Hello everyone,

One the other NLP forum I was moved to post a review of a recent NHR seminar.

I think it could be useful here. Since there are people here who attended the same thing I'd be interested to learn about their perspectives as well. I halucinate that some of them would be very different from mine.

So, I've been there, done it and the shortest possible version of my review can be expressed in just one word: OVERPRICED.

Now a slightly longer version goes as follows:

By the third day of sitting in chair listening to Bandler's feats of linguistic brilliance and wondering what's up with this wounded weak teenager stage persona, e.g. all these cartoonish tales of imaginary violence and great feats of power -- "and I grew up a Chinatown and really learned martial arts", "and we didn't use mats, just bare concrete", "and I hit him with a wooden handle on the head", etc -- (to me all these stories sounded... anoying geeky), well, by that time I just had to ask myself a very simple question:

It's obvious that I've paid way too much money for this experience, now is it completely useless or is there a fair price that had I paid it would give me a feeling that I got money worth? I came with the following very subjective answer:

I enjoy a good show and the guy is a great performer, so I'm quite willing to pay $100 for 4-5 hours of his time, just the same way I'd be willing to pay the same amount for a really good concert.

Since it was a 5 days seminar, my fair price for it is $500.

At that point, I made a decision, that the only way I'll ever pay to see Bandler is if he comes to where I live and it will cost me no more then $100 a day. Since, this is not likely to happen, I realize that my chances of seeing him doing his thing live are diminishingly low.

I'm content with that.

By now, I hallucinate that some of the readers of this post might be curious about what exactly happened there that made me think in this way (other than old Richard trying to act the tough guy part) and I would also imagine that some of the more sophistic-ate-it NLPers, rushing to correct the errors of my way, e.g. I'd expect somebody to gently remind me about "multi-level" marke^H oh I mean communication and how silly it is to take Bandler's stories at the surface level, how he uses metaphor to speak to the unconscious and how he paces the audience, etc. Well, before I proceed to the actual description of the seminar and the good, the bad, and the ugly of it, I'd like to address this multi-level thingy.
Briefly, yes, I understand the power of indirect communications and yes, seemingly irrelevant stories can have a profound effect on a person's psyche by having its deeper meaning absorbed outside of the critical awareness. Seems to me, that's how a lot of Religion and Great Art really works. Also, I realize that Bandler is quite good at it. And still... and still what kind of a man would come with stories of inflicting pain and humiliation on other people (well, they asked for it!) and what kind of people would be profitably paced by these stories? The audience seemed to be greatly entertained and I kept thinking, "Do I really want to be a part of this crowd?" Well, the answer was, maybe, once in a while and not for too much time at once and definitely not as a paying customer.
So now, let me describe my very own, very distorted, deleted, and generalized understanding of what actually happened during the seminar:
For the first four days the seminar was structured as follows:
From 10 am to around 1:30 or 2:00 Richard Bandler would talk (quite entertainingly), pick somebody for a demo and maybe tell us to do one exercise. He is quite good and I found there is a lot to learn from him if I pay attention. After 1:30 lunch break, John Lavale would take over and show us how spending many, many years with Bandler doing NLP doesn’t necessarily turn one into a charismatic speaker with brilliant ideas.
Well, the good new was that he didn’t talk all the time and we got to do some exercises.

The bad news was that we’d do about 3 different things (not enough by my standards) and they weren’t structured in a particularly helpful way if the aim is to obtain proficiency with NHR. The really bad news was that there weren’t enough experienced trainers or assistants around to assist with the exercises. So they couldn’t possibly give more exercises or adjust them to be appropriate for the skill level of people practicing them. So, by necessity, the exercises had to be few in number and rather simplistic in nature, with the main goal of some of them to simply entertain the participants.

On the fifth day, they switched and John did the first half and Richard did the second and finished earlier (I think at around four).
So here are the exercises we did:

1. First day, a few simple inductions to get into a trance and establish a sliding anchor that would make it easier to drop a person into trance at some latter time.
2. On latter days we did something more NHR specific like making a particular sensation (e.g. joy, exhilaration, happiness) circulate through body. E.g. “and notice where this feeling starts in your body… that’s right… now I wonder how strongly can you feel it traveling through your body … ah, that’s the way and now you can double it and double it again.” A variation of this exercise is to combine two feelings such as joy and a sense of accomplishment and center them in the body. I think these are very interesting things to do, but without sufficient practice and proper feedback from the experienced instructors they’re not as useful as they could’ve been.
3. One day was dedicated to making people laugh hysterically. Emotions are contagious and laughter is one of the easiest to setup and probably safest to demonstrate in the large audience. It wasn’t done in a particularly artful way. LaVale simply picked one guy, Jose, that’s been on other Bandler’s seminars, has been anchored extensively, has a naturally cheerful mood and the type of face that make others burst out in laughter just by looking at him. So, all it took to put this guy in the first row and make him laugh uncontrollably. Then have someone else who’s also quite suggestible to start laughing and you have a wave of hysterical laughter going through the audience. Latter we did it in a group of five people, transferring and intensifying the feeling.
4. The same day, right after we did the laughter thing, we tried the nonverbal transfer of a skill. It works (actually it does!) as follows: you sit facing your partner with the palms of your hands touching his/hers. Close your eyes, go into a trance and get into a state you’re in when you’re performing the skill. Your partner, also in trance absorbs it and sends you back their understanding of it, you can correct the submodalities of what they’re doing, occasionally going verbal if you must and send your version to them again, do it until they get it more or less. Surprisingly, it went well. I was “broadcasting” one of my problem solving trances and my partner was able to describe the pictures I was seeing in my mind (I was in trance and my eyes were closed). I didn’t expect it. Other people also reported a positive experience.
5. Next day, I asked about time distortion and got to be on stage. Interesting, but I feel it was mostly a good old uptime experience. I didn’t think to test it they way another participant did by dropping and object to the floor and noticing whether it feels to fall slower. No it didn’t for him.
6. The last exercise I remember was using a timeline for motivation, e.g. going to the future just after something you need motivation on is done and looking at it as if it and all the resources you need to develop to get it are already in your past. How it fits with NHR, I’m not sure. Nice exercise though.

So that’s my summary of the 5 days Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning seminar. Some good things, but nothing ground-shaking. In my opinion, overpriced and over hyped.

I also stayed for a one day introduction to the patterns of physical transformation work of Ron and Edie Perry. I enjoyed it immensely, and would like to learn more about their work. But that I’ll leave for another post.

-- Alex.