Review of Carmen and John Grinder New Code NLP seminar For anyone who attended this seminar with the co-creator of NLP, developer of six-step reframing and his partner, Carmen, this was a wonderful learning experience. John really embodies the spirit of NLP: insatiably curious, polymathic, physically fit, strong, open open minded and a linguistic genius. His partner added even more fun and they were open enough to take on board the comments and extra questions questions people had. It was an amazing amazing experience. The learning environment environment was set up to be fun and for for implicit learning. That means we did a series of exercises in groups and pairs, but were not told the reason for this till after the exercise. John and Carmen believe that there are several urgent challenges for traditional NLP that could be addressed: 1. NLP relies on the conscious conscious mind of of the client too much: it asks asks the client to find an outcome consciously when this is the least resourceful part of the body-mind 2. It completely ignores ignores modelling (NLP (NLP Modelling) in favour of the existing NLP models (NLP Application) 3. This means that NLP itself is in danger danger of ceasing to exist as a distinctive “discipline” unless a new generation of modellers come along 4. A corollary of this is that many of the models are predominantly therapeutic when modelling can also be used for painting well 5. Practitioners are often incongruent in being able to help others others but not not themselves 6. This hiatus needs to be bridged by congruent self application application and by a return to modelling as the core of an NLP Practitioner’s activities 7. Modelling could be expanded expanded out of the therapeutic field to make itit worthwhile existing as a valid discipline e.g. modelling good parenting Carmen and John therefore developed New Code NLP, which consists of a series of exercises in which the Practitioner must participate to be able to do, use and apply the model and make make a successful intervention. intervention. This is done via a series of fun games designed to create a new independent super resource state. From this state, the Practitioner Practitioner can literally collapse collapse a spatial anchor anchor and experience his unconscious making cross-contextual generalisations. New Code NLP has the following format for all the games: 1. Anchor in space space the problem problem state (create (create full associated associated spatial anchor for problem) in first position 2. Go to third position (dissociate entirely entirely from the problem state) 3. Access the flow content-free super resource state (find necessary necessary resources inside) by playing games which balance both brain hemispheres
4. Walk back into the area of space marked out as the problem (collapse the spatial anchor). Or in the case of stalking simply approach the area of space marked out as the problem resourcefully and allow the anchor collapse to happen that way/. Sometimes a client may not wish to go all the way into that area of space and this game allow you to calibrate by physiology whether there has been a shift in state. To access the new content-free state we played games. Games included: • • •
Trampolining “Stalking” The “Alphabet Game”
Each game is designed to balance and access both brain hemispheres. One example of a game was to look up, right, down and left as a partner asked addition questions. This forces the Practitioner answering to use an unconscious strategy to calculate the sums as they has to say up, look up and answer the question. My partner, Michael, got about 95% correct even when asked tougher questions. When I did the exercise it radically altered my state to the point where I felt euphoric and in the flow. When I stepped back into the area of space marked out as my problem, I immediately saw 10 different contexts flash before my eyes in a microsecond: I saw myself excelling in each of them and it was a done deal. This not only validate how fast generalisations take place but also that the unconscious is more than capable of creating more effective behaviours and choices when we get our (conscious) mind (who we think we are) out of the way. New Code NLP is not for the faint hearted. Like 6-Step reframing and PhotoReading, you trust your unconscious and its ability to generalise resourcefully for you. It is so simple, elegant, even beautiful in theory that Though it was not explicitly mentioned during the semianr, it seems to me that the New Code NLP games are especially good for helping children access resource states for learning or feeling better about school and exams. They engage you fully, are playful and enjoyable to do. They do require the Practitioner to have played them too and have faith in the unconscious. After all, this way we are leaving the conscious mind alone and thereby not putting either of our feed forward filters on the process. Secondary Gain John was completely happy and comfortable to take questions during his “open frame” sessions and tell us very candidly what had worked for him and what had not. We discussed how there could be a regression in apparently successful interventions. In other words, with regards to the NLP Application and existing therapeutic models, in which cases would an intervention be likely to hold over time?
This was especially important for the seminar. I have had great succes working with people. But I have seen regression back to the problem state when using the following: • • •
Visual Squash Clean Anchoring TimeLine
I also noted that my most successful therapeutic work is when I use: • • •
Metaphors and Ericksonian Trance work Presuppositions 6-step Reframing
I had been edging more towards using 6-step reframing, presupposirtions and Ericksonian hypnosis in my work and John seems to feel that this heading in the right direction. After all, every problem has secondary gain to some degree. We discussed this at length in the seminar and a consensus seemed to arise. John said he is reconsidering classifying all problems in this category. So by asking the unconscious to find new ways to satisfy the positive intention of the old behaviour, we are respecting the ultimate protocol of the inner mind – to protect us and keep us safe. In fact John and Julie also use a similar stategy, which they made explicit for the first time to a group, to deal with people who are in “overwhelm.” You guide a person with you hand movements and body language into visual (looking up) away from kinaesthetic (looking down) and ask the million dollar question: What is the positive higher intention for your unconscious presenting this to you now? That one question is enough to get massive shifts for people. It is almost as if now that part of them that has been repressed is being given awareness and the need behind it validated, it is relatively simple for t he mind to then generate other behaviours and feelings – once it is reassured that this is OK. New Code NLP (as defined in Whispering in the Wind ) places a lot of faith in the powerhouse of the unconscious and trusts that this is the cleanest way to avoid F1 and F2 interference (putting our exisiting beliefs (map) on any new information). John and Julie stressed asked questions while in peripheral vision and the importance of language. John and Carmen stressed creating new clean super resource states by playing games and marking out a problem in space, then entering it and collapsing the old anchor after playing 10 minutes or so of New Code games. Carmen also spoke extensively and helped the group understand just how much we filter any information coming in, so involving the
conscious mind in finding a solution to long-term problems is not like to be effective. We apply feed forward filters (= beliefs = expectations = self fulfilling prophecies) consistently, whether we know it or not. State management and physiology seem to be critical to overall congruency in New Code NLP, as does trusting your inner mind. The injuntion to “go there first” when do trance work also applies to helping others make the shifts they want. It helps make any we do have much more depth to it because it is working for us too. Carmen and John are warm, entertaining, intelligent and very supportive. They left many of us excited and all of us challenged to t ake our NLP skills to a new level. They also attracted a very high calibre of attendee, including several Richard Bandler trainers. It was wonderful too that such a mixture of backgrounds and consistency of high integrity in the group and Michael Carroll is to be thanked for managing to pull it off. I for one will be going to John and Carmen’s modelling seminar next April 2004. Learning modelling from the co-founder of NLP and his partner. Now that is a treat that even Santa Claus would be hard pushed to pull off! Richard Haggerty Accelerated Excellence www.accelerated-excellence.com Mobile: 07796 616041 Tuesday, 03 June 2003
