What is NLP?

A practical and powerful approach to personal change.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is the art and science of excellence, derived from studying how top people in different fields obtain their outstanding results. NLP is a model of how individuals structure their unique experiences of life.

NLP is also practical. It is a set of models, skills and techniques for thinking and acting effectively in the world. To increase choice and to enhance the quality of life.

NLP started in the early seventies from the collaboration of John Grinder, who was then an assistant Professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler who was a student of psychology at the University. Together they studied three top therapists, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. Their aim was to identify patterns used by outstanding therapists and pass them on to others. From these initial models, NLP developed in two complimentary directions. Firstly as a process to discover patterns of excellence in any field. Secondly as the effective way of thinking and communicating used by outstanding people.

NLP deals with the structure of human subjective experience, how we hear and feel, and how we edit and filter the outside world through our senses. It also explores how we describe it in language and how we act, both intentionally and unintentionally to produce results. It examines the relationships between thought, communication and behaviour and gives us techniques for quickly and effectively changing thoughts, behaviours and beliefs that are currently limiting us.

NLP is both an "epistemology", meaning the study of how we know what we know, and a "methodology" which allows us to unpack how we do what we do.

By understanding how we perceive the world through our five senses, we can then understand how some people can respond very resourcefully in a particular situation and others do not. Once you learn how those who remain resourceful set up their representations, then it's a simple matter to teach others to do the same thing.

So NLP brings with it the techniques to understand how we do what we do and the ability to re-program ourselves to do it differently. We can also utilise the patterns of behaviour of experts in any particular field in order to replicate those abilities within ourselves.