I just found about Dave Dobson and found this thread by searching. Does anyone (Eric Robbie perhaps?) know if/how Dave Dobson influenced NLP in its early days, and why he (atleast to my knowledge) has never been mentioned in any NLP litterature?

And how did exactly Dobsons hypnosis differ from Miltons?

Bit of an 'aul' thread perhaps, but thought it was worth sharing.

Firstly, apols for those of you already getting Jonathan Altfeld's newsletter - (apparently thousands do so) as you'll have just read the article I'm about to refer to.

In my opinion he takes the whole unconcious hello thing to a whole new level - to the extent of unconcious conversation *with perhaps a touch of mindreading based on good calibration*.

It's one of those elusive obvious things IMO, that most of us have probably done unconciously.

here's the newsletter link

Be interested on your opinions, I was fair dinkum impressed.

Egg.

Well I signed up for the newsletter, but didn't see anything on that page but the opportunity to sign up. Did I miss summat? Would you consider asking JA for permission to reproduce the relevant text here? I'm totally curious now.

I'll drop JA a line and let him sort shit out. ;-)

love ya bridge.
x

Hi Al,

I'm not Jonathan. But this is my take on it:

Much of the PUA rap is about "Wow, you can consciously do these behaviours and it will get you chicks."

It's really, "You can consciously do these behaviours - and if you do them well enough, the other person may come to think/ feel you're doing them naturally, and so you'll get into 'rapport' ... and that's one step on the way to getting chicks."

If you do them well enough … if you do them naturally … and if the other person isn't too picky, isn't too good at telling deliberate behaviours from completely natural and unconscious ones. (Because even your best rapport-getting behaviours are detectable as being deliberate, and won't work unless …. )

Then there's the nlp techniques collector - "Oh, I'm a real maven, I'm real cool, I've got all these techniques, and -- what's that? You say there's a new one? One that I don't already have? Hey, I'm interested …. "

And so they get hooked. As if just having a name, a label, means a thing exists. "The Unconscious Hello, you say? Tell me more …. "

They assume (a) it must mean something, and (b) it must be a technique, and (c) they can easily master it. Why, haven't they already collected 200 previous techniques, put them in a book, and are very proud of it?

And then there's the seeker of Mysterious Power Over People - the "Oh, wouldn't be cool to, like, you know, be able to say 'hello' to someone unconsciously, and like, you know, have them be completely under your spell - without them ever knowing it" people. People who are still operating out of teenage embarrassment, longing, and ineffectiveness.

Well, there is no big secret.

You can say "hello" inside - that is, silently, and to yourself, but directed at someone else - especially the first time you meet them - and if you have a positive and happy and welcoming feeling inside you, then it will have an effect - or what the Americans call "an impact".

And if you mean it - IF YOU MEAN IT - then that will have an effect on your behaviour - all of your behaviour. And that is ALMOST ALWAYS noticed by other person - ON SOME LEVEL. And so, from there on, you're on the up.

But that's all it is. Have a happy and positive and welcoming attitude to other people, and other people will pick upon it. Some secret, huh? Dale Carnegie, eat your heart out.

It's not a technique - UNLESS YOU MAKE IT ONE. And the bummer is, if you deliberately and callously make it one, it won't work. Because it relies on you being genuine, on you genuinely and naturally having a warm and welcoming and positive attitude to other people.

And if you do it as a cool, way-too-deliberate technique, then it won't be genuine - and the other person will know it.

Now, taking the idea further ….

If you're "centered" - that is, truly being and behaving and operating out of your "hara", then all sorts of things change. Your whole voice and "face" and body behaviour will change. You will be "completely integrated" - or, to use the label that John Grinder foisted on nlp (and which I think shows his machine-like formal-systems-over-people limitation), you will be "congruent".

By which JG means "all your five rep systems messages will add up" - and by which I mean more, much more than that.

I mean ALL your messages - not just your face and voice and behaviour, but your energy and your aura and your "field" and your detectable-at-a-distance kinesthetics, and the rays of light that sometimes fan out from your middle, and … well, all of it ….

You do that, and you will not only be both unconsciously and consciously welcomed by everybody, you will light up the room the moment you walk into it. You will have what some call "charisma". You will indeed be saying IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE way, "Hello". :-)))

As to "unconscious conversation" ….

As you know, Al, you being a student of the martial arts, if you are in the state of hara-gei ("hara" meaning "centre", and "gei" meaning "knowledge", thus knowledge from the centre), you can pick up when someone who means you harm even if they're six miles away. And in closer combat, you can sense from THEIR hara, what move they are about to make before they even make it.

(Unless they are also skilled at "masking" by entering the void.)

That's a kind of "unconscious conversation".

But something like it happens everyday, and not just in the dojo. Some years ago, someone who is now a famous lady novelist said to me, "I knew as soon as I saw you that I liked you." If you like, Al, we had a hara-to-hara, "unconscious"-field-to-"unconscious"-field conversation - although, as I remember it, neither one of us was unconscious of it.

We both knew about it, and enjoyed it.

The thing you talk about is out there. It happens. For another example, one of the things the same lady novelist talked about in one of her books was her central character going back to work only three months after giving birth, and while she was still breast feeding. And having the mild embarrassment of having her breasts "let down" and leak milk into her blouse at four in the afternoon, in the middle of a business meeting.

Rupert Sheldrake did a survey of similar, still-nursing mothers who'd gone back to work, and got diary evidence of them (the mothers) experiencing similar flows when their baby at home - and miles away - started crying from hunger. (Obviously, there was somebody else at home doing the caretaking, and who kept the matching diary.)

That's also "unconscious conversation". And at a distance.

Now, here's the bad news: short of falling madly in love with someone, or having a baby, you can't just develop this ability "just like that".

You can't just read about it, like the way you'd read a train timetable, and be able to change your behaviour on the basis of what you have just read. "Oh, I know that the train leaves at 4.15. Now I know what to do, and how to get there."

You could read all of the above a hundred times, and that still won't give you that special kind of state, that special kind of awareness.

I've been known to teach it. I've been known to inculcate that kind of awareness in some of my students, and in the handful of people whose development I personally foster. But I can't do it by mail, and it doesn't transmit too readily by DVD. In fact, anything other than person-to-person transmission is useless.

As with other of my stuff, if you want it, you have to come to a workshop.

Hi Damian,

You mentioned Dave Dobson ....

The thing about Dave that may have got people banging on about him with respect to this mythical "unconscious hello" is that Dave used to say that he didn't wait till the client sat down in the seat and/ or until they'd finished outlining their problem before he "did" anything. He started to get into rapport - his kind of rapport - and to "speak to their unconscious" the second they put their head round the door.

It's not that deep, and it's not that mysterious. It was and is a message about when do you start being "courteous" to the client. But it is the mark of the man that he so highly valued being both courteous and thorough.

Eric.

I agree with most of Eric's post -- very thorough & right on the money.

Which is why I recently added a new 3-day course to my calendar for July in NYC on "Silent Exchanges", whereby I will train this skill. I have no intention of training techniques. As Eric said -- Techniques make the ability 'not work.' Most especially in this specific area.

The reason I've added this new course to my roster is that I've observed far too many people (even experienced NLP'ers!) get lost inside their heads when they approach people, and worse, they're operating from a faulty paradigm thinking that the conversation hasn't started until someone opens their mouth.

Which of course, isn't true -- nonverbally speaking, the exchange, the larger conversation, started much earlier than that. It certainly didn't start any later than making eye contact. It probably didn't start any later than you walking into the room. And it may very well not have started any later than you beginning to approach someone else from miles away, as Eric has described with the "milk letting-down" stories.

Great nonverbal communicators don't interpret & analyze every nonverbal behavior. Instead, they're inventing or re-inventing the "nonverbal lexicon" between themselves and other people, on the fly, experimentally.

I'll be training (through experiential exercises) the ability to engage in that nonverbal dialogue, real-time, with anyone.

Also, for the record, the article Al's referring to in my newsletter has nothing to do with Pickup Artists at all -- OTHER than to reference four groups of people who tend to be better at this than other groups.

• Actors/actresses.
• Great pickup artists (& flirting teachers). Not all, but some. Also, I'm not saying they're good at training this, just that some of them can demonstrate it.
• Gifted Improv (Improvisational) Artists
• Truly great coaches/consultants who have worked extensively in both fields (coaching 1-on-1, and corporate consulting).

So towards the larger scope of teaching people to enter any nonverbal exchange in any setting with greater confidence and intention to enjoy warm, effective communication, I referenced a handful of groups that tend to demonstrate this natural ability more readily than others.

I'm fascinated by how much conversation can be enjoyed entirely nonverbally, and, knowing how enjoyable it is, and how "out of reach" it seems to be for many, I know there are streams of people who badly need this sort of education.

Should be immense fun to run the course.

Regards,

- Jonathan

Hi Jonathan,

My reference to PUAs wasn't in response to your newsletter - in fact, because of a server glitch at my end, I couldn't access your site, and still haven't been able to do so - so I haven't read it.

I was following on from a remark that Damian made (and may have made in a pm to me rather than on the thread - and if so, my error in not making that clear) about PUAs looking for the next quick fix or "trick" to pull on people. And I was taking his remark as the jumping off point for my posting.

In the main, I was after making the case that it's about intent and genuine-ness. And, as you so rightly add, great "performers" are able to muster up genuine-ness. And even though they're mustering it up, it is - and in every way appears to be - and then still is - genuine. That's part of their art.

And what it means is that real acting isn't about "acting", it's about being. And real coaching isn't about "coaching", it's about becoming whatever the client needs - to get the coaching job done.

And if that means "using yourself" in a certain way - by honestly being this kind of person, or honestly being that kind of person - then so be it.

It's a paradox from the world of great performing - a paradox that we can all learn from - that acting only becomes real when we stop "acting". And flexibility only becomes flexibility when people (other than those who know us well) can't tell we're being flexible.

And out of that comes: if you want to say "hello", then mean it.

I hope your gig in July does well. I encourage people to go to it.

Eric.

silverback wrote:

I'll drop JA a line and let him sort shit out. ;-)

love ya bridge.
x

JA sorted shit out nicely, and thanks for that. Love ya back, Al.

I've experienced that deep, weird connection that Eric mentions; 6000 miles is nothing to it, never mind down the street. Strange and wonderful. And awful. And strange . Off and on for a lot of years I tried to reassure myself it was imagination, wishful thinking, whatever. But all that "rational" thinking has never made it go away. I had to rearrange my explanation of my world to accomodate the reality of my own experience. Not a bad idea in general, I think.

And anyone who can hypnotize a crow knows more than a bit about it, too.

Hey guys.

Eric, thanks for your lovely indepth response!
It's funny, I think that if I am honest, when I first considered 'getting' nlp - I was thrilled by the idea of having the upper hand with people I communicate with. It kind of transformed into a deeper respect for people, based on an idea that the more I understand, by good quality calibration, become a more 'aligned' communication partner (that sounds a little lame to me right now - but there it is).

I seem to do great rapport greatest when I don't *conciously* 'do it' - and it's pleasant for me to notice myself *already* doing a lot of the stuff we get drilled in during our practitioner days.

As for the technique itself, I certainly did sound enthralled by the idea, and perhaps it's no surprise, when I *conciously* did it - I got diddly squat results.

However, - and here's where this links right in with your great rundown of the 'process' - when I imagine opening myself up (energetically) and well, altho it sounds a little hippy, *radiate* an open warmth, is when I got good results.

So I guess, feedback from this thread is essentially, not to 'techniqueify' it - instead just do it.

lol As far as the PUA bit goes - my wife would render useless extranneous equipment and pickle it probably....

And just looked up the word Maven - classic!

Jonathan - the course sounds good buddy, willyou be releasing a little teaser on youtube for us all ;-)

Bridget, you know I'm sweet on you ;-) -it's the star trek outfit - *sigh* what that woman can do with a tricorder.... :P