Neuro Linguistic Programming, as the name suggests –‘neuro’ refers to brain, ‘linguistic’ refers to language and ‘programming’ is the installation of a strategy, procedure or plan. NLP is the study of what works in thinking, language, and behavior. It provides a systematic framework for directing our brain and body. It defines the way how we code and produce excellence which enables us to achieve the results that we want in each area of life. With NLP, you can create a set of strategies that can work for you as to how you will make decisions, build lasting relationships, create excellence in your personal and professional life, communicate to motivate your fellow men, and create balance in your life.NLP is software manual for the bio-computer situated between your two ears. NLP is an effective tool with which you can produce desired results and enjoy peak in your work. It works as a peak performance technique for you. Today, around the world, NLP is being practiced by Therapists, Counselors, Students, Stage Performers, Sportspersons, CEO’s, Managers, Corporate Executives, Self-Employed People, Businesspersons, Sales and Multi Level Marketing (MLM) leaders, and Politicians. It is a human tool with which you can produce desired results and enjoy peak in your work. It works as a peak performance technique for you.

Neuro

Each individual has established their own unique mental filtering system for processing the millions of bits of data being absorbed through the senses. Our first mental map of the world is constituted of internal images, sounds, tactile awareness, internal sensations, tastes and smells that form as result of the neurological filtering process. The first mental map is called ‘First Access’ in NLP.

Linguistic

We then assign personal meaning to the information being received from the world outside. We form our second mental map by assigning language to the internal images, sounds and feelings, tastes and smells, thus forming everyday conscious awareness. The second mental map is called the Linguistic Map (sometimes known as Linguistic Representation)

Programming

The behavioral response that occurs as a result of neurological filtering processes and the subsequent linguistic map.

NLP Origins

Neuro Linguistic Programming began it’s life early in the 1970s when an Associate Professor from the University of California, Santa Cruz, John Grinder, teamed up with an undergraduate Richard Bandler. Both men had a fascination with human excellence which charted a path for them to model behavioral patterns of selected geniuses. 

Modelling is the core activity in NLP, and is the process of extricating and replicating the language structure and behavioural patterns of an individual who is excellent at a given activity. 

Grinder and Bandler began their NLP quest by modelling three people, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. These geniuses were outstanding as professional agents of change, working in the domain of therapy. All three geniuses, Perls, Satir and Erickson performed their magic from a perspective of unconscious excellence. The geniuses did not present Grinder and Bandler with a conscious description of their behaviour. The modellers (Grinder and Bandler) unconsciously absorbed the patterning inherent in the geniuses and then provided a description. 

With little direct knowledge of each of the geniuses speciality and little knowledge of the field of psychotherapy on the whole, Grinder and Bandler over a two year period set out with enthusiasm bordering on fervour, to explicate selected portions of the geniuses’ behaviour. They coded the results of their work in language-based models using the patterns of transformational grammar as the descriptive vocabulary. Through NLP Modelling Grinder and Bandler made explicit the tacit skills of the geniuses and NLP was born. 

The company that Grinder and Bandler were keeping in these heady days of the 1970s was a melting pot of enquiring minds seeking investigation into human behaviour. John Grinder was an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Richard Bandler a fourth year undergraduate student. The world renowned anthropologist Gregory Bateson had joined the faculty at Kresge College, and such was Bateson’s interest in Grinder and Bandler’s collaboration he introduced Grinder and Bandler to Milton Erickson. Bateson provided support, feedback and his enthusiasm is in part captured in his introduction to the book Structure of Magic where he states “John Grinder and Richard Bandler have done something similar to what my colleagues and I attempted fifteen years ago.” 

In 1975 Grinder and Bandler presented the first two NLP models to the world in the volumes “Structure of Magic I and II.” The volumes published by the respected publishing house “Science and Behaviour Books inc” put NLP on the map and interest in the new field of NLP spread quickly. People in fields related to communication, behaviour and change sought to learn how they too could get amazing results when doing change work. Grinder and Bandler willingly offered training courses in the application of their models. The training courses Bandler and Grinder conducted – proved that the NLP models were transferable to others, meaning the learners could use the NLP models successfully in their own work.

NLP Modelling, NLP Training, NLP Application

So where NLP began it’s life as a means of modelling excellence, training courses soon became a very active part of the NLP adventure, followed by NLP application where NLP trained people apply their NLP tools for commercial and personal benefit.

NLP Modelling

NLP modelling is the art of making explicit the set of differences present in someone who is excellent at a given activity compared with someone who is mediocre at the same activity. NLP modelling is by far the highest skill level in NLP. NLP modelling can be used to capture patterns of excellence present in anyone in any context.

NLP Training

When the NLP developers began to share their knowledge, NLP Certification became available with other trainers. Thirty years after the NLP inception, modern day NLP training comes in all shapes and sizes, some excellent, some good, a lot of average and some decidedly poor.

NLP Application

An NLP Practitioner can employ his/her skills as an agent of change working with individuals, groups, or companies, or even global organisations and governments. As a technology, NLP has an amazing track record for instigating fast and efficient change in individuals and groups.Many people study NLP to help them become more effective in their chosen field. The patterns can be employed across a wide area of applications ranging from fields as diverse as education, team building, sales, marketing, personal development, leadership and coaching. Wherever there is human interaction and growth potential, NLP can be used to develop and enhance performance.

NLP Modelling

Coding patterns of genius
The patterns of any genius can be replicated through modelling

NLP Training

The training of NLP patterning
NLP Practitioner
NLP Advanced Tools
NLP Master Practitioner
NLP Trainers Certification

NLP Application

Change work
Education
Training
Sales
Leadership
Marketing
Therapy

So what started out with a wanton curiosity as to how geniuses performed their magic, has now grown into an international field of NLP Trainers, Practitioners, and people excelling as a result of applying Neuro Linguistic Programming in their professions and personal lives.
NLP now features in over 1000 educational books on subjects ranging from specialist NLP matters, psychology, sales, negotiation, management, parenting and accelerated learning. There are thousands of NLP public seminars worldwide, training over 20,000 people each year around the globe hosted by specialist NLP Trainers. The majority of quality business seminars will now include aspects of NLP, which equates to a figure of tens of thousands of people learning how to use NLP, and that figure is growing every year .