We try to keep the blog mostly to content pieces of interest. But every once in a while we need to make a living too, so we want to make sure you know about upcoming trainings…

Both these trainings are real opportunities for personal transformation. If you’re a therapist or coach, you will also be learning methods you can use in your work with others. Both are with exceptional trainers and training teams, and tend to draw a warm and friendly community of learners/explorers. If you haven’t been to one of our programs in Colorado, we invite you to find out for yourself.

Earlybird Discounts available until January 31, this coming Tuesday. (Note: Southwest Airlines often has the best fares to Denver, and you have to go to the southwest.com website to find them.)

Core Transformation 3-Day Training
with Tamara Andreas
March 2-4, 2012
Boulder, CO

People continue to find benefit from the simple yet profound Core Transformation process. You’re welcome whether you’re completely new to this method, or if you want an opportunity to deepen your experience and skills with this method. One can never have too much “inner peace,” “presence,” “love” or “oneness with all.”

There are many meditation practices for people seeking these qualities. What’s unique about Core Transformation is that it offers a dependable way to experience them directly and rapidly through the doorway of our difficulties. These “Core States of being” naturally transform troublesome areas of our life.

Note: you’ll also learn a second method, Aligning Perceptual Positions, that is rarely taught, yet also quite powerful. An unusual set of questions enables us to notice how we have unconsciously “set up” our experience of others and the world. The process leads to a natural integration/wholeness that increases our resourcefulness in relationships.

People usually tell us after doing this process, their inner perception is clearer and richer (their inner images are usually more accurate and also more “positive,” troublesome voices either melt away or transform.) Occasionally someone tells us they recover hearing, or their vision spontaneously improves.

“Great training…very useful. I noticed that I have stopped biting my fingernails…and have a great sense of being. I enjoyed the whole weekend.”
— Marge Perry

Click to read more from participants of Core Transformation trainings with Tamara…

Click Here For More Information or to Register
for Core Transformation

Metaphors of Movement: 4-Day Training
with Andrew T. Austin
April 20-23, 2012
Boulder, CO

Our last blog post gave you an example of Metaphors of Movement in action. However, there’s a LOT more to it than can be conveyed in a short blog. You’ll have the opportunity to explore the full terrain of this method as part of our friendly and diverse training group. You’ll observe Andy doing many demonstrations, and have lots of time for practice and discussion. Andy continues to refine how he uses this approach to get better and better results. It’s always fun to learn from/with Andy. Connirae, Mark & I are very excited to be participating again and deepening our own abilities to use the method.

“This training is certainly ‘leading-edge’ information. My money was well spent. I felt the marketing material did not do the training justice. Those who did not attend missed something very valuable.” — Jessie Milan, Denver

Click to read more from participants of last year’s Metaphors of Movement…

Click Here for More Information or to Register
for Metaphors of Movement

Free Client Sessions with Andrew Austin
On April 24 (Tuesday), Andy will be doing four client sessions in Boulder. This is an opportunity for a free session, in exchange for agreeing to having the session videotaped for possible use for a learning material or product. Andy will consider working with anybody, however is particularly interested in working with someone who has nightmares or depression. He will give priority to people who aren’t already familiar with his work. If you’re interested in one of these sessions (or you know someone else who might be) contact Andy directly by email to find out if it will be a fit.

Email: NLP [insert at symbol here] hotmail.co.uk

Include:

• Your outcome for the session (what you’d like to work with).
• When you’re available on April 24. Session times are expected to be 9 am, 10:30 am, 1 pm, 2:30 pm

Recently I was exasperated by someone who didn’t keep what I thought was an agreement between us. But “Exasperation” doesn’t fully express the intensity of the confusion and disorientation I felt when that happened, so I decided to explore it using Andy Austin’s Metaphors of Movement process. Connirae and I have been having a great time with this model, both as a way of helping others find solutions to difficulties, and also on occasion guiding each other.

I explained to Connirae, “It’s like they pulled the rug out from under me.” My image was that I was standing on a small rug, about 3 feet wide, and 6 feet long. Someone else was holding onto the end in front of me, and they jerked it literally out from under me. When that happened I tumbled backwards, flailing, into a tank of some kind of fluid that had been beneath the rug. The broken agreement was disappointing, but tumbling and flailing into the fluid was what created my confusion and disorientation.

Connirae said, “So you’re a person who stands on your agreements.” “Definitely!” I said. This was true both literally and figuratively. It’s always been important to me to keep my commitments.

At first I didn’t see a way out — except for the other person not to yank the rug!

At his last training, Andy Austin said, “We usually see clearly what other people can do to “solve” their metaphoric situation, but we often don’t see what we can do in our own.” This is the value of working with a partner, and it certainly held true for me in this situation. Connirae suggested that I explore taking a step to the left, or to the right, or back — just off the carpet — to see what that would be like. “You’ll be standing by your agreements instead of on them,” she said. Initially, I didn’t like the idea. It wasn’t being true to my commitments in the way I was familiar with, but I wanted to explore it.

What if I “stood behind” my agreements? What if I “stood by” my agreements? In my metaphor, there was just solid ground on all sides of the rug, so this had potential. As I tried out these different ways of “standing” within the metaphor, I decided that standing behind an agreement fit best for me. I could do this with integrity, and my position was definitely more stable. (I could also have explored what it would be like to “sit on an agreement” or be more ready to “leap aside” if the rug was pulled out, etc.)

When I tried out that new stance in the real-life context of the agreement that hadn’t been kept, it felt much better, because I remained standing when the rug was pulled out. Without the flailing and splashing, and the resulting disorientation and confusion, it was much easier to focus on what to do about the broken agreement itself.

As most of us do with our problems, I had been feeling like a victim, and focused on what someone else did, rather than on what I was doing. Within the metaphor, I could quickly realize what I was doing, and experiment with more useful alternatives. It is one thing to know, as a general principle, that I can only really change what I am doing, and that if I feel like a victim, I am probably missing what I can do in a situation. It is quite another to explore a metaphor, and find out what I can actually do differently.

One of the really lovely things about using Metaphors of Movement with a client is that I don’t have to know anything about the real-life event that the metaphor represents.

Full Disclosure: It’s not always as easy to find a metaphoric solution that works as in this example. But this time it was.

Have you ever experienced someone breaking an agreement with you? . . . If you ask the question, “What is that like?” what is your answer?. . .

And if you’d like to, you can go on to explore your metaphor in more detail as I did above. Does anything become clear to you that you might prefer to do differently?

You can share your answer by making a comment below.

Andrew T. Austin will be in Boulder, CO teaching Metaphors of Movement on April 20-23, 2012.
Click Here to learn more. Save $80 with Early Registration!

Milton Erickson — probably the greatest therapist who ever lived — described an interaction with a woman who had been in therapy with him for some time:

“This woman came in this morning, and she said, “I’ve got a very bad sinus. I know this is correct. My face is aching, and my face is hot. I’ve got a horrible headache. And I don’t think I have been behaving very well. My sexual behavior has been pretty bad. I don’t think I’m improving at all. I think I’m slipping. I think I’m going backwards.”

Imagine for a moment that this woman is your client, and you are wondering what might be the best focus for the session. Would you begin by asking more about her physical symptoms, her sexual or other behaviors, her sense that she is slipping, or going backwards? . . .

Erickson continues: “I don’t know what it was in her tone of voice, (later Erickson wrote, ‘There was that desperate note in her voice when she spoke about her face aches and her sinus. Haven’t you ever heard somebody speak irritably, and you know that this is it, they’ve had all the aggravation that they can take? How do you recognize that?’) but this frank, and open, and ready negative attitude; I said, ‘Well what do you really think?’ She said, ‘I wonder if I’m in pretty serious shape.’ I said “You wonder if you’re in pretty serious shape. Do you want to repeat that question again but change it slightly?’ She said, ‘I’m wondering if I’m going crazy.”

With this additional information, where would you focus your attention? . . .

Erickson continued: “I said, ‘That’s not your question at all, and you know it, and I know it. I think it’s about time you stopped all of that pretense. I’ve been trying for a long time to get you to face the facts. You’ve been afraid. You wouldn’t do it. You’ve gone in every direction. And you know your headaches have been increasing. Your body pains have been increasing. Everything. Now go ahead and ask that question.’ She said, ‘All right, is my husband an alcoholic?’ I said, ‘Would you ask that question if it weren’t true?’ She said, ‘No.’ ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ ” (1)

At this point, you have a specific behavioral outcome that is probably quite different from what you had thought of earlier. How much time could you have wasted trying to achieve one of the earlier possible outcomes? Since Erickson had been seeing this client for some time, he had a lot of background information that gave him the confidence to directly confront her (including her anger at other alcoholics whom she knew) which was probably necessary because of the strength of her denial. Usually a client’s denial won’t be as complete, and there will be no need to confront — an inquiry directed toward the client’s unconscious processing will be adequate.

Clarifying the Meaning of a Significant Word
Often a client says a word that is “marked out,” emphasized by a difference in volume, tonality, facial expression, or gesture, etc., as if it contained an important hidden message beyond its ordinary meaning. A client may be obsessed by a word, and yet be puzzled about its significance. Perhaps a client uses a word that seems strange in the context in which they use it. Sometimes a client uses a very general word, and you would like them to be more specific in order to understand their experience better. Or a client may have an ache or pain and wonder if it has a deeper meaning than the word they use to describe it.

In any such situation where you would like to explore the possibility that there is an additional or different meaning of a word, Erickson recommended offering the following instruction, preferably while the client has turned their attention inward and has their eyes closed, or is in some kind of trance or hypnosis:

“Spell the same word with another set of letters. So that it would read like a different word.”(2)

Take a few minutes to reread this interesting instruction, and then try it yourself. First think of a word you’ve used that has drawn your attention, or that you have been puzzling about, . . . and then close your eyes and follow this instruction, to find out what happens. . . .

If you have a puzzling emotional feeling, physical pain, image or sound (or smell or taste) you can find a word to describe it, and then use that word as a starting point to discover more about its meaning. . . .

Some people will find it easier to do this instruction using visual imagery for a deeper access to unconscious processing and information. For instance, “See the original word printed out in the air in front of you with each letter a different color.” . . . Pause, and then follow with, “Just watch as the word falls apart and the letters all scatter — perhaps like autumn leaves fluttering in the wind, turning over and over as they slowly fall from a tree. Watch as each letter changes color, and some of the letters themselves may separate and fall apart, or join together with other letters as they drift down, and then gradually come back together to spell a new word.” . . .

Instead of autumn leaves fluttering in the wind, you could use any other context that presupposes random movement, such as fish swimming in an aquarium, or birds flying in the sky, people walking in a crowded mall, etc.

You could do the same process in the auditory system. “Notice the sequence of sounds in the original word. Hear each of these sounds separately, one at a time, each coming from a different place in your personal space.” . . . Pause, and then follow with, “Now hear these sounds in reverse order, . . . and then in a different order, . . . and then hear them all at the same time. . . . Now listen as they all move from one location to another around you in your personal space. As the sounds move, some may change how they sound in some way — a sound might change in volume, or tonality, or change the way it is pronounced, one sound might split into two sounds, two sounds might blend into one sound, etc. Continue to listen to these sounds as they move around in space and finally arrange themselves in the same space as the original word to form a new sequence of sounds that creates a new word.” . . .

You could also combine visual and auditory by imagining, “What kind of animal or bird (real or imaginary) is making each of the sounds in the original word? Listen as these creatures move and scurry about, sometimes disappearing into an underground burrow or behind a bush, as other creatures with different sounds emerge, coming together or moving apart, etc.

Discussion
“Spell the same word” sets a frame of identity. “With another set of letters” gives the client the opportunity (or invitation) to think of how the “same” word could be spelled differently. “So that it would read like a different word,” implies that it is the same word, it just “reads” differently. The implications (processed primarily unconsciously) are that it will have the same or similar meaning as the original word. Of course, logically a word with different letters is actually a different word, but that is conscious-mind thinking, and this is a lovely example of Erickson using language in a way that tends to bypass conscious thinking.

This process is a very gentle roundabout way of asking, “What do you really mean by that word?” or “What else do you mean by that word.” However, if you ask a direct question, you will usually get a very logical conscious mind answer — or no answer — especially with someone who doesn’t have much awareness of their internal processes. The next time someone uses a word in some way that marks it out and draws attention to it, you can try out this intervention, and find out what happens.

Using visual or auditory imagery as outlined above usually makes it easier for unconscious processes to emerge, “take center stage,” and be recognized and acknowledged. If you do this with visual imagery, and nothing interesting emerges, you can try again with auditory imagery using the same word. If you use the process and the new word doesn’t offer a significant new meaning, you can start with that new word and do the process again — as many times as you find useful. Of course it is also possible that there may be no significant additional meaning to discover. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Finding a different word will recategorize the experience described by the original word. This recategorization will provide a different set of reference experiences, connotations, and meanings, and this will often be useful in clarifying or specifying a problem or outcome, and should help indicate what to do next that might be useful.

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1. Conversations with Milton H. Erickson, M.D. volume 1, by Jay Haley. NY, W.W Norton Inc. 1985, p. 209.)
2. Ibid, p. 9

Book Review. The Better Angels of Our Nature: why violence has declined. Stephen Pinker (NY, Viking Press, 2011)

If you have ever despaired of humanity because of all the violence and injustice in the world, this book is a lovely breath of fresh air and optimism. However, despite its clarity and fascinating thoroughness and detail, it is also a long breath. I think it’s likely that even those who buy the book may not find time to read the nearly 700 pages of small print. (I had the luxury of a vacation, and it still took me a week.) So I thought you might appreciate a brief sharing of a few of the books highlights. There are many reviews of this excellent book online; I will only add a few thoughts for those who may not get around to reading it.

Pinker first demonstrates that violence of all kinds — from tribal and national wars to infanticide — has declined steadily by a factor of 100 since Medieval times. This conclusion is based on analysis of hundreds of datasets, and the book includes a compelling array of figures and graphs showing this basic trend. This puts current violence into perspective, and holds out significant hope that the decline will continue.

After establishing the evidence for the decline, Pinker goes on to ask the question, “What accounts for the change?” He carefully examines many different factors that could have played a role, checking across cultures through time, and noticing where there are consistent correlations. I don’t have space for Pinker’s thorough and thoughtful reviews and analyses, only for a few interesting conclusions — and a couple of quotes from the book so you can sample the flavor of his writing.

One factor is the rise of democracies, which are based on periodic voter feedback. Democracy is based on the assumption that people with different ideas and desires can usually work things out without fighting and killing each other. Even when a “democracy” is deeply flawed or entirely bogus, the idea of democracy and universal rights has a near universal appeal, and sooner or later people are likely to demand some substance beneath the idea.

An increase in empathy (a word that is only a century old!) is clearly a major factor. One factor that surprised me with its simplicity and obviousness is the impact of the invention of the printing press. While initially it was used only for religious texts, after the late 17th century, books became more widespread, and the rise of the novel increased people’s experience of others’ viewpoints, and this was correlated with a further decrease in violence.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else’s thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person’s vantage point. Not only are you taking in sights and sounds that you could not experience first-hand, but you have stepped inside that person’s mind and are temporarily sharing his or her attitudes and reactions.
. . .
Slipping even for a moment into the perspective of someone who is turning black in a pillory, or desperately pushing burning faggots away from her body or convulsing under the two hundredth stroke of the lash may give a person second thoughts as to whether these cruelties should ever be visited upon anyone. (p. 175)

Another factor was the rise of central governments with effective laws and enforcement. When you can reasonably hope that most criminals will be brought to justice, there is much less incentive to take matters into your own hands — and likely be brought to justice yourself. Pinker quotes a Croat who described the situation in pre-breakup Yugoslavia, “There was a policeman every hundred meters who made sure that we all loved each other very much.”

These are only a few examples of the many, many aspects of a fundamental shift in human consciousness that this book documents and explores, much of which has taken place within the last hundred years. Though Pinker is very careful not to make predictions, the trajectory is clear, and gives us hope for a future with even less violence. I would like to end this review with Pinker’s closing paragraphs:

To review the history of violence is to be repeatedly astounded by the waste of it all, and at times to be overcome with anger, disgust, and immeasurable sadness. I know that behind the graphs is a young man who feels a stab of pain and watches the life drain slowly out of him, knowing that he has been robbed of decades of existence. There is a victim of torture whose contents of consciousness have been replaced by unbearable agony, leaving room only for the desire that consciousness itself should cease. There is a woman who has learned that her husband, her father, and her brothers lie dead in a ditch, and who will soon ‘fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation.’ It would be terrible if these ordeals befell one person, or ten, or a hundred. But the numbers are not in the hundreds, the thousands, or even the millions, but in the hundreds of millions—an order of magnitude that the mind staggers to comprehend, with deepening horror as it comes to realize just how much suffering has been inflicted by the naked ape upon its own kind.

Yet while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, that species has also found ways to bring the numbers down, and allow a greater and greater proportion of humanity to live in peace and die of natural causes. For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible. (p. 696)

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined on Amazon.com

This is a passionate and moving story of courage and the influence of language. It’s a great example of entering another person’s world through mirroring — and much more — in an extremely dangerous situation.

We think you’ll enjoy this story, from Rosemary Lake-Liotta, sharing her experience working as an EMT in tough neighborhoods.

Her response was the opposite of the classic instructions in such situations. You are usually told to respond to conflict with placating words like “let’s all calm down and discuss this rationally.”  I think you can easily imagine how that would have worked here.

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From the new book, Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict.  Available on Amazon.

Words Save Lives

After my training to become an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) I was given an opportunity to further my learning. I would participate in a 120-hour unpaid internship riding with Chicago Fire Department Paramedics to learn further crisis intervention techniques in the field.

One of the paramedics who mentored me during my field internship said some things on my first day that I will never forget. “You are going to be seeing and meeting people who may be very different than you. They may not look like you, may not act like you, they may not share the same values as you, they may use foul language, and they may not have the same personal hygiene habits that you have. They may be homeless or living in poverty. They may have had horrible life experiences that have shaped the way they act and what they do. They may be deaf or blind. They may be from another country and not speak English. You must treat every person you come in contact with, regardless of who they are, with RESPECT.”

He continued, “The words you use and how you use them convey many things in this work. First, they must always convey respect. Next, you must be able to communicate with others in terms that they use and understand. You will have to learn to be very flexible and change with the circumstances. In any situation, you must always protect yourself and protect your patient. When you take a person onto your stretcher, their life becomes your total responsibility. It makes no difference if you’re in a hospital or in the projects; if a person is on your stretcher, that person is your responsibility.

“When you are here with us in the field,” he said, “I want you to keep your mouth shut and watch everything we do, listen to what we say, and especially observe people’s expressions as we interact with them.”

During the months that followed, I watched hundreds of faces. Each transport provided a wealth of knowledge regarding human behavior, and taught me to choose my words with care. All that training prepared me for the day that was to change my life…

I had taken a job working for a private ambulance company that had contracts with hospitals and nursing homes all over the Chicago area. Each ambulance was assigned a two-person team that included a driver and an attendant, both certified EMTs. Long before the era of cell phone technology, the ambulances were equipped with stationary CB radios. (The only portable radios available were carried by the paramedics who staffed the four mobile intensive-care ambulance units.) This meant that when we left the ambulance to get a patient, we had no radio contact with dispatch.

My partner and I that day were assigned a routine transport that was dispatched as a “patient pick up” at one of the housing projects, Cabrini Green. The patient was to be transported to a local hospital for physical therapy. I had been to Cabrini Green many times during my internship with the fire department. As part of my training, I had a crash course on gangs and gang violence. In effect, I had learned to “speak gang.”

The cement walls of the high-rise buildings were covered with gang graffiti, much of it dominated by The Vice Lords and The Latin Kings. Graffiti was one way the gangs claimed their territories, letting others know that this was their turf. The hallways were also cement and open to the air, being covered by chain-link fencing from the first floor to the top floors to prevent people from falling to their deaths. The elevators were in poor repair. We never knew beforehand if the elevator we needed would be working or not. Today we were lucky. The elevator doors opened. I pulled the stretcher in and my partner Joe pushed the button for the 14th floor. The doors closed. As we lurched upward the light in the elevator kept flashing on and off, and the elevator would stop all together and then jerk upward again. Perhaps the wiring had been gnawed on by rats, which were a common problem here.

When we arrived at the 14th floor we both cautiously stuck our heads out to see if the scene was safe. It looked clear so we pulled the stretcher out of the elevator and proceeded down the hall to apartment number 1407. Joe stood on one side of the door and I stood on the other side. We knew not to stand directly in front of the door because you never knew if there was a person on the other side with a gun. Joe pounded hard on the door. A voice came from the other side.

“What the hell you want?”

Joe said, “We’re EMTs here for Jessie.”

The door opened and a little boy of about 10 was standing there. “C’mon,” he said, “Jessie’s in here.”

We followed the boy with our stretcher in tow, passing through a small living room and into a bedroom. Sitting upright on the bed was a young man with thick white casts on both legs. He was wearing shorts that had been cut up the sides to make room for the casts that started at his hips.

“Jessie can’t move himself at all,” the little boy said. “You have to lift him up.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I’m Henry, Jessie’s my brother.”

Jessie told his brother to go next door and stay with a neighbor while he was at the hospital. After Henry left I asked Jessie what had happened to him. He said that the Lords had broken both of his legs with baseball bats because he would not join their gang. He and his family were Jehovah’s Witnesses. He said that due to his religious beliefs he would never join the gang. He asked that I give him his Bible so that he could read at the hospital while he waited for his physical therapy appointment. When we had Jessie safely secured on the stretcher, we headed back out into the hall.

I was at the front of the stretcher as we pulled Jessie along to the elevator. I pushed the down button and again the elevator doors opened. This time three men were standing there. The man in the middle was holding a gun. He looked down at me and said, “WHAT THE HELL do you think you’re DOING with MY BOY?”

I glanced back at Jessie and saw sheer terror on his face. In that split second I knew that these were some of the men that had done this violence to him. I straightened to my full height of exactly five feet, looked up at the man with the gun, and said, “He’s NOT your boy, he’s on my stretcher, he’s on MY TURF. He’s MY boy!”

Shocked, the man looked at the gun he was holding, looked back down at me, and said, “SAY WHAT?”

So I said, “Now I can see that you’re a man that demands RESPECT.”
“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT.”

“I give you that RESPECT.” I said. “Now let me tell you about my gang.”

He said, “YOU in a gang?”

“Yeah! All these EMTs and Paramedics that come here when you call 911 are all part of MY GANG. Now, let me ask you, has there ever been a time when you called 911 and someone from MY GANG didn’t come to help you?”

“No, they be there,” he said.

“THAT’S RIGHT. If you mess with me or you mess with anyone on MY TURF,” I pointed to Jessie, “or you mess with anyone in MY GANG, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK’S GOING TO HAPPEN THE NEXT TIME ONE OF YOUR BOYS IS BLEEDIN’ OUT BAD AND YOU CALL 911?”

He looked back down at the gun, then looked back at me and said, “DAMN, YOU A BITCH!”

“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,” I yelled at him, “AND WHILE I GIVE YOU THAT RESPECT, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY TO BE STANDIN’ HERE SHOOTIN’ THE SHIT WITH YOU!”

“Let the lady pass on by,” he said with a nod of his head.

I pulled the stretcher into the elevator, praying that he wouldn’t change his mind. Tears were streaming down Jessie’s face as the elevator doors closed. Joe and I took some deep breaths, doing our best to prepare for whatever might meet us on the ground floor. Thankfully, when the elevator doors opened again the scene was safe enough to proceed to the ambulance. We notified our dispatcher that an incident had occurred but that no injuries resulted and we would call him from the hospital. En route, I asked Jessie who the men were. He said he didn’t know their names. I asked him if they were some of the men that had broken his legs. He nodded and said, “If I tell anyone who they are, they will kill my family. I already talked to the police. What you don’t understand is that I have to live there.”

When I called my dispatcher, a meeting was arranged with the supervising field paramedic and the owner of the company to discuss what to do. Because the man with the gun did not actually point the gun directly at me and say he was going to kill me, and I did not know who the men were, filing a police report was not recommended. Thousands of people live in Chicago Housing Projects and many have guns. Paramedics and EMTs across the country face dangerous situations every single day. They continue to do their job. We were there to safely transport Jessie to physical therapy and back, not try to hunt down gang members. Following the meeting, I was promoted to become one of the company’s EMT trainers.

As a trainer, I went to pick up Jessie three times a week for the next six months with trainees under my charge. Every time I pulled up to Cabrini Green and got out of the ambulance, the gang scouts that were watching over their turf would say, “Hey, it’s that little white MEDIC BITCH again!” And then the call would come back, “He says let the lady pass on by.” I was never bothered by anyone there ever again.

~Rosemary Lake-Liotta

Excerpt from Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree: 61 stories of creative and compassionate ways out of conflict, by Mark Andreas. ©2011 Real People Press.

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To read the entire collection of remarkable true stories, order now at Amazon.com.

Available locally at The Tattered Cover and The Boulder Bookstore.

If you’d like to order this book as a gift for friends or family, contact us for quantity discounts: order [at] realpeoplepress.com or go to the official website for Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree.

Every time I read the inspiring stories in this book, I wind up with tears in my eyes. If you like the stories half as much as I do, you’ll really appreciate them. There is a lot of both wisdom and “heart” in these pages.

Over the past 7 years, our son Mark has been interviewing people who have a story to tell of how they dealt with a situation of potential conflict, and writing up their stories for this book. To this he’s added some great stories others have written, but which in most cases have not been easily accessible or well-known. Connirae and I are very pleased with the result, and happy to make it available to people around the world through Real People Press.

Below is the full description of the book, as well as endorsements from Dan Millman, William Ury, Mark Gerzon, Pamela Gerloff, Bill O’Hanlon, and a link to order.

— Steve Andreas

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Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree is a book of fascinating stories of how real people dealt with conflict situations by responding in unusual and creative ways that most of us would never think of. Some intensely moving, some funny, some startling or surprising — these stories can open our hearts with a deep appreciation for what is possible.

These pages cover the full spectrum of life — from the kinds of conflicts that all of us face, to the intensity of war and threats of extreme violence. Here you will find stories that take place in the community, the workplace, the schoolyard, and the backyard. You’ll read stories from dark alleys, psych wards, jails, hostage hideouts, and wars.

These stories show how each person came face-to-face with a significant challenge and found their own unique way to meet it. There are no recipes here, no set of steps — just raw experience unfolding with a richness that will keep readers on the edge of their seats through the last page.

This unique and meaningful book includes stories from Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, Nonviolent Communication founder Marshall Rosenberg, Colonel Christopher P. Hughes, Milton H. Erickson, as well as many people like you and I — you may know some of these contributors.

• You’ll laugh out loud at the funny interventions used by a cop.
• Be touched by the forgiveness and generosity of heart that made resolution possible between people who suffered tragedy in the midst of war.
• Learn how an estranged husband and wife rediscovered their love for each other by studying their dog.
• Witness a creative teacher dealing with bullying on the school playground.
• And marvel at how a taxi driver with a gun to his head avoided being murdered by a “psycho.”

Two of these stories have appeared earlier on this blog:
“A Stunning Example of Rapport (and Pattern Interrupt)”
“The Plywood Artwork”

Order below to enjoy the other 59 stories!

What People are Saying about this book:

“As a sage once said, ‘God invented men and women, because God loves stories.’ The stories compiled by Mark Andreas in Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree, tasted one by one, each morning or evening, can transmit real-world reminders about how changing our behavior can change the behavior of others — and that the right words, used skillfully and with heart, can turn a life around.”
— Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Journeys of Socrates

“In the immortal words of songwriter Nick Lowe: What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? This book is a charming and moving book about peace, love, creativity and understanding. I predict that you will be inspired by the stories in this book. One of them may even save your life someday.”
— Bill O’Hanlon, featured Oprah guest and author of Do One Thing Different

“There’s an old saying that some conflicts are so difficult that only a story can heal them. Mark Andreas has done us a great service with this collection of extraordinary stories that have this inspirational quality.”
— William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes, author of The Power of a Positive No

“What a wonderful book this is — truly exceptional. The stories are so varied, so profound, so fun and surprising. The result is a sense of possibility awakened. If these ‘ordinary people’ can turn a tense or scary situation into harmony and peace, couldn’t the rest of us do that too? Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree subtly instructs us in the fine arts of possibility and peacemaking, as we savor its beauty and grace.”
— Dr. Pamela Gerloff, Founder of The Global Possibility Project, co-author of Dignity for All: How to Create a World without Rankism (Berrett-Koehler)

“The stories in this book can teach you more than any academic course or workshop. They are not ‘case studies;’ they are life itself.”
— Mark Gerzon, President of Mediators Foundation, author of Leading Through Conflict (Harvard Business School Press)

Order Your Copy!
If you are ordering a single copy and live in the United States, we suggest ordering from Amazon:

Order Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree From Amazon.com

(Amazon should ship out within 2-3 days and at this time has plenty of books in stock. Their long estimate on shipping time we think is their attempt to “play it safe” in case they are deluged with orders. However, please know that we will be shipping to them within 24 hrs. if their orders exceed supply.)

If you are ordering this book along with other Real People Press Products or live outside the U.S., use this link to go to the order page on the Real People Press website:

Order Sweet Fruit from the Bitter Tree from Real People Press

Book Review: The Gift of Fear: survival signals that protect us from violence
by Gavin de Becker. (Little, Brown and Co., 1997)

I very rarely get to recommend a book as highly as this one. It is packed with useful information that could save your life, and it is well-written and easy to read. It has great examples that make it vividly clear exactly what he is writing about, and it is written with the matter-of-fact humility that indicates a true expert. The fundamental message of the book is that you can trust your intuition, and that you can train your intuition to make it even more accurate and reliable. Here are three short paragraphs from chapter 1 that summarize the book:

Because of my sustained look at violence, because I have predicted the behavior of murderers, stalkers, would-be assassins, rejected boy-friends, estranged husbands, angry former employees, mass killers, and others, I am called an expert. I may have learned many lessons, but my basic premise in these pages is that you too are an expert at predicting violent behavior. Like every creature, you can know when you are in the presence of danger. You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.

I’ve learned some lessons about safety through years of asking people who have suffered violence, “Could you have seen this coming?” Most often they say, “No, it just came out of nowhere.” But if I am quiet, if I wait a moment, here comes the information: “I felt uneasy when I first met that guy. . .” or “Now that I think of it, I was suspicious when he approached me,” or “I realize now I had seen that car earlier in the day.”

Of course if they realize it now, they knew it then. We all see the signals because there is a universal code of violence. You’ll find some of what you need to break that code in the following chapters, but most of it is in you.

Below is the opening story from chapter 1 about Kelly, a woman who was raped at gunpoint. Some may find it scary, and not want to read about “negative thoughts.” However, it vividly illustrates many of the clues that you can use to avoid violence — not by carrying guns, mace or learning martial arts, but just by paying close attention to your intuition to detect the early signs, so you can get out of a situation before it becomes dangerous.

After meeting with de Becker, Kelly felt more safe than before it happened, saying, “The weird thing is, with all this information I’m actually less afraid walking around now than I was before it happened — but there must be an easier way people could learn.” There is. You can develop this same sense of safety without having to go through what she did.

That afternoon, in an effort to get all her shopping done in one trip, Kelly had overestimated what she could comfortably carry home. Justifying her decision as she struggled with the heavy bags, she reminded herself that making two trips would have meant walking around after dark, and she was too careful about her safety for that. As she climbed the few steps to the apartment building door, she saw that it had been left unlatched (again). Her neighbors just don’t get it, she thought, and though their lax security annoyed her, this time she was glad to be saved the trouble of getting out the key. She closed the door behind her, pushing it until she heard it latch.

Next came the four flights of stairs, which she wanted to do in one trip. Near the top of the third landing, one of the bags gave way, tearing open and dispensing cans of cat food. They rolled down the stairs almost playfully, as if they were trying to get away from her. The can in the lead paused at the second floor landing, and Kelly watched as it literally turned the corner, gained some speed, and began its seemingly mindful hop down the next flight of steps and out of sight.

“Got it! I’ll bring it up,” someone called out. Kelly didn’t like that voice. Right from the start something just sounded wrong to her, but then this friendly-looking young guy came bounding up the steps, collecting cans along the way.

He said, “Let me give you a hand.”

“No, no thanks, I’ve got it.”

“You don’t look like you’ve got it. What floor are you going to?”

She paused before answering him. “The fourth, but I’m okay, really.”

He wouldn’t hear a word of it, and by this point he had a collection of cans balanced between his chest and one arm. “I’m going to the fourth floor too,” he said, “and I’m late — not my fault, broken watch — so let’s not just stand here. And give me that.” He reached out and tugged on one of the heavier bags she was holding. She repeated, “No, really, thanks, but no, I’ve got it.”

Still holding on the grocery bag, he said, “There’s such a thing as being too proud, you know.”

For a moment, Kelly didn’t let go of that bag, and then she did. “We better hurry,” he said as he walked up the stairs ahead of Kelly, “We’ve got a hungry cat up there.”

Even though he seemed to want nothing more at that moment than to be helpful, she was apprehensive about him, and for no good reason, she thought. He was friendly and gentlemanly, and she felt guilty about her suspicion. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who distrusts everybody, so they were next approaching the door to her apartment.

“Did you know a cat can live for three weeks without eating?” he asked. “I’ll tell you how I learned that tidbit: I once forgot that I’d promised to feed a cat while a friend of mine was out of town.”

Kelly was now standing at the door to her apartment, which she’d just opened.

“I’ll take it from here,” she said, hoping he’d hand her the groceries, accept her thanks, and be on his way. Instead, he said, “Oh no, I didn’t come this far to let you have another cat food spill.” When she still hesitated to let him in her door, he laughed understandingly. “Hey, we can leave the door open like ladies do in old movies. I’ll just put this stuff down and go. I promise.” She did let him in, but he did not keep his promise.

He raped her at gunpoint for three hours, and after that he planned to kill her. But this time she trusted her intuition and escaped. Besides repeatedly dismissing her strong intuitions, Kelly ignored eleven clear signals that would have confirmed her intuitions, and could have saved her from a horrible experience. How many of these eleven signals can you identify? You’ll have to read chapter 4 of the book to find the answers, and it will be well worth your time.

I think everyone should read this book. Period.

In this very interesting 18-minute video, filmed at one of his very large “Mastery University” seminars in Australia, Tony Robbins asks if anyone present is suicidal. A woman raises her hand, and Tony proceeds to interact with her. I don’t know how long the video will be available online, so if you want to watch it, you may want to do it soon. I strongly suggest that you watch the video below before reading my review below for two related reasons:

1) So that you can pay close attention to what you see and hear — particularly nonverbal behavior, both in Tony and the client — and notice your own responses, thoughts, and evaluations, unbiased by mine.

2) So that you can later compare what you observed with what I saw and heard. You may also find it useful to watch the video a second time after reading my comments. (I have watched it a number of times and learned a lot from this.) Watch the video now.

After watching the video, scroll down for my review. . . .
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(If you haven’t yet watched the video, please do so before reading on.)

Tony first interrupts Olivia’s sad story by asking her, (2:36) “Why are you unworthy to be alive? Do you fart in public?” etc., and this gets a very definite state change into humor. This is a particularly effective interrupt and redirect because English is Olivia’s second language, and she is at first quite confused by his words, adding to the interrupt. He continues to solidify this state by asking her more questions about farting, “Did you ever fart and blame it on your dog? Did you ever fart and blame it on a friend?”

At 4:00, after Olivia has said “No” to all these questions about farting, Tony says, “No. OK, good, then you are worthy of living, . . . unlike many other people in this room.” In the first part of this sentence he links her not farting to being worthy of living, which links back to her statement about unworthiness, and makes it seem ludicrous. The second part of the sentence makes the same linkage in reverse seem equally ludicrous.

Olivia then continues with her extensive tale of woe — her betrayal by her husband, who took everything from her, etc.

Then Tony nicely reorients her to her pre-marriage identity by asking about her last name, and then her maiden name which is a powerful positive resource for her identity. Although the video is titled, “Creating a Compelling Future,” what he is actually doing is accessing a compelling past, bringing it into the present, and then taking this into the future.

At 10:24, Tony says, “You need to stop this story; it’s very painful. I have total compassion for you. But because I care about you, I can’t let you indulge in this story any more. Because the story is making you stand not like a Garzon, behave not like a Garzon. It’s created the illusion that you are not who you really are.” This pulls her out of her sadness, and back into her family identity again.

While acknowledging these useful changes, I think it is useful to keep in mind that someone who is willing to volunteer in this kind of context — being videotaped in front of a huge audience — is likely to be very motivated. While Tony makes some good moves, I don’t think we could expect to see the same kind of intense responses to these moves very often in a one-on-one session without the thousand-plus backup “therapists,” and with someone who doesn’t have Tony’s reputation. The fact that this is a very high-priced seminar further selects for people who are highly motivated.

Now let’s take a look at some very interesting nonverbal behaviors. Notice how often Tony sneers, for instance at 13:00 when he says, “Miss Garzon,” and again at 13:03 and 13:12 when he again says, “Miss Garzon.” (See the still below.) I will return to this topic later.

At 13:06, in between the last two of these “Miss Garzons” Tony smiles and then wipes his hand across his face. What is the quality of this smile? It is certainly not a smile of pleasure, or of embarrassment. I would call it a self-satisfied smile. Tony appears to be pleased at his own cleverness, and I think this view is supported by his “wiping the smile off his face,” (see below) as well as his shaking his head from side to side immediately after that. I will also return to this topic later.

Near the end of Tony’s interaction with Olivia is the following exchange:

13:46 Tony: Dear Garzon, with the heritage of a Garzon, what is possible? What is possible for a woman who has the heritage, the lineage of a Garzon within her? What is possible?

14:03 Olivia: To see that life is just a great opportunity, to be — um — to conquer the universe, to conquer the love and the loss—

Although Olivia has made some useful shifts, her nonverbal behavior — voice tone, furrowed brow, upside down smile, and facial expression — indicates that much of her identity as a “victim” is intact.

When she says, “I can conquer the universe,” that indicates that she has undergone what is called a “polarity flip.” She began by being suicidal and a complete victim of events; now she is saying that she can “conquer the universe,” which is just as unrealistic and unbalanced, and very likely to flip back again into its opposite. Bipolar disorder is another example of this kind of alternation. Flipping between polar opposites is very different from the integration of opposites. Tony validates what she says, ignoring her nonverbal messages of incongruence.

Tony: That’s right.

14:22 Olivia: —to remind myself that always I was respected, that only one man was — used me and hurt me, and took away everything from me—

Here Olivia clearly slides back into her unhappiness as a “wronged woman,” and Tony challenges this again.

14:36 Tony: Did he take away everything?

Olivia: Yes.

14:39 Tony: No. I’m asking you, did he take away everything?

Tony’s “No” directly contradicts Olivia’s “Yes,” followed by a repetition of his question challenging what she said.

14:41 Olivia: No, no, my faith, my self, my dignity, my personality, is with me now.

Tony: Right, he could not take that. You had the illusion that he took it—

Olivia: Yes, yes.

14:49 Tony: —that’s why you were so sad. You forgot who you are. Will you ever forget this again?

Olivia: No, again, no.

Tony: Never again.

Olivia: No, Never again.

14:56 Tony: Never again. (applause)

Is it realistic to think that Olivia will actually “never again” fall into being unhappy about being treated so badly by her husband of 19 years, leaving her destitute? I don’t think so, especially with all the nonverbal signals that clearly indicate her incongruence, even when she says positive things. If she does slip into her sadness again later, Tony will not be available to pull her out of it.

I think it would be much better to assume that at least occasionally she may slide back into being a helpless victim — as she just did — and provide a way for her to quickly move back into a more positive outlook by linking this to remembering her positive identity.

For instance, saying something like, “If you ever again become sad about how badly you were treated, you can remember this moment of knowing who you are as a Garzon, something no one can ever take away from you” could create a link between being sad, and remembering that she is a Garzon. A detailed future-pace would be even better.

A lasting solution would involve taking the time to integrate these two polarities, and create the congruence that would eliminate any chance that she could slip back into her sadness. But that would take more time than Tony’s razzle-dazzle workshop context would permit.

To summarize, Tony succeeds in changing her state, and accessing a positive polarity, but he does not go on to integrate the two polarities. It’s good theater, but only a start on lasting change.

Back to the sneer
In Tony’s follow-up comments on the session he repeatedly sneers, a clear signal of contempt. I would call the still below the “mother of all sneers.”

As a little experiment, think now of something that you could feel contemptuous about, or disgusted with, and then sneer. . . .

Did you sneer on the left side of your face or the right? . . .

Now try sneering on the other side of your face. . . .

Probably you had difficulty doing this last step, or you may have found it impossible. A sneer is usually on the left side of the face in a right-handed person, because it expresses non-dominant (usually right-brain) emotion, which is usually less conscious. Given that Tony released this video clip, I assume that he was not aware of his sneer, and probably many people watching it aren’t either, despite its magnitude. This video is not unique; if you watch any of his many videos closely, you will see him sneer over and over again.

A sneer is a facial expression of scorn or disgust characterized by a slight raising of one corner of the upper lip, known also as curling the lip or turning up the nose.
— Wikipedia: Sneer

In the sneer, buccinator muscles (innervated by lower buccal branches of the facial nerve) contract to draw the lip corners sideward to produce a sneering “dimple” in the cheeks (the sneer may also be accompanied by a scornful, upward eye-roll). From videotape studies of nearly 700 married couples in sessions discussing their emotional relationships with each other, University of Washington psychologist, John Gottman has found the sneer expression (even fleeting episodes of the cue) to be a “potent signal” for predicting the likelihood of future marital disintegration (Bates and Cleese 2001). In this regard, the sneer may be decoded as an unconscious sign of contempt.
— The Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, & Body Language Cues by David B. Givens, 2002, Spokane, Washington: Center for Nonverbal Studies Press, pp.24-25

(For more on sneering, see the note at the end of this post.)

Tony’s repeated sneers during his work, and as he talks about his work with Olivia later, is incongruent with his statement about being compassionate and caring at 10:24, when he says, “You need to stop this story; it’s very painful. I have total compassion for you. But because I care about you, I can’t let you indulge in this story any more.”

Being compassionate and caring for someone is the opposite of sneering. Generally speaking, nonverbal behavior is more likely to be valid than the words someone uses, which are more likely to be a “front” created by the conscious mind. We all have personal limitations that will interfere with helping others, so Tony is not unique, but pervasive contempt for a client is a pretty serious one.

Back to the self-satisfied smile
We see this smile again (though less intensely) in his follow-up comments when Tony says, “I watched her and listened to her, and I saw that she came from a traditional background, and I gambled, . . . correctly.”

Summary
Given all the foregoing observations, it appears to me that even when Tony helps someone, his ultimate goal is not their well-being, but Tony’s power, fame, and self-importance and this is bound to distort the result. His first book is titled Unlimited Power, and among his seminar titles are “Unleash the Power Within,” and “Wealth Mastery,” so it is reasonable to assume that power is a prime motivator for Tony.

In the case of Olivia, it is impressive to leave her with “I can conquer the world,” and “I will never forget this,” but it is not the kind of integrated resolution that will result in lasting benefit.

In the five-year follow-up, Olivia says, “She was doing well, and always remembered what Tony said to her,” so apparently she did benefit from the session. However, the fact that she remembered her session with Tony is not surprising, given the context of being the focus of Tony and a thousand other participants. To what extent this memory contributed significantly to her “doing well” is at least questionable; a lot can happen in five years that might have contributed to this result, and the passage of time alone is bound to be a factor. A one- or two-month follow-up would have provided better evidence of changes that resulted from the session alone.

Despite my criticism, it can be useful to watch and listen to Tony’s videos. Having watched a lot of live client demonstrations at national psychotherapy conferences, I have to say that Tony gets far more changes much faster than most well-known therapists — many of whom don’t get any changes at all. And he is also willing to show what he does publicly, so that we can see exactly what he does. This is something that is all too rare in the field; most therapists practice privately, hiding behind “confidentiality,” not willing to make what they do public — often for good reason.

And now I suggest that you watch the video again.

Note: more on sneering

In The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin defined a “sneer” as “the upper lip being retracted in such a manner that the canine tooth on one side of the face alone is shown” Darwin related the sneer to the snarl observed in non-human animals, particularly carnivores, observing that:

“The uncovering of the canine tooth is the result of a double movement. The angle or corner of the mouth is drawn a little backwards, and at the same time a muscle which runs parallel to and near the nose draws up the outer part of the upper lip, and exposes the canine on this side of the face. The contraction of this muscle makes a distinct furrow on the cheek, and produces strong wrinkles under the eye, especially at its inner corner. The action is the same as that of a snarling dog; and a dog when pretending to fight often draws up the lip on one side alone, namely that facing his antagonist.”
— Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872, pp 249-250, as quoted in Wikipedia: Sneer

“Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.”
— William Shakespeare, Richard III: Act 1, Scene 2

A friend sent me a very interesting example of conversational change:

In the biography of Janos Starker, world-renowned cellist — who has recorded more pieces than any other, and who was once called the “King of Cellists” and still teaching at 86 — there is a story concerning his habit of being late for concert performances. Starker is quoted as follows:

“I remember vividly my frantic inventions of excuses for arriving late, already the fifth time, while I was changing into my tuxedo as the overture played without me.

“Dear John Mundy, the orchestra manager, interrupted my colorful story and said, ‘Don’t, Janos — I know how unpleasant it is for you to be late.’

“Twenty-two years later, I do not recall ever again being late for any professional obligation.”

How did this single comment permanently change Starker’s habit of being late? Pause now to review the information provided above, and think about how this brief comment resulted in instant and permanent change. . . .

Notice that Janos describes the situation as a “professional obligation.” I think it is very likely (though I can’t prove it) that Janos had been thinking that he should be on time, in order to please others — since that is what most people mean by the word “obligation.” Like most people, he had an opposite response to this implied demand, making him chronically late. (“arriving late, already the fifth time”)

Whenever someone else says, “You should—” most people’s typical response is “I don’t want to—” what is called a “polarity response.” This kind of response can even occur when we already want to do something! As Paul Watzlawick said, “Maturity is doing what you want to do, even when your mother thinks it’s a good idea.”

At the moment that Mundy spoke to him, the fact that he was frantic and can recall it vividly indicates that Janos’s attention was totally occupied: “I remember vividly my frantic inventions of excuses for arriving late, already the fifth time, while I was changing into my tuxedo as the overture played without me.”

When Mundy said, “Don’t Janos,” that was an unexpected interrupt, which typically makes someone much more ready to accept any subsequent communication. (See my blog post on pattern interrupts)

Then Mundy said something that must also have been very unexpected, another interrupt. Rather than complain, or scold him, or judge his lateness, and its impact on others, he is sympathetic, and presupposes that his lateness is unpleasant for Janos. “I know how unpleasant it is for you to be late.”

This shifted Janos’ attention from “Other people are feeling bad” to “I am feeling bad.” Once his ?attention is redirected toward his own feelings it becomes easy for ?him to change his behavior. “This feels terrible; I don’t want to do this any more!” (It must have ?been very unpleasant for him to be rushing to put on his tuxedo while making up frantic excuses, as the orchestra is playing without him!)

Redirecting his attention to his own unpleasantness changed his external “should” (please others) to an internal “want,” (to avoid the unpleasantness) and that is the crucial difference that made it easy for him to change, and for that change to last 22 years.

Another way of thinking about this change is that initially his “should” and his “want” were in opposition. Mundy’s comment changed his want to be in alignment with the should, so he became congruent about being on time.

Wants are typically much more effective at motivating us than shoulds. If this were emblazoned on the walls of our minds, all us — especially parents — could save ourselves an enormous amount of conflict, difficulties, and unpleasant consequences. Even when children, teenagers, or adults dutifully follow a should, the “I don’t want to” response is still there, a polarity lurking and waiting for an opportunity to emerge into behavior. But when our own wants are motivating our behavior, we are much more congruent, and much less likely to engage in any kind of mindless rebellion or other self-destructive behavior.

I love small and concise examples like this — especially conversational ones — that can illustrate so clearly an important principle of how we can change quickly and effortlessly.

The next time you find yourself about to tell someone else (or yourself) that they should do something, pause. . . . And then think about what aspects of doing that would naturally and spontaneously be enjoyable or pleasurable, . . . or what consequences of doing that would be attractive. . . . or how doing that would demonstrate something positive and praiseworthy. . . . And then think about what you could say — and how you could say it nonverbally — that could elicit a response of wanting to do it. . . .

When her son wanted her to do something, a very wise woman I know would often say to him, “I could do that; can you make me want to do it?” as a way of training him to develop his persuasion skills (instead of his whining and complaining skills, as so many parents unwittingly do).

And if you really can’t think of anything else useful to say, it would probably be much better not to say anything at all — both verbally and nonverbally — so that you don’t elicit the polarity response to the word “should,” which is a very dependable way to make your life — and that of others — “shoulddy.”

I am often asked whether there is any “hard science” academic research that supports NLP. There is some good news, and some bad news.

First the bad news…
(If you don’t like bad news, feel free to skip or skim this section.)

Most of the research directly on NLP concepts was done in the 1980s and 1990s; little or no research has been done directly on NLP in the last decade or so. The vast majority of studies that were done earlier addressed the concept of a primary representational system (PRS) — that people are primarily visual, auditory, or kinesthetic — or the impact of matching sensory predicates on rapport.

There’s a problem with this. Bandler and Grinder had introduced the idea of a PRS primarily as a teaching tool in the 1970s, to direct students’ attention to people’s sensory predicates and eye accessing. Soon after that, they pointed out that the idea of a PRS was a deliberate and gross oversimplification, only somewhat true in a particular problem context. Despite this, the bulk of research, supposedly “on NLP” at that time was done in an attempt to verify or disconfirm this concept.

As those of you with significant NLP Training will already know, whether or not people have a PRS is not in any way central to the field of NLP. We didn’t even mention it in our book Heart of the Mind (1989) introducing people to the field, because we didn’t consider it important or useful. PRS doesn’t really have anything to do with the effectiveness of the many methods that we have come to rely on in NLP to get results for people wanting change in their lives. When I sit down with someone to do a session, I can’t recall ever asking myself, “What is this person’s PRS?” It’s just not a useful question to ask.

At the same time, it is often useful to notice what sensory channel the client is using at the moment, or what sensory channel underlies the “problem.” For example it can be useful to notice that someone’s unpleasant feelings result from a critical inner voice, or to notice that many large and close movies of things to do leads to feeling overwhelmed.

Investigating Primary Representation System is a bit like Nasrudin looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp “because the light is better here,” even though he lost them somewhere else. PRS was perceived to be an “easy” thing to study, but the results of those studies don’t tell us anything about the field of NLP.

It’s also worth noting that the studies themselves were often full of research errors. The questionnaires used in an attempt to assess PRS often had confusing self-report questions like, “Do you see yourself as a feeling person,” or “Do you feel you are an auditory person?” As that kind of question clearly reveals, most experimenters were not trained in NLP, did not understand what they were researching, and did not use anyone trained in NLP as a consultant to review their experimental protocols. As a result, there was no control of the language used in the studies, nor control of nonverbal confounding variables such as gestures or voice tone.

For instance, when matching a subject’s visual predicate with a sentence like, “I see what you mean,” a higher-pitched voice, looking up, or a pointing gesture in the upper visual field will be congruent with visual processing, and be more likely to result in rapport. However, a lower-pitched voice, looking down, or a palm-up gesture in the lower visual field will be incongruent, and be less likely to lead to rapport. (Visual processing is typically accompanied by a high voice tone, looking up, and pointing gestures, while kinesthetic processing is often accompanied by a lower voice tone, looking down, and palm-up gesturing.)

As a result of these kinds of mistakes, most of the research was very poor quality. Not surprisingly, there is very little direct academic experimental support for NLP. A research committee working for the United States National Research Council in 1988 found little if any evidence to support NLP’s assumptions or to indicate that it was effective as a strategy for social influence. “It [NLP] assumes that by tracking another’s eye movements and language, an NLP trainer can shape the person’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions. There is no scientific support for these assumptions.”

To summarize, the research that has been done was on the wrong questions, by people who did not understand what they were trying to measure, ignoring linguistic and behavioral confounding variables, so of course the results were negative or inconclusive.

Although researching NLP is definitely doable, effective research in the field of NLP is a challenge for a number of reasons:

Psychological research costs quite a lot of money, which most NLPers do not have. Furthermore, if research is not done in a recognized academic institution, it is usually ignored, even if the double-blind controls and protocols are impeccable.

NLP’s focus on sensory process parameters makes it extremely hard to communicate with academics and mental health professionals, because it is so different from the typical psychiatric focus on content. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a recognized therapy that is most similar to NLP (and which has the strongest experimental support) focuses entirely on the content of internal auditory dialogue — the words that people say to themselves. CBT ignores the volume of the internal voice, its location in personal space, its direction, its tonality, and tempo, etc. Usually changing these process parameters has a much greater impact on experience than changing the content, and it is much easier. This is something that I have explored in great detail in my e-book Help With Negative Self-talk.

Advocating rigorous research has not been easy or without resistance from within the field itself. The original developers, and a number of others in the field — some of them widely respected — have explicitly said that NLP is inherently unverifiable by scientific research. One widely regarded leader in the field has even said that since NLP is about subjective experience, it is inherently untestable.

This ignores the fact that dreams — the most subjective experiences that most of us will ever have — have been researched scientifically for decades. A variety of new methods of brain scanning make it possible to do all sorts of experimental work on internal mental events, some of which are not even subjective experiences! For instance, brain scans have been used to detect when a decision is about to be made by a subject seven seconds before the subject becomes aware that they have made a decision.

The lack of unified support for securing research grants within the field of NLP has made it awkward to approach potential researchers. Even more of a problem in my view, many who “do NLP” have combined NLP with reflexology, remote viewing, crystal healing, aromatherapy, aura reading, and a host of other such new age methods. Most of these do not make specific claims that would be testable by the scientific method; associating NLP with them makes NLP appear to be only another get-rich-quick scam or even a cult.

Now for the good news…

All NLP processes include specific testable outcomes, detailed systematic protocols for different kinds of problems, and clear operational tests in sensory-based experience to determine when a client has reached their outcomes. In addition, many NLP processes can be completed in a single session of an hour or less. Because of this, NLP would be much easier to research than most therapies which are much less structured and usually take place during many sessions over a period of weeks or months. Scientific research needs to be done in order to confirm (or disconfirm) the various processes and understandings that are typically included in the term “NLP.”

A diverse group of dedicated NLP-trained people have joined together in establishing the NLP Research and Recognition Project in an effort to propose, develop, and support relevant research by academic institutions, with the goal of doing high-quality research that actually tests NLP principles and methods. This could do a great deal to establish the legitimacy of NLP methods, as well as advance the practice of psychotherapy generally. The director of the project, Frank Bourke, a clinical psychologist with a strong research background, has been a tireless advocate, working with those of us in the NLP community plus those in government organizations and universities, in efforts to establish studies. So far these efforts have come quite close to having funding for large scale studies several times. This is really quite a testament to Frank’s diligence and persistence, because it is not an easy thing to get through all the levels of “hoops” to gain this approval.

Although little or no research is currently being done directly on NLP processes, there is quite a lot of academic research that supports NLP indirectly. NLP methods and principles are being “rediscovered” in bits and pieces in a wide variety of research studies. Following are a few examples.

Treating PTSD and trauma using dissociation.

Sufferers who were asked to write about their traumatic memories in “third person” as if they were happening to someone else (“He was hit by a car and thrown 60 feet into a roadside ditch.”) recovered more quickly than a control group. Writing in third person requires viewing these events at a distance, as if they were happening to someone else, a way of creating dissociation.

In parallel research,

Ayduk and Kross contrast two alternative ways of working through highly emotional experiences. A self-immersed perspective is one in which we try to remember the experience at the same time that we try to analyze it — for example, when we say to ourselves, ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to me so much?’ By contrast, a self-distanced perspective analyzes the same experience as if you yourself were a third-party observer, a kind of fly on the wall — ‘Why did that prejudiced comment get to him so much?’ In both cases, you are trying to understand the emotions, but when you do this in the first person, the pull of the emotion can overwhelm understanding.

It seems amazing that a small change in the way one analyzes a painful experience (using s/he as opposed to I) can lead to such dramatic results, but the research on this is solid and clear. In one study, people who were prompted to recall a negative experience from a self-distanced perspective (why did s/he feel this way?) in the lab felt less distressed about the experience one week later compared to those who recalled a similarly negative experience from a self-immersed perspective (why did I feel this way?). In other studies, people who spontaneously self-distance have been shown to ruminate less about negative experiences and are less likely to be hostile when disagreements come up.

Timelines.

In research by Prof. Dov Shmotkin of Tel Aviv University Department of Psychology in Israel, “We discovered that overcoming trauma was related to how people organized the memory of their trauma on the larger time continuum of their life course.” In a study of Holocaust survivors, Prof. Shmotkin separated these survivors into those who considered the “Holocaust as past” and those who conceived of the “Holocaust as present.” Those in the ‘Holocaust as past” category were able to draw an effective line between the present day and the past trauma, thus allowing themselves to move forward. Those in the “Holocaust as present” category considered their traumatic experience as still existing, which indicated a difficulty in containing the trauma within a specific time limit.

Motivation, specific outcomes and behavioral change.

Recently the BPS Research Digest (well worth a free subscription) summarized a couple of recent studies done on changing behavior:

In rich countries, temptation is never far and many of us struggle to achieve our long-term aims of moderation, dedication and fidelity. An increasingly popular strategy for regaining control is to form so-called implementation intentions. Rather than having the vague goal to eat less or exercise more, you spell out when, where and how you will perform a given activity. For example, ‘When in the cafeteria at lunch I will buy orange juice rather than cola.’ A more specific variant is to form an ‘if-then’ plan, as in ‘If it is a Tuesday morning, then I will go for a run.’

Past research has found these plans to be successful, helping people to live more healthily. There’s even evidence that they are particularly beneficial to those who have had their willpower compromised by brain damage or by taxing laboratory tasks. Two new studies add to this literature, one of them cautionary, the other more hopeful.

Sue Churchill and Donna Jessop studied 323 students tasked with eating more fruit and vegetables. They found that implementation intentions helped students achieve this task over a 7-day period, but only if they scored low on a measure of ‘urgency,’ as revealed by their agreement or not with statements like, ‘When I am upset, I often act without thinking.’ The researchers said this suggests implementation intentions may not be a panacea: ‘Ironically, people who possess poor self-regulatory skills insofar as they tend to act on impulse when distressed, who are arguably most in need of assistance in achieving their goals, may benefit least from behavior change interventions based on implementation intention formation.’  . . .

“Urgency” appears to be identical to “Impulsivity,” so it is not surprising that those people will have difficulty following through on a plan, even if the “when, where and how you will perform a given activity” is specified. Impulsivity can often be reduced by changing the timeline, or other interventions that expand the scope of what is attended to in the present when responding to temptation — for instance by including a representation of consequences in a client’s images of alternative choices.

. . . That’s the cautionary news. The good news comes from a study by Barbel Knauper and her colleagues who found that using mental imagery boosted the benefit of implementation intentions for students attempting to increase their fruit consumption over seven days. Rather than merely forming an if-then plan, such as ‘If I see orange juice at lunch, then I will buy it,’ they also imagined themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible. A promising result, and the researchers expressed their surprise that no-one had thought to investigate the combination of these two strategies before.

This result comes as no surprise to anyone with even basic training in NLP. Imagining “themselves performing this act, with as much sensory detail as possible” has been a standard and essential part of rehearsing or “future-pacing” any behavioral change. And if done well, an “impulsive” person will often “impulsively” choose what has been rehearsed. (See my blog post, Programming yourself now to remember later.) This study does not report any checking for objecting parts and satisfying them before a final future-pace, so presumably their results would have been even stronger if they had done that.

Nonverbal rapport and empathy.

Research on “mirror neurons” has established a neurological basis for nonverbal mirroring of gestures and movements, the foundation for the nonverbal rapport that has been a key feature of NLP trainings since the 1970s, as well as for compassion, and “stepping into someone else’s shoes.” Recent research in this area distinguishes between neurons that only fire when someone moves accidentally, or with deliberate intent, showing that the perception of intent (which has also been a major intervention in NLP for over 30 years) has an inherent neurological basis.

Negative reframing.

Susan Clancy’s research on people who had experienced childhood sexual abuse finds that surprisingly, the vast majority of them were not traumatized by it, and that of those who were, some were not traumatized at the time, but only years later when it was reframed as a horrible experience as a result of listening to the opinions of others who presupposed that it would have life-long harmful effects. So some of what is called PTSD is not an echo of the experience itself, but a result of evaluating the experience after the fact — sometimes years later.

Synesthesias.

John Bargh’s research focuses on “unconscious mechanisms that underlie social perception, evaluation and preferences, and motivation and goal pursuit in realistic and complex social environments.” In one example, interviewers asked interviewees to hold a cup while they asked them questions. The only difference between the experimental and control groups was that the cup held either warm coffee or a cold drink. Those holding the warm coffee expressed more positive responses than those holding the cold drink. These experiments involve synesthesias — crossover effects between different sensory modalities — in this case transforming the perception of physical warmth into interpersonal warmth. Attention to synesthesias has long been a staple of NLP training — and it is also strong support for nonverbal unconscious factors in rapport, responsiveness, and change.

Self-control and submodalities (the smaller parameters in each of the five sensory modalities).

The ability of small children to exert self-control when presented with marshmallows (If they were successful in delaying, they got two marshmallows instead of one) correlated with success later in life (age 32). When the children were asked how they were able to delay, they said that either they deliberately distracted their attention from temptation by looking somewhere else, or doing something else. Some pretended that the real marshmallow was only a flat picture of a marshmallow — an explicit submodality shift that is used in a number of NLP patterns.

Summary

This is only a very small sampling of current research studies that support various aspects of NLP practice and methodology, and more appear each week. There is a lot of research that supports NLP principles, but it is not identified as such. If all these studies were collected into a review article, it would provide quite impressive support. Meanwhile, a few of us continue to explore the boundaries of what we already know and can do.

We received this email through a friend over the weekend, and have permission to send on to you. We found this report deeply touching and quite amazing in the wake of the recent tragedy there. It is a beautiful thing that has happened in Norway and so good for us all to know this is also a possible response to violence and tragedy.
—Steve and Connirae Andreas

Letter From a Woman in Norway…

“Thank you for messages of condolence and sympathy regarding the bombing in Oslo and shooting in a youth camp on a small island near Oslo. It warms to have you thinking of us.

“I have been able to reach almost all co-counselors living in Norway. They have not been so close as to be injured by the bombing and they were not present on the island during the attack. But many people here know survivors or victims or their relatives or friends. We are a small nation and youth delegations from all parts of Norway were present at the camp.

“I guess you know most of the cruelty from the news.  I will not repeat.

“But I would like to share some hopeful and deeply moving things happening here:

“The prime minister, the head of police in the municipality of the attacked island, the king, the queen, leaders of different political parties—they have all cried on national television. The leaders of the nation encourage people to hug, hold hands, be close, cry, tell their stories and listen to each other with love and respect.

“There is very little demand for revenge against the anti-Islamic offender. Instead a collective agreement has been reached to embrace the values that the offender wished to destroy by creating a more open, friendly and inclusive society. A young woman said: ‘If one person can hate this much, think of all the love we are able to show together.’

“There has not been so many people out in the streets since the celebration of the end of World War II. On Monday in my town, there were Muslims and Christians, young and old—thousands and thousands of people hugging, giving flowers to each other, putting flowers on buildings and fences. A wonderful appeal was given: ‘Tonight the streets are filled with love.’

“This atmosphere of sister and brotherhood will probably fade as society goes back to normal. But something special and precious happened these days. It showed us what is possible and there are many, many who will make an effort to have this as a permanent part of society. It will definitely have an impact on the upcoming elections. Racist statements and extreme right wing sympathies will be very unpopular.

“Myself, I can’t help smile at every person I meet. Thinking, ‘You precious person, I am so glad you are alive.’ I am proud of my people.”

Anne Helgedagsrud
Oslo, Norway

(With thanks to Gordon Davidson and John Steiner for passing this on.)

Often people congruently make a change, but it just never happens. Sometimes this is because the change wasn’t made appropriately, or because some important competing outcome wasn’t considered. But often it is simply because the change wasn’t securely programmed into a specific appropriate time and place in the future, what is called “future-pacing.” For instance, someone may sincerely decide to exercise. But if it isn’t programmed into a specific time and place, they may find themselves at the end of the day with no time left to do it. Then they may sincerely promise themselves that they will do it “tomorrow” — and then again find themselves at the end of the day not having done it.

For example, we live in the country, and our mailbox at the road is some 400 feet from the front door. Repeatedly I would drive up to the house and then realize that I had forgotten to pick up the mail. Annoyed, I would promise myself that I would notice the next day. But when I came home the next day, I would usually forget again. I was definitely motivated, but something was missing, so I decided to put what I know to work. I vividly imagined the context — being in my car as I approached the mailbox. Then I focused on the mailbox, and thought about what kind of event would definitely get my attention if it happened in the real world. Then I imagined the mailbox simultaneously turning bright pink and expanding into the size of a Volkswagen and then exploding with a loud pop — something that I found amusing, as well as attention-getting. This linked the external cue of seeing the mailbox with my internal representation of the large, pink, popping mailbox. The next few times I approached the mailbox, I became conscious of the exploding pink mailbox, and felt a small smile of enjoyment, but this gradually diminished, as my noticing the mailbox became more and more unconscious. Since then, I have never missed getting the mail.

In the mid 1980’s we posed the following question to an NLP practitioner training: “If, right now, you think of something that you want to do later, how do you program yourself, so that in fact you will do it at the appropriate time?” We gathered a variety of different responses from participants, noted the advantages and disadvantages of each, extracted the general principles involved, and summarized them into a general format for teaching others how to do this in a way that is effective and dependable. We have just resurrected the audio of doing this, and made it available as an hour and 19-minute MP3 download:

Future Pacing Audio

My wife Connirae and I visited Erickson for a week about a year before he died. At that time Erickson was very well-known, and could have charged a lot of money for these group sessions, but he only charged $40/hour—divided by the number of people visiting—which worked out to only about $4/hour per person! At that time Connirae and I had been living together for four years, but had not yet married. By way of introduction, and in hope that it might help induce Erickson to allow us to come for a visit, I had sent him a copy of my book Awareness.

When we arrived at his small meeting room, along with 6 or 8 others, my book was on the coffee table, with a pen on top. Either later that day, or perhaps the next, Erickson held up the book with the pen on top (which he could do only with great difficulty) and asked, “Is the implication clear?” I took the book and pen, and set them down separately on the table, and replied that I didn’t sign books, because I thought it was a meaningless ritual.

The next day I had the thought, “I know, I could sign Erickson’s name.” Soon after that, Erickson asked me, “And have you decided to sign the book yet?” I replied, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have,” and at the end of the day I signed the book, “Milton H. Erickson.”

At the end of the last day, Erickson was signing books for people in his small office, when a woman picked up my book, opened the cover, and said with surprise, “You signed Erickson’s name!” Erickson raised his head from his book signing, and looked up at me silently with one of the strangest expressions I have ever seen, and which I have never found words to adequately describe. The closest I can come to a description is that it was a sort of mixture of surprise, outrage, and demand.

Though I have no solid proof, I’m quite sure that Erickson somehow arranged for the woman to pick up the book and read the inscription, and that he had planned the look that he gave me. After all that orchestrated hard work, I decided to give in; I wrote “For” before his name, and followed it with “with great respect,” and then signed my name, which at that time was John O. Stevens.

At some point in the week, Erickson said something that stuck in my mind like a burr under a saddle blanket: “Marry an ugly woman, and she’ll always be grateful.” My thought at the time was, “What a stupid, sexist thing to say! Why on earth would he say something like that? I’m sure that isn’t true.” Was this simply a probe, so that he could notice how each of us in the group reacted? I don’t know if he was directing that comment to me; I only know that I still recall it very vividly, and Connirae didn’t remember it at all, so it wasn’t about her. Perhaps it was just a way to deliver an embedded command to “marry a woman,” while distracting my conscious mind with the sexism. Unmarried couples who went to see Erickson often found themselves married soon after.

Twenty years later, when I understood verbal implication better, I realized there was also an implied message, “Marry a beautiful woman, and she won’t always be grateful.” Most people think Connirae is quite beautiful—even now, over thirty-five years later. So the message may have been alerting me to be realistic; no member of a couple, beautiful or not, is always going to be grateful. Members of a couple often have unrealistic expectations about each other, and often the main theme is that the partner will provide what each feels to be missing in themselves. At that time, I certainly wasn’t as grateful as I could have been, and even now it is not a strong point. I’ll probably never know; I think that even those who spent years with Erickson, or who have studied his work extensively, understand only a very small fraction of what he did.

At another point, Erickson posed a question to us all: “Can you tell when someone is hypnotized?” Somehow I knew this was a trick question, so I kept my mouth firmly shut. Others offered a number of criteria. “Well there is “Spiegel’s sign” where the eyeballs tend to rotate upward.” “Their movements tend to be slower and more jerky.” “As someone goes into trance, first their face often becomes asymmetrical, and later more symmetrical,” etc. Erickson listened with total attention to each of these answers. Then when the flow of responses gradually slowed and stopped, he turned to a woman several seats to his right in the circle and said, “Where are we, Mary?” She responded in a high-pitched voice that might have belonged to a child of 5 or so, “Up in the apple tree.” Then Erickson said, “And what’s my name?” and she answered in the same sing-song childlike voice, “Tom-my.”

We had all understood Erickson’s question as intellectual and theoretical, but what he was really asking was, “Can you tell when someone is hypnotized—right here and now.” Erickson wanted us all to pay more attention to what was happening in the moment, and he didn’t mind rubbing our noses in our ignorance in order to make the point.

During the week there were different people on different days; some would come in for only a day or two, and others would come in on other days. One morning, a young woman appeared and sat a few seats to Erickson’s left. She was dressed from head to toe in purple—from the bow in her hair to her shoes and stockings. It was an unusual outfit, but purple was the only color that Erickson could see well. It didn’t take great observational skills to conclude that that this woman was a “people pleaser” who could use more self-direction.

About half-way through the morning, Erickson mentioned that because of having polio twice, he was almost completely color-blind, but sometimes he could distinguish colors based on faint cues. Then he turned to the person on his right and said, “For instance, I think that your plaid shirt is mostly made up of different shades of light yellow and brown, except for one thin line of dark red.” Then he proceeded to describe, with perfect accuracy, the colors in the clothing of the next person in the circle. He slowly worked his way around the room, never making a single mistake in naming the colors.

This took him a while, and he didn’t seem to be in any rush about it. When he finally got to the woman in purple, he paused for a moment, and looking bewildered said, “But I have no idea what color your dress is.” You have never seen anyone go into such a profound confusion state as she did, and she was literally speechless. Erickson immediately followed with, “Would you please tell me?” This request for her to speak while she was already so confused and unable to talk compounded her confusion exponentially. Erickson then offered her some suggestions that invited her to pay more attention to her own needs, rather than looking outside herself to others for approval.

This is an example of how Erickson often planned far ahead in his interventions, so that he could carefully frame and amplify his message to make it really impactful. If Erickson had simply commented on the woman’s dress at the beginning of the session, it would have had only a tiny fraction of the impact that it had after all the build-up of talking about being color-blind, and then naming colors correctly all around the circle.

At that point in my evolution, I usually couldn’t follow what Erickson was doing. Periodically Erickson would do something like the examples above, but even then I often had no idea how he had achieved it, so most of the time I was bored, and wasn’t interested in returning to see Erickson again. However, Connirae went back a few months later to spend another week with Erickson, and the following is her description of her experience during that week, which I’ve excerpted from her account from the Core Transformation official website.

“At the time of my second visit to Dr. Erickson, I was dealing with a very difficult personal issue regarding my relationship with Steve, and wasn’t sure if our relationship would work out. My friend who had organized the week with Erickson encouraged me to ask Dr. Erickson for a private session, since he had helped her with a similar couples issue during the past year. I felt more than a bit intimidated by the famous Dr. Erickson, but on the first day we were there, when I said ‘Hello’ and introduced myself, I got my courage up and asked him if he would work with me privately. He said ‘Yes,’ smiling and nodding his head, but then he turned away without anything further—no explanation about how to set up an appointment, no next step. I was confused.

“Everyone was getting seated, and Erickson was definitely ‘in charge,’ so I didn’t ask any questions, but waited for him to let me know when this private session would happen. During the morning group session, at some point Erickson mentioned offhand and with a big smile, that his license had expired, so he could no longer work with anyone privately.

“Now I was really confused! Was he really going to work with me, then? Maybe he had meant he would use me as a demonstration person in the small group. This thought gave me a little reassurance, so every time he demonstrated a trance technique with someone, I did my best to be responsive. I noticed that he sometimes demonstrated with the person sitting next to him in the small circle. So the next day I made sure I sat in that place, but he didn’t work with me. The next day, when I sat farther away, he finally did use me as a demonstration person, but nothing much happened. Once more I was disappointed. Each day I would get my hopes up, and each day I was disappointed.

“Finally, on the last day, I gave up. I resigned myself to not getting anything for myself personally, so I thought I may as well just learn as much as I could about what he was doing with others during this last session. Instead of trancing out, I stayed alert and watched for the nonverbal marking out of messages, etc., that Erickson was doing with everyone else.

About an hour or more into the morning, as I sat there, all of a sudden I felt like I was a different person—that’s the only way I know how to describe it. Within a matter of seconds, I suddenly felt like I had never felt before. I still don’t know how to put it into words, but looking back on it I felt a sense of complete well-being. Plus I had a kind of wordless inner knowing that whatever happened, I would be OK—things would be fine no matter what. I had never felt that way before, in such a complete way. I assumed the man sitting on the other side of the circle in the purple pajamas had something to do with this, but I sure didn’t have any idea how.

“At this moment, Erickson looked straight at me and said in his slow, rhythmic voice, ‘And your unconscious mind has just made an important decision.’ (OK, so that’s pretty clear—he not only had something to do with this, he knew exactly when it happened!) ‘And you don’t know what it is,’ which is exactly what I was thinking. I thought about the major issue that I had been in such turmoil about, and realized I still didn’t have a clue what I would do, or how I would solve the situation. But somehow I knew, on a very visceral level, that things would be fine. More than fine really—it was a kind of deep peace with whatever could happen.

“Then the thought went through my mind, ‘I’m not sure if I would have anything to work with him about—maybe I don’t need a private session now.’

“And that was the moment Erickson asked, ‘And do you still feel a need to work with me privately?’

“I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’ I was still very puzzled. I didn’t know what had happened, and I had no idea what I was going to do about my life situation. Yet I had a knowing that it was handled.

“Over the next several weeks, this feeling of well-being and clarity stayed with me very strongly. What I needed to do gradually came to me over the next several days, without any conscious thinking or planning. My experience was that it sort of ‘bubbled up’ without my doing anything. When I was clear what I needed to do, I carried it out in a way that felt more congruent than I can remember ever having felt before. Even though it was something difficult, I felt I could act from a place of love and respect, and without an attachment to what would happen as a result.”**

This is yet another example of Erickson’s planning, this time over a period of five days. We both assume that he was noticing how Connirae was responding to the different topics brought up during that time, to understand the structure of what was going on for her. Connirae and I both think it is no accident that the main intervention/change happened after she had “given up hoping.” So Erickson did work with Connirae privately after all; it was so private that even her conscious mind wasn’t invited to the session!

Within the next year we were married, I had changed my name to Steve Andreas, and Connirae was pregnant with our first child—something that happened to quite a number of couples soon after they went to see Erickson. *

Notes of Interest:

* It is worth noting that not all couples who went to see Erickson ended up with this scenario of marriage and family. A much smaller, yet not insignificant number, went away with a clarity that they needed to split up and go their separate ways. Our assumption is that Erickson had a way of tuning in to the particular couple’s relationship and compatibility.

** Connirae says,

“This experience with Dr. Erickson is what is started me on a search for what I later called the “Core Transformation Process.” The deep feeling of well-being I had then is the same as a “Core State”—what we come to fairly easily through CT—but I was very disappointed when the deep well-being I had for a few weeks began to fade after that, and determined to find some way to experience that as an ongoing basis of living.”

Core Transformation will be offered this fall, Sept 23-25, 2001, in Boulder, Colorado with Tamara Andreas. Click here for details!

Introduction by Connirae Andreas

The video we posted several weeks ago on Provocative Change Works (PCW) definitely stirred up some controversy. Some found the bits we shared offensive (thank you for emailing us to let us know), some were intrigued, and some have become inspired. Sometimes these were all the same person.

PCW is not intended to be a replacement for other therapeutic skills, but an additional choice. Many therapists who have used it have found that it freed themselves up to work in a much more spontaneous way. And like all such skills, it’s essential to be sensitive to the client’s response to using it; if it’s not working, try something else.

Today we’re sharing how someone was inspired by the videos to use this approach in parenting. Duff McDuffee, who runs our office at Real People Press, talks about how he used PCW….

After recently watching some videos of Nick Kemp’s unusual and entertaining Provocative Change Works, I decided to try out this style of communicating with the teenager in our household, my partner’s son.

Recently I was driving myself, my lady, and her son somewhere when he mentioned something about peer pressure. In an exaggerated and playful tone of voice, I said how important it is to always do whatever anybody wants you to, especially if it is harmful and destructive and you don’t really want to do it!

From the tone of my voice and the smile on my face it was clear I was joking, and he obviously understood this. He started to argue playfully with me, saying “That’s not what you should do.” I continued to push the joke further and said things like, “If your friends give you some poison to drink, you have to drink it, otherwise they’ll make fun of you! ‘Come on, don’t be a loser, drink this poison already. You only live once!’ ” He said things like, “No way, I’m not drinking poison! I’m doing what I want to do.” Only afterwards did I realize how elegant this method is for teaching a teenager about peer pressure.

Most teenagers are naturally a bit rebellious, even if they are good kids like my lady’s son. They resent being lectured to about things like peer pressure and drug use, and saying “Don’t do drugs” is more likely to elicit eye rolls, if not outright use of drugs as a form of rebellion, rather than abstention and standing up to peer pressure. By arguing that the teenager should take poison or something else harmful that they don’t want, it utilizes that teenage rebelliousness for a life-enhancing outcome. By using “poison” as the example, it implicitly emphasizes the harm of drug use, but without actually saying it. Most kids are aware of the potential danger, but don’t see it when peers emphasize how “cool” it is.

By using a provocative approach, the kid argues against a hypothetical peer while also getting to feel rebellious towards the parent. I think this may have been particularly effective because I am in a step-parenting role and thus don’t have any real authority to set limits or lecture about things anyhow, so a more direct way of speaking would have been more likely to elicit resistance.

And by arguing against me playfully pressuring him to drink poison, he was in that moment practicing behavioral skills for resisting peer pressure. We were also having fun together, which is very different than most people’s childhood experiences of being lectured about drugs by their parents!

Ultimately kids will make their own choices of course, but it helps to be able to give them some skills, and sometimes these little tricks can make a big difference in communicating those skills to kids.

If you’re interested in learning this approach, consider our upcoming training with Nick Kemp. Duff’s example is just one way of using the PCW approach—there are many more which Nick will be artfully demonstrating and we will all explore in exercises. The PCW methods are especially useful when the other person—and/or we ourselves—are trapped in one way of thinking about things. The more “stuckness” there is, the more PCW can have a useful effect.

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one we have.”
–Emile Chartier.

If you haven’t got around to spring cleaning yet, this might be for you:
Cleaning Out Clutter DVD - Steve Andreas

Last December I did two live client demonstrations at the Milton Erickson Foundation Brief Therapy Conference. Before the videotaping began, I asked for a volunteer from the audience without asking them what they wanted to work on, and I also asked for a second volunteer in case there was time after working with the first one. To my surprise, they both wanted to work on clutter in their lives, and there was time for both of them. You can see how two people with a problem bearing the same name can have somewhat different structure, requiring different interventions.

Among the methods demonstrated are: eliciting the internal sequence of events that creates the problem, determining where it begins to “go wrong,” changing the sequence to a more useful one, eliciting and utilizing values in the new sequence, increasing motivation by adding and intensifying submodalities, and rehearsing and testing the new sequence to verify that it works well, and adjusting it accordingly. Jeff Zeig, the conference organizer, tells me that clutter is a common issue that people bring to a counseling or coaching session.

Here is a short excerpt from the first client on the DVD:

http://youtu.be/wpuFGbUq6fU

Get the Clearing Out Clutter DVD with Steve Andreas here.

Some time ago I wrote an article on my blog about how to clear out clutter, which might also be of interest: Clearing Out Clutter Article.

We are looking for people who are interested in having a free NLP session as part of our Advanced Mastery Training (in Boulder, CO, August 3-6, 2011). While we prefer people who do not already have NLP background, we’ll consider someone with a small to moderate amount of background, who may fit the other criteria below.

Who should contact us?

We’re seeking people with life issues that will fit with the special knowledge and strengths of our trainer team, and what we will be teaching. The following issues are what we most want to work with:

1. Depression (major or minor). Richard Bolstad has considerable experience working with overcoming depression and will be demonstrating how he begins the change process with someone.

2. Someone who has been through major trauma (natural disaster, war, etc.), and experiences PTSD or other “leftovers” from that. (This will be Richard B., who has extensive experience with this.)

3. Anger, jealousy, or anxiety. These are some of Nick Kemp’s specialties. He will be demonstrating how he works with this, often combining his Provocative Change Works approach with very brief hypnotic inductions, and/or some rapid change protocols.

4. Anything else. If you know someone who has a significant life issue, and they want to do something about it, have them contact us. Steve Andreas will be doing at least one demonstration and is open to a wide range of personal issues & goals.

If you, or someone you know, are interested in this opportunity, please contact Mark or Connirae at: info [at] andreasnlptrainings.com. We’ll be happy to answer any questions, and send you a brief intake form if you are interested.

What results can you expect?

NLP is known for its quick results, based on its ability to quickly identify and work with the structure of what is going on, rather than just the content. With some issues (and some people), it is possible to get complete results in one session. (We have many examples of quick changes with NLP recorded on video available from Real People Press.) However, with some issues (such as major depression), while we always go for as much change as possible beginning in the first session, typically getting the full results desired is a process that happens through a series of sessions over a period of time. Be prepared to have an interesting and useful exploration, and in addition most people experience at least the beginning of a significant shift in the desired direction.

Recording:

The sessions will be video recorded, because we will be modeling how the significant “change moments” take place, as part of this training. However, this will be an “in-house” recording; we are not planning to professionally record for the purpose of making products available to the public.

To learn more about the three NLP Master Trainers who will be conducting these free NLP sessions, visit our website: http://www.andreasnlptrainings.com/advanced-mastery-training. You can read their bios and follow links to watch them demonstrate online.

“In Heaven, they tell jokes; In Hell they explain them.” (Argentinian proverb)

For most of us, when we have a “problem,” we may get intently serious about it, and may resent anyone who says anything humorous about it. I’ve watched a lot of therapy sessions by now, with people of many orientations. What I notice is that most therapy, and most therapists are VERY serious in their sessions. (First people get serious, then they get dead serious, and then they just get dead.)

However, Virginia Satir, one of the greatest therapists who ever lived, used a LOT of humor in her sessions. Besides being enjoyable, the mental events involved in humor may be exactly what we need in order to see our limitation in a different way, and begin to take steps to resolve it. Let’s explore this further.

In every joke or cartoon, there is a “set-up” in which an ordinary and easily understood narrative is created, along with a certain meaning. Then the “punch line” completely changes this, and our response is to smile or laugh as we embrace a new — and usually unexpected — meaning.

Here is my current favorite example:
“What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?”

Most of us immediately begin to consider the possible accolades, and which we’d most like to have said of us: “He was a great guy, she was so generous and kind, he was sensitive and empathic, she contributed to the neighborhood, etc.”

So the answer takes us by surprise: “Look! He’s moving!”

What makes this joke funny is that we begin with the assumption that we have actually died. But when we hear the punch line, our images, understanding, and meaning change completely; the implication of “moving” means that you are alive, replacing the presupposition that you are dead.

Every joke, and every other kind of humor involves some kind of shift in perspective that changes your images; when your images change, often your understandings and meanings also change. This is exactly the kind of change that occurs when someone resolves a problem, whether it is a personal one, or one in science or art.

Often therapists talk about the usefulness of “reframing” in changing someone’s understanding, as if it were a single process. In fact, there are at least 17 distinctly different processes that have been described using the word “reframing.” (1)

What is really interesting is that these 17+ processes are exactly the same processes that occur in both humor and creative inspiration and discovery. In short:

Reframing = Humor = Creativity

We also know a little about what goes on neurologically when this process occurs. It has been known for some time that left frontal lobe damage often results in depression (and very little laughter). Right frontal lobe damage often results in either an inability to appreciate humor, or in humor that is thought to be strange or inappropriate by normal people. Evidently humor requires — and activates — both frontal lobes functioning together simultaneously. (If you want to explore this further, google “frontal lobe damage and depression” (or humor) and you can find plenty to read about this.)

A fascinating series of experiments sheds light on how humor affects the brain’s functioning. When horizontal moving lines are presented to the left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere), and vertical moving lines are presented to the right visual field (processed by the left hemisphere) subjects report seeing either vertical stripes or horizontal stripes, but only very rarely both (a “crosshatch” of intersecting lines). This is called “binocular rivalry” — meaning only one image makes it to our awareness at a time, and the other is not consciously noticed. The image we see tends to switch back and forth between the two hemispheres roughly twice per second. So we go back and forth between seeing the vertical lines and the horizontal ones. Interestingly, researchers in Australia have found that people with bipolar disorder took up to 10 times longer than normal people to switch from one hemisphere to the other. (2)

As this lab was carrying out research with a subject, someone cracked a joke, and the subject saw a crosshatch that persisted for some time. Following up on this surprise discovery, they found that laughing integrates the functioning of the two hemispheres, eliminating binocular rivalry for up to half an hour. (3)

Given the foregoing, it should come as no surprise that a recent article from the New York Times reports that humor results in significantly greater creative problem-solving. (4)

In Provocative Change Works, humor — about what the client thinks is very serious — is a major aspect of the method, stimulating both our own brain and the person we are talking to, to think in different ways, providing a variety of different exits on the “one track mind” problem superhighway.

So if you want to use both hemispheres of your brain to solve a problem, ask someone else to tell you some good jokes, think of several of your own favorites, or just put yourself back into a time when you were helpless with laughter. Get a good laugh going to activate and balance your hemispheres, and then think about the “problem.” Reboot your laughter at least every 20 minutes or so—and more often if you really want to have a good time.

References

(1) For a free handout describing these reframing patterns in summary form, and a short video example, check out Using Reframing Patterns Recursively. For more in-depth learning and examples of the different patterns of refaming, read my book Six Blind Elephants, which is all about how we create meaning using these patterns of thinking.

(2) http://www.uq.edu.au/nuq/jack/procroysoc.html

(3) http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Pettigrew_01.html

(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07brain.html?_r=2&ref=science

Have a few laughs right now! Click to watch this funny 6+ min excerpt of Nick Kemp doing an interview at last summer’s AMT.

When someone says emphatically, “Never again!” or “That’s it!” or “I’ve had it!” (usually accompanied by some kind of definitive slicing hand gesture) it indicates that they have reached a threshold, and are ready to take action to make a change in their lives. However, they may reach this threshold, take action, and then continue in the same habit, relationship, or other behavior. But after doing this repeatedly a certain number of times, they may go over the threshold, which is very different than reaching it. After that, the habit, relationship, or other behavior becomes “A thing of the past,” and “There is no turning back.”

This pattern, which we described in chapter 6 of Change Your Mind—and Keep the Change can be used to help someone congruently make a significant change in their lives when other patterns have not been successful. It was modeled by Richard Bandler in the early 1980s, and this demonstration by Connirae and Steve Andreas was conducted in a Master Practitioner Training in late 1986. The technical quality is typical of recordings made at that time, but the content is excellent. Here is a small excerpt from the beginning of the program:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_BtwcjS5q4

Purchase the full video here
on DVD or digital download:

“The Last Straw” Threshold Pattern - NLP Video

A friend of mine who has Lyme disease wrote me recently, saying:

“So good to hear from you. I’ve thought of calling to ask if you have any special ideas or resources for dealing with the Lyme beast.”

I answered her as follows (edited):

A. Notice the image in your mind as you think of the word “beast.” Calling Lyme a “beast” probably makes it appear larger and more powerful than it really is, and probably more powerful than you are. If you were battling the beast that you see in your mind, would you win or lose?

What happens in your experience when you use some other word (and image) to describe Lyme disease? It is actually caused by very tiny little bacteria (with a really dorky name, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto!) and it is only by a lot of them working together and ganging up on you that they can make your body sick. Using a different word (and image) for these little critters is likely to result in a more positive attitude.

Then you could go on to contemplate how your body could confuse these little bacteria, and sow dissension among them, so they can’t work together. When they are disorganized, your immune system can pick them off one by one. Do you know the story of Sergeant York, in WWI?

B. There is Connirae’s natural healing process in our book, Heart of the Mind chapter 20: “Engaging Your Body’s Natural Ability to Heal.” This process relies on the submodality codings that you already use to represent healing naturally, engaging the resources of your unconscious mind directly. This can be much more effective than a conscious “positive attitude.”

C. Here is another thing to try. I have not tested it, nor verified it, but it is something that I do naturally. It can change your outlook, and I’m very sure it can’t hurt.

1. First think of, and make a long written list of, all the sicknesses, injuries, and ailments of all kinds that you have recovered from successfully over the years, from little scrapes to potentially life-threatening ones.

2. Make a brief movie of each item on your list, from its onset, through healing and resolution. Then choose a still image from the movie to serve as an icon for the whole movie, just as an icon on a computer gives you easy access to the information that appears when you click on it.

3. Put all those icons into a large, close, colorful, simultaneous collage directly in front of you, so that when you focus on an icon, the movie plays. As you allow your eye to wander across the collage, each icon can burst into the brief movie of healing that it represents. This creates an experience and reminder of how effective your body is at healing itself from all sorts of illnesses and injuries.

OR

Put all the individual movies together into a long sequential movie that loops back at the end to the beginning, and start it playing endlessly in the back of your mind, where it won’t interfere with whatever else you are doing during the day.

OR

Put these movies together in any other way that is natural for you, in order to create a comprehensive database of all the times that you your body has successfully healed, and recovered from, an illness or injury.

Whether or not either of these options has any direct effect on the illness itself, at the very least it is likely to alter your state for the better, and that will have an indirect positive effect on your health. Feeling better is a benefit in itself, even if it doesn’t directly affect the disease, and there is pretty good research that your feelings affect the functioning of your immune system and overall health and resilience.

Although the last option (C) is something that I have personally done for years (At 75, I am healthy and not taking any medications—but of course I could just be lucky—one third of the people my age in the US are already dead.), I haven’t tested it thoroughly by teaching it to others, to find out how well it works for them. If you use it, I would appreciate your letting me know what you experience, and/or any questions you might have.

Virginia Satir was one of the pioneers of family therapy, and probably the greatest family therapist who ever lived. She was also a major source of NLP patterns and distinctions. In 1985 she presented a morning and afternoon keynote address to the National Association for NLP in Denver, Colorado. At the end of her afternoon talk, a man asked for help in applying her approach to his mental health work in a rural community, where he was encountering strong opposition from conservatives. In response, Virginia enacted a series of brief role-plays in which she demonstrated a wide variety of ways that he could respond in this situation.

Many people think that Satir had only one approach to working with people, but in these two videos we are treated to a rare display of Virginia’s flexibility, and her willingness to do anything to evoke a powerful response, knowing that all responses can be utilized as a way to connect with someone and initiate a process of change. This is based on a key principle of Virginia’s:

“Anybody on the outside of me — let’s put it like that — is someone whom I can respond to. They are never the definers of me. They can only be the definers of me if I have handed over my charge of myself to them. And you can do that in many ways. ‘How could I think differently from somebody?” “They will be mad if I don’t.’ ‘They will be hurt if I don’t.’ ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ you know. Can you fill in the ‘blah blah’s’? OK. All right.”

A verbatim transcript of these Virginia Satir videos can be found at the following link:
Virginia Satir Video Transcript

To order videos (DVD or download) of both of Virginia’s keynote talks—3 delightful hours with one of the finest therapists the world has ever known—click here:

Virginia Satir Video

We thought about it for years, living in the lowlands along the creek, where the water table is close to the surface. We thought of adding fish, and maybe ice skating in the winter if we dug it large enough.

One year a backhoe was in the neighborhood, so we dug a small test hole. It quickly filled with water, and we watched the water level change through the year—lowest in fall and winter when the creek dwindled, but always only a few feet below the surface.

And then we did it; a backhoe to dig, and a loader to move. Working through most of a summer day, down through dirt, sand, gravel and boulders, down to red shale bedrock, some six feet below, the hole gradually grew and quickly filled with clear water. A huge wound in the earth, all harsh ragged edges of raw earth, with broken tree roots…. We wondered if it had been such a good idea after all.

And then healing began; the edges softening and rounding with rain, grass and weeds slowly thickening, crawling down to the water’s edge. The fish we added didn’t last long, and changes in water level flooded or stranded the ice—no good for skating…and it was too small for that anyway.

But there were so many things we didn’t think of….

The reflection, mirroring in stillness the grassy meadow in the side valley, the dark green pines of the far ridge—like the ancient pine at the valley’s mouth silhouetted now against the sky. And the sky’s many changing moods: the soft pink or yellow of early morning, held by the pines in a brief soft alpenglow, the blue of day, sometimes with clouds or early morning fog, or darkening with rain and thunder, the orange of evening sunsets, and more, all resting gently on the willing surface.

Mirroring too, the seasons; the lush green of springtime fading to tan in summer and fall, the stark white of winter. The clear image shuddering in a breeze, or shattering entirely in a stronger gust, transformed into overlapping silver circles in the rain, congealing to translucency with falling snowflakes or the first hard freeze.

Dotted with fallen golden cottonwood leaves in autumn, briefly floating, sinking slowly to enrich the bottom, nourishing the cattails growing in the shallows, seeds brought in on the feet and feathers of the travelers, thickening over the years to provide a home for nesting redwing blackbirds.

Occasionally a great blue heron, statue still, intently searching the depths, like a graying philosopher pondering the meaning of it all, leaving with slow ponderous wing strokes, gradually gaining altitude. And the dragonflies—how to describe their fragile beauty, the way they dart back and forth above the water.

And the ducks!—and later geese—announcing themselves with gack-gack and gonk-gonk, wings outspread in between the trees to land, slicing the surface in a long narrow arrowhead of water, gliding silently, ducking for food. They come in March, an early whisper of the coming spring, chasing each other in short bursts of speed along the water, courting and mating.

We tossed in some water lily seedpods, gathered on a hike, not knowing how to plant them, they rooted in the deeper water. In the early spring the dark green leaves, still curled, begin to rise from the depths—another whisper of spring. Like thoughts we don’t yet know how to think, breaking the surface like anchored sailboats, then spreading and flattening on the surface. Later, the flowers, golden globes edged with green, rising above the water, opening to reveal more yellow, ringed with sooty mascara, relaxing to the water’s surface.

All this beauty, and more, we never dreamed of….

I like to think that human beings were created with the same lack of foresight.

Frank Farrelly’s Provocative Therapy is one of the major approaches that influenced Bandler and Grinder in the early development of NLP. Nick Kemp has modeled what Frank does, and then added some hypnosis and NLP to it to develop what he calls Provocative Change Works™, a unique method for assisting people in making the changes they want in life. In most therapy, the therapist tries to help the client reach their outcome. All the parts of the person that don’t want that outcome are often ignored, and sabotage the efforts of both client and therapist. One of the core patterns in PCW™ is to stand this on its head: the therapist allies themselves with the advantages of the problem, provoking the client to pursue their outcome even more actively and strongly.

Most clients think of their problem in only one way, one that isn’t useful. In a PCW™ session, the problem is linked with a huge number of different, and often humorous or outrageous experiences. The old way of thinking about the problem becomes embedded in a sea of these new, often outrageous points of view, and the client can never see their problem in the same way again.

This new clip which Nick has just made available on YouTube—intended to be educational in itself—is long enough for you to experience some of the many specific patterns Nick demonstrates and teaches. Despite the unconventional approach, and the seemingly effortless conversational manner, there is a real precision to this work, which results in accelerated client change. If you want more, there is a part 2 and part 3 showing more of Nick’s interview with this same man. On the last clip you’ll hear the man’s response to the interview. Here is the link to part 1 of the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fGjikWM3Ro

Nick is one of the few NLP Trainers who has a full private practice, seeing many clients with a wide range of different problems and limitations. Nick knows from experience what actually works in effective client sessions, and he has a very high rate of success with people over time.

The only way to really understand any method is to experience what it is like on the receiving end. During the AMT training last summer, Nick introduced us to PCW exercises that gave us first-hand experience of how each of the separate patterns in this method can easily shift our own experience. When done in the style Nick teaches, it feels friendly, and makes what “seemed to be” a problem feel lighter at the least, and sometimes change completely.

Nick Kemp’s Provocative Change Works ™  training in Boulder, July 30th-August 2nd 2011, will radically expand your natural ability to bring humor into your changework sessions—and also into your life. For a lively three days where you get the opportunity to practice great skills and have a lot of fun while doing so! Nick will also be demonstrating this PCW approach working with members of the public during the AMT training that directly follows this 3-day event.

What people are saying:

“You are totally disarming and beyond formalisation. There is ease and naturalness about you and you make people relax really quickly. You got the power, man.”

~Frank Farrelly
Creator of Provocative Therapy

“I’ve watched the work of Fritz Perls, Anna Freud, Carl Rogers, Moshe Feldenkrais, Alexander Lowen, and a few more of the ‘names’ in the psychotherapy field. Your clinical work surpasses some of them now, at a comparatively young age. Given your passion for clinical learning, love of people and creative spirit, I suspect I’ll be dropping your name onto that list of recognized ‘names’ in the psychotherapy field one day.”

~Frank Bourke Ph.D
Executive Director of the NLP Research and Recognition Project, former lecturer Cornell University and researcher London University

“I attended Nick’s workshop in San Francisco and thoroughly enjoyed it. I learned a lot from Nick about other ways to help my clients, and even more importantly I realized that Nick is a comic genius!”

~Shelle Rose Charvet
Author of The Customer is Bothering Me and Words That Change Minds

Get a $100 discount if you register before April 30 for Provocative Change Works™.

…or get a $200 discount if you register for both Provocative Change Works™ AND the Advanced Mastery Training (7 consecutive days of Advanced NLP Training).

Open to: Everyone with NLP Practitioner Training or equivalent.

For more info and to register, click here to go to http://andreasnlptrainings.com

Someone I’ve enjoyed learning from over a number of years is Richard Bolstad, one of the most thorough and competent therapists & trainers in NLP. He is one of the very few who is constantly developing new distinctions in understanding and practice, as well as congruently living what he teaches. His extensive background as a trained nurse, student of Asian martial arts, and his cross-cultural experience with Anglo/Maori relations in New Zealand, and Anglo/Japanese relations from his teaching in Japan, provide a rich and wise background for his work.

I’d like to share with you some you free online clips of his teaching I think you’ll enjoy watching. (Most of these were recorded in Poland. Richard’s teaching is all in English, so just wait a bit while the translator translates into Polish.)

How the common practice of using war metaphors in arguments and negotiation gets in the way of reaching a solution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKYGsnjOJWg

A short piece on the neurology of synesthesia and metaphor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWiv7YzgSyo

A message of hope about international conflict resolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EPX8xmYsE0

A redefinition of success, in a response to a question about ethics and ecology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xQW6GoojkY

Because Richard is such an outstanding and effective therapist and trainer, we have invited him to participate in the 2011 Advanced Mastery Training in August.

Richard will join Nick Kemp and myself in demonstrating with naive clients, followed by a review of what he noticed, his internal process in responding to the client, his understanding of the structure of their problem, how he selecting and delivered interventions, and including responding to questions and observations from training participants. Join us for this unique one-of-a-kind training:

Richard Bolstad at the 2011 Advanced Mastery Training in August

Click the video below to get a sense of what you might get out of the Advanced Mastery Training, and what it can do to enrich your life and your practice of NLP:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgNoZ61U148

Listen to 8 participants from last year’s training describing their experience (5 mins total).

If you’re already an NLP Practitioner, the Advanced Mastery Training is a unique and valuable way to deepen your NLP skills with 3 International Trainers all in the room at the same time!

This summer… featuring international trainers, Richard Bolstad, Nick Kemp, Steve Andreas

Advanced Mastery 2011—This Summer in Two Segments
Join us for one training, or join us for both. Your choice.

Provocative Change Works

Nick Kemp
July 31-August 2, 2011

Come gain incredible flexibility and effectiveness in your communication with others, in this fun, outrageous, easy-to-learn format. You’ll discover an incredible thing: that no topic or response need be taboo when said with “a twinkle in the eye and affection in the heart.”

Last year’s participants asked for more opportunity to learn with Nick Kemp, so this year we’re providing this. A special opportunity to expand your range of choices as part of this advanced NLP learning community

Click Here for more information…
Prerequisite: NLP Practitioner or equivalent

Advanced Mastery Training 2011: Client Session Focus

Richard Bolstad, Steve Andreas, Nick Kemp
August 3-6, 2011

How often have you wondered what one of the NLP experts would do with one of your clients?

Join us in this rare opportunity to observe first-hand how these experienced and skilled NLP Master Trainers conduct client sessions with people who have no NLP background. Then “get inside the head” of each trainer in the “post-session” modeling, where you can ask your questions about why the trainer did X, etc. Also included will be teaching segments of new material, and/or impromptu exercises based on the route an interesting client session took. (to help you integrate patterns that emerge from a particularly interesting session.) The modeling holds rich possibilities given the presence of 3 master trainers plus a room full of experienced NLP learners… We look forward to the generativity that unfolds. Our past participants tell us they experience tremendous benefit from observing these client sessions and have asked for this special “Client Session Focus” that we are having this year.

Click here for more information.

While this training is of special interest to coaches of all types (therapists, mediators, managers, parents, etc.), our participants also include those primarily using this learning for their own personal development.

Prerequisite: NLP Practitioner or equivalent

Attend Both Trainings! 7 Days of Learning

July 31-Aug 6, 3011
Save $200 when you register now (or before April 30)

Prerequisite: NLP Practitioner Training or equivalent (Ericksonian Hypnosis, etc.)

Register for both by clicking here.

Introduction by Steve Andreas

Below is a verbatim excerpt from Danie Beaulieu’s “Living Metaphor” video (recorded at the 2010 Advanced Mastery Training in Boulder Colorado.)

Danie is a master at utilizing simple props for profound effect. Here she tells how she used a bag of smelly chicken bones to gain rapport with a young boy who had been totally mute for six months, in order to make it possible to do Eye Movement Integration to heal his PTSD.

Danie’s first language is French, and she uses eloquent body language to communicate her stories, which you can see on the DVD itself. But even in written form I think you will find this account touching and inspiring.

---

I saw a young boy, he was 9, and he lost his brother. There were only two in the family. The brother was 11, and he was 9—so, his big brother. And right in front of their house, there were all these big barrels. And according to the police, they weighed 5,000 pounds each. And so they’re heavy—big ones—and you have three layers of those. And the kids, they would just climb on those, you know, 5,000 pounds. And they would jump on the barrels, and they would enjoy it. And these barrels have been there for years.

But it’s May, the snow has melted, the ground has moved, and two barrels opened. The 11-year-old slipped between (she gestures to show the barrels separating and then moving together) and of course he died. But the body was mutilated, and under the eyes of his 9-year-old brother. So as a result of that, the 9-year-old, he went mute completely, and he didn’t talk.

So when I saw him, it was May, June, July—close to six months, and he didn’t say a word. He doesn’t cry. Even to his parents he doesn’t talk. I wanted to do the eye movement integration. But, it was an interesting thing. He always looked at the same spot all the time. So he sat in therapy, and he looked down. And you talk to him; he doesn’t answer. And he always looks—he looks down.

So my colleague [who had been this boy’s therapist] said, “Danie, I’ve seen him for four months, two or three times a week. I’ve tried all the props I could find. I went back to the Dollar Store to find some more inspiration. And I don’t know what to do any more. Do you have any ideas? Do you want to see him?”

And he was in Sherbrooke, which is about two hours from home, but I happened to be working in that area three weeks in a row. So I thought, “OK, I can have a follow-up, so I’m going to see him.” So I saw him in my hotel room. (winking and smiling) I don’t do that with everybody! (laughter) I just want to clarify that right away. But Milton Erickson was doing stuff like that, and personally, I even resigned from the Psychologist’s Association in Quebec so I can do that. Because otherwise, you cannot do that. And I want to have the freedom to do that, so I resigned.

So I was in my bedroom with this 9-year-old. I tried a few things and it didn’t work. Then, Oh, I notice that I have my garbage. I had called for some chicken for dinner. I had some clients that night, I wanted to eat something quick, so I had some chicken. Put it in the box, in the bag, and shut it. So you get—you take what you have, you know. So I took the bag, and I put it where he was looking, so he had no choice but to see it. So I said, “You notice the bag. Even if it’s shut, it still smells. It reminds me of you very much. Even if you don’t talk, you smell. It smells like you’re not happy. I’m sure when you’re at school, everybody smells you. You smell very strong, I’m telling you. When you’re home, your parents, I’m sure, they smell you. (she sticks her tongue out in a friendly disgust) And I had a surgery for smelling—for not smelling,”—which is not true of course.

When I said that “I had a surgery for not smelling and I still smell you,” he had some kind of—(Danie points to one corner of her mouth, and turns it up just a little bit in the start of a smile, indicating the boy’s response.). Oh, it’s positive! Let’s stick with the bag, let’s stick with the garbage bag!

And I said, “I’m sure when you are on your own you smell it. Don’t tell me you don’t smell it. I mean, I had that surgery and I still smell you. Do you think by leaving this bag like this, and shut, over time, it will smell more—or less? Do you have any clues? Are you thinking about it, or do you have the answer? Do you think over time, the bag will smell more?”

And the guy, the kid, the 9-year-old, has no idea what is PTSD. I mean, he has not studied the DSM-IV. But he knows about garbage bags! And he got it, you know. How much repetition would it take for you to learn French? To put it in your head, it would take a lot of repetition. So if you want to introduce new information to someone, the idea is, it is long. But if you get something that is already in there, then you just awaken it— like in this case, garbage bags. You have tons of experience with garbage bags. And he knows with all his muscles, that if you leave something that smells in a garbage bag, over time it will get worse. And it will attract rats, and it will attract bugs; he knows it. And I’m just using it to make a link with that situation.

So I’m saying, “In this case, you know, sometimes we have something that smells inside of us. And over time, if we don’t clean that up, it just gets worse, you know.” And he knows I’m telling the truth. I’m saying, “No, you can’t open it with everybody.” I don’t want him to open it with everybody. “No, you can’t open it with everybody, no. When you open it up, it will smell like crazy. (She holds her nose.) You need to open it up with somebody who had a surgery for smelling. (laughter) You know anybody?”

And I find that adding humor is good. It’s kind of telling, you know, “This too, you will digest it, and it will make you stronger.” And I fully know it and trust it. So I allow myself to make jokes like that, even if we’re talking about very important issues.

And what I did, I sat down. We were both of us staring at that damn garbage bag. No witness, hopefully. And I started to touch the big box, the chicken box, OK? I started to touch the big box. And I said, “Yeah, I think that’s the one that smells.” And when I started to touch the box, it was so fantastic—an experience I will always remember. He started having nonverbal reactions. (She sways back and forth, sniffing tears.) And I know it’s touching, literally, his experience. Using his nonverbal, ready to create the rapport. “OK, that’s the one that’s smelly. That’s the one you are afraid of; I understand.”

[To the audience] And the way we touch the bag, or don’t touch the bag, or approach the bag, was creating this trust relationship. Eventually I started to pull, inches by inches, centimeters by centimeters, to pull the bag slowly in my direction, making sure his eyes would follow. And once I was feeling some security [that the boy was OK with it], to eventually bring it on my legs.

And I was holding the bag with tenderness. Have you ever done that—hold a bag of chicken bones with tenderness? You need some practice. (laughter) I was just, you know, holding the bag with as much tenderness as I could. And he was crying, the poor baby, like crazy. And eventually, when he had calmed down, I said, “You know, I don’t think we’ll clean up the bag today, but we can start opening it up a little bit.” And I just played with the knots. Silly me! I made two knots for that bag. Just slowly, you know, trying to open it up. And when I would—you know, like metaphorically, it was perfect. He didn’t have to talk. I didn’t say much. I just stayed in there, you know, an hour and fifteen minutes, playing with the bag. Trying to open it up, and he would cry, and I would stop, and caress the damn chicken box.

And eventually, like, we didn’t open the bag. We managed to open the first knot. And I said, “Well, you are very tired. Me too. And, so we need to stop here. It’s good. You’ve done some good work, because you had the courage to start working on that bag. And it’s difficult for you.

Now, I don’t want you to go with the bag. It smells. It’s been smelling for months. I have an idea. I’m coming back next week. I could keep the bag. That would give you a little break, a week break. I don’t charge your parents for keeping the bag. (laughter) It’s included in the consultation. And then it would give you a break. And you know, I would take good care of the bag. OK, yeah, we’ll do that.”

[to the group] So, you don’t throw the damn bag. You keep it (cradling the bag) and I let him out. And you have to keep the bag. And I kept the bag, in my car. (laughter) You cannot just order new chicken a week later. It had to be this bag, open the way it is, and it had to smell more. Don’t even think of putting it in the fridge!

Comment from someone in the group: “Good thing you had the surgery!” (laughter)

Good thing I had the surgery. And so the week after, when he came in my room again, and I had the bag here, and it was smelly. For the first time, he looked at me like saying, “I think you’re crazier than I am.” And I said, “You know, I think it smells very strongly. I think we ought to do something about this, this week.” And we did eye movement integration, and he had all these pictures and these sensations, and these thoughts, “I should have died.” And he was so peaceful after that.

To watch Danie tell this story herself, along with many more creative examples of how she uses props to create healing and learning, order the Download or DVD: “Living Metaphor.”

To learn Eye Movement Integration, the method Danie used with the boy to heal his PTSD, you can order this DVD of Steve Andreas demonstrating Eye Movement Integration with a Vietnam Vet. (Includes explanatory booklet.) (LINK)

Danie is author of the book, Eye Movement Integration Therapy (Crown House, 2003). She has a second DVD, “Impact Therapy and Ericksonian Hypnosis” in which Danie demonstrates using three other props with participants at the 2008 Erickson Brief Therapy Conference.