this as neurological pathways that have become strengthened over time. In fact every time someone avoids the stimulus that causes the reaction, they action reinforce the pattern and strengthen the neurological pathways for the reaction. Every time something is repeated it will strengthen the neurological pathways.
In fact there is a classic ‘old’ psychological technique for dealing with phobias (just to stress, this is not NLP) – it is called flooding, where you expose the person to the stimulus until they stop having the response. This is a really harsh technique and can be very unpleasant, however it is effective.
People will only maintain the strong emotional response for a certain time and at some point it disappears. A psychotherapist who was a tutor on a course I attended when I first learned hypnotherapy would sometimes assign someone with a fear of driving the task of getting into a car and driving until the response disappeared – not an easy thing for the client (and perhaps for other people on the road!), however he had good success.
Flooding is not a technique we would use in NLP. The fast phobia process that students learn on the NLP Practitioner course is far quicker and not stressful for the client.
In the next NLP blog, we will continue with exploring phobias.
We still have space on our next NLP Practitioner training – March 14 – 20, and also our hypnotherapy training in March. Book your place now…
Tags: NLP, personal development, Phobias
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February 22nd, 2010
In the last NLP blog we talked about phobias – a little diversion today (then in the next NLP blog I’ll go back to phobias)…..
It seems to be everywhere now – attend a free NLP course! It reminds me of a story.
Have you ever read the story of Hansel and Gretel. They get enticed into a Gingerbread House with the offer of free sweets and food. After enjoying the delights of the free food, they suddenly find out they are being fattened up to be eaten by a wicked witch!
Most people know that nothing really is free – particularly with NLP. However the offer seems to be more and more enticing for people. Of course, people aren’t going to be eaten by a witch! However, they may easily be enticed into a training which may not be the best quality.
Trainings cost a lot of money to put on, and a day or 2 day course is also costly to put on. They also work very well at unconscious levels of influence. The law of reciprocity says that if you do something for someone else they will want to do something for you. Give them some free training and they are likely to sign up. But not necessarily for the best course for them. I don’t know any of the most established and quality NLP organizations that offer NLP trainings, so my advice is to be cautious. Only in January, I had 5 people contact me to retrain with me after a bad experience with other organizations. They had attended a ‘free’ training, and felt motivated to take the course after it. The thing with NLP is that the techniques can be so effective, that if someone has never experienced NLP, even attending a poor quality training can seem like a revelation. It is only when they attend an outstanding training they realize what they have missed.
So my advice is be a little cautious with free courses – if an organisation needs to put on free trainings of any length to put people on their courses, are they really established, or offering the quality of training that will really benefit?
It is a real challenge out there finding a good NLP course – there seem to be so many trainings, but only a few offer excellence. I little while ago I wrote a guide to selecting trainings, which you can find by following this link.
As I mentioned at the beginning, in the next NLP / personal development blog, we’ll go back to how to work with phobias.
In the meantime, if you are looking for the highest quality NLP training or hypnotherapy training, join us in March in London…
We also now have a range of hypnosis downloads – follow this link for details.
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February 19th, 2010
In the last NLP Blog we talked about phobias. An important thing about working with phobias is to reframe the phobia. Most people only see the negative side of phobias (you might think for obvious reasons!), however there are some positive aspects to developing phobias. A phobia is an example of the brain’s incredible capacity to learn and remember. I had a client once who said he had really bad problems with his memory. He also had a phobia. I saw this as a good opportunity to do some reframing. You see, how often does someone with a phobia forget to do their phobia? NEVER!
An arachnophobic doesn’t walk into a room full of spiders and forget to do their phobia! They remember to do it every time! Now the amazing thing is that they learn to do the phobia from a one time learning. Maybe they had a bad experience with the thing they are now phobic about. For example, a client of mine had a serious phobia of traveling by the underground – they had once been stuck on a train that broke down and the power went out. People starting screaming thinking it had been a terrorist attack. After that, the very thought of traveling by underground drove him into a panic.
It was a one time learning that for over ten years drove him into a state of terror still.
Phobias start from a one time learning and people always do them afterwards. They are an example of the brain’s amazing capacity to learning rapidly and because you learn to do it rapidly, you can also unlearn it rapidly.
That is what the NLP phobia technique does – it allows you to rapidly unlearn the unwanted pattern of response. More in the next NLP blog…
To learn more about dealing with phobias with NLP and hypnotherapy, book your place on the hypnotherapy foundation course – March 5 – 7 & 11 – 13 and our NLP Practitioner training between March 14 – 20.
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February 17th, 2010
So how does the NLP fast phobia technique work?
There seem to be so many variations around, so what are some of the essential pieces to the technique. When we teach the NLP technique for dealing with phobias on our NLP training, we want to make sure students learn it in a way that gets results. So over the next couple of NLP blogs, we will discuss the fast phobia NLP technique.
The first and probably most important part of the process is dissociation. This means seeing yourself in an event, rather than imagining as if it was happening right now.
An example of this would be to imagine yourself at a theme park (for some people this is a great experience, for others it is a punishment!). Imagine you get onto a roller coaster. The roller coaster car starts to climb up the steep incline and suddenly you see the huge drop below you! If you really imagine being there and doing this, your heart rate will probably rise dramatically!
Now let’s do it in a different way. Imagine you can see yourself going into the theme park and getting into the roller coaster. Imagine you are standing outside of the park and can see yourself from a distance. You can see the car rising up towards the drop and then whizzing around the ride.
Because you are seeing yourself from a distance, you shouldn’t find you have the same intensity of experience.
One major factor in making events seem less emotional, is to dissociate from them – to see yourself in the event, rather than imagining you are looking through your own eyes. Many therapies do this indirectly be getting someone to recount an event time and time again, until the client starts to feel dissociated from the experience.
NLP offers a fast way to do this by directly changing how you internally represent the memory and therefore freeing yourself quickly and easily from the emotions.
More on managing emotions in the next blog…
We still have places on our next hypnotherapy and NLP Practitioner trainings, so book your place now! Hypnotherapy foundation course on March 5 – 7 & 11 – 13 and our NLP Practitioner training between March 14 – 20.
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February 13th, 2010
A little while ago someone came to see me with a serious flying phobia. He hadn’t been on an airplane in years – in fact since ten years ago a flight he was on had engine failure! He cam to see me for NLP and hypnotherapy to help him overcome this intense phobia as he needed to travel abroad for business.
As soon as he started talking about having to go abroad, his breathing started becoming rapid and he clearly went into an anxious state. We did the NLP fast phobia process. This involved ‘Double Dissociation’ (some NLP Jargon!) where you imagine watching yourself in a cinema watching a movie of yourself in the first time you ever experienced the event where the phobia started. The client then played this through from beginning to end. Afterwards, he imagined floating into the end of the movie and playing it back very quickly to the beginning. He did this several times and afterwards he had an amazing revelation, which was that his fear of flying had disappeared!
The fast phobia technique is something that people learn on our NLP Practitioner training.
I usually reinforce any change like this with hypnosis, so I followed this with some hypnotherapy with positive suggestions and visualization.
The next week he telephoned me to tell me he had been on a flight and everything was great. What a difference!
People can make changes easily when they know the right way.
Why not join us on our next hypnotherapy foundation course on March 5 – 7 & 11 – 13 and our NLP Practitioner training between March 14 – 20.
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February 8th, 2010
What are the real secrets of hypnosis?
Most people have some idea of what hypnosis is, however more often than not, it is nothing like the real thing. People have seen hypnosis on television, stage shows and other entertainers, where they seem to make people do things they don’t want to.
So the first rule is YOU CANNOT MAKE PEOPLE DO ANYTHING THEY DON’T WANT TO OR THAT VIOLATES THEIR BELIEFS IN HYPNOSIS!
When I first trained in hypnotherapy back in 1990, I trained part time over several years and started seeing clients after completing my first level of training. At that time I only had a few basic scripts to work with, however I was amazed at the results that I got.
One of my first ever clients when I started practicing hypnotherapy in London was for stress and IBS. Within just a few sessions the IBS had totally resolved itself and she felt more relaxed and in charge of her. Then I really discovered the power of hypnosis – or really I should say the power of the human unconscious mind to help them get the results they want. Because really it is the client that gets the results – not the hypnosis on its own. In fact the clients that get the best results are the ones that are prepared to work at getting results, rather than thinking hypnosis is a magic wand that just reprograms them.
Working on yourself between sessions is also essential, and a great way to do this is with hypnosis recordings – which is why I have just decided to release some via our revamped hypnosis and coaching website.
The experience and skills of the hypnotherapist are of course very important – I am amazed when I see all of these short 7 day or less NLP courses offering 3 certificates in 7 days (including hypnosis) – like that is a selling point! To me that should be a warning – if you want pieces of paper that mean nothing, then just print your own out! If you want to become a good hypnotherapist, then taking a course lasting more than just a day or less is essential.
That is why we offer a 6 day foundation hypnotherapy training and then a diploma track for specialized skills. Why not join us on our next hypnotherapy foundation course on March 5 – 7 & 11 – 13.
Tags: NLP Training
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February 5th, 2010
In terms of negotiations with NLP, the mindset that you are in before the negotiation is critical. As in the last NLP Training blog, we talked about how important it is to go for a win-win. You also want to have in mind what you are really prepared to settle for, and during the negotiation start with something greater. I remember many years ago going to Morocco with my father, who was a photographer. I had had no experience with bartering, and this was a major culture shock to me. As on many days out in Morocco, we somehow ended up being taken into a carpet shop, where we would be shown an incredible range of carpets and offered incredible mint tea. The carpets would of course be offered at a huge starting price which was not the sale price, but bartering was expected. At the time, I was a student and had pretty much no money. However at some point we were shown this incredible carpet weaved with real gold thread by a tribe in the desert – it took months and months to make. The starting price was thousands and thousands, however I really wanted it! The salesperson knew I really wanted it, so he asked me how much I could offer. I said I didn’t want to insult him and after minutes of being pushed I said £10! Of course he laughed, however after about 15 minutes he offered it to me for £100! Before I had ever attended an NLP Training, I wouldn’t have dreamed about doing this, but through my own personal development from learning NLP, I really enjoyed the whole process.
After that experience I took any opportunity I could to try my bartering skills! But the important thing was I set myself a limit I wouldn’t go above and would make an offer initially of much less than that limit.
In any negotation both people are never unlikely to get exactly what they would ideally want, however when both parties are happy with what they settle for, you can still have a win-win outcome.
Join our NLP Practitioner training in March in London to learn more about how to get the most out of any communication. Or take our hypnotherapy training to get in touch with your unconscious to make the changes you want.
Tags: NLP, outcomes, personal development
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