NLP FAQ

What is NLP?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is “The Study of the Structure of Subjective Experience and what can be calculated from it.”

+ What is NLP technology?

NLP is based on finding out what works and formalizing it.

In order to understand NLP, it is important for people to make a distinction between a model and a technique.

A model is a formal representation of behavior that allows prediction. Models are most commonly used in physics. A model will allow you to create new techniques. The techniques generated from these models are techniques, nothing more.

Some people will want to learn something from someone they consider to be a genius and they will have to elicit enough information in order to accomplish this. When they do this, they are actually eliciting the genius’ “strategy”, or “strategies”. They have not elicited a new “model”. The strategies will include the models that constitute NLP. Once put together in the proper sequence, they will change someone’s internal representations. This set of strategies is called a technique, which when used, would change that behavior.

The models that constitute NLP are all formal models based on mathematical, logical principles such as predicate calculus and the mathematical equations underlying holography. What we have done is simplified these so you don’t have to know about the mathematical equations or holography because we have provided the models and some techniques.

Furthermore, all of these models are generative. For example, when challenging one Meta Model™ distinction, the answer will always be a surface structure (a sentence) containing further Meta-Model™ distinctions. In addition, these models are also recursive, i.e., the model can be applied to itself.

These distinctions will help people understand the difference between what a model and a technique is.

+ How are the NLP building blocks used to observe experts?

NLP has a wide variety of building blocks such as calibration techniques, patterns in the language someone uses, predicates and Meta Model™, eye movements and Submodalities, other analytical models such as Logical levels, Meta-programs, perceptual positions, timeframes, etc.

These tools were not developed in order to observe experts. They were discovered by observing experts. They were developed in order to further evolve human consciousness to the point that people could replicate skills and have deliberate control over their own consciousness. Nothing in NLP is analytical. It is all designed to be applied.

Meta Programs describe how people sort through multiple generalizations. As such, they will tell you what lies inside and what lies outside of someone’s generalizations about things like doors, for example.

When someone says, “Stupid door!”, that gives you a pretty good idea about what lies outside their generalizations about what doors “are”. If you then ask them how they know the door is “stupid”, they’ll give you an answer that will identify their “sorting style”, i.e., “There’s no knob,” meaning that it can only be a not-stupid-door if it has a knob. If what they want is to be able to open more kinds of doors, then you have to teach them to sort for things other than just a knob in order to identify a door. That’s how Meta-Programs work. They don’t just explain what the person is doing. They give you something to do.

NLP consists of models. By applying these models one can generate techniques. The models are patterns. As such, they will be true 100% of the time. That is why statistics don’t apply.

+ What are typical NLP applications?

Collapsing Anchors, Visual Squash, 6-step Reframing, V/K dissociation, Change Personal History, Belief Change, Reimprint (all which are sometimes called NLP), are some of the techniques that were derived from applying the models. All these models and techniques can be used in transforming your mind, belief system, emotional patterns and behaviours.

+ Isn’t NLP mainly used for therapy and that’s where the procedures came from?

NLP never calls anything a “procedure”, but rather techniques or exercises. It’s important to emphasize that NLP is an educational tool, not a form of therapy.

+ What about enhancing creativity?

By receiving a  NLP session, the degree of creative output that you have in your daily life will be greatly improved. Once new behavioural strategies are created, you will understand how NLP can be used as a creative tool and applied to any scenario in which you deem suitable.

+ The basic NLP Presuppositions are:

The NLP Presuppositions are the basic assumptions of the technology that have not yet proven to be false.

+ What are the roots of NLP?

Dr Richard Bundler created NLP with John G (linguistics), and Richard has a versatile psychology and psychoanalysis background as well as a Mathematics. NLP applied what was learned from various earlier works and developed models that are the foundation of NLP.