NLP Master Class: Introduction Video Transcript

Introduction to NLP

Hello, this is Robert Dilts here in Santa Cruz, California. I want to introduce this series of master classes on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I have been involved in NLP for a long time - since 1975 or right before it got its name. In fact, I am a co-author with the founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder of NLP Volume I, along with my colleague Judith Delozier. Judith and I also are co-authors of The Encyclopedia of Systemic NLP, and of NLP II called the Next Generation. I am also a co-founder of NLP University along with Todd Epstein. We founded it in 1991 and after Todd's untimely passing in 1995, continued that with his wife Theresa Epstein. Judith Delozier joined our faculty in 1992 and has been part of our core faculty ever since then along with many other illustrious NLP trainers who might be getting some experience in this program.

Slide 1: What is NLP?
What I would like to do in this first introductory master class is to say a little bit about NLP. What is NLP? And how can we apply it, and the kind of things we can do with it. To do that, I am going to show a few slides here and we will be exploring this idea of what is NLP in this part of NLP University International Virtual NLP Practitioner Certification program. So if we take this first question of what is NLP, the subtitle of the first book NLP one is called, "The study of the structure of subjective experience." and really what NLP is focusing on is what happens inside of us. We can just distinguish between objective experience and subjective experience. Objective experience is measurable. It is something that is testable, that can be observed by anybody, and we can reach some kind of consensus about it. Our subjective experience is personal. It has to do with things relating to our imagination, to our history, to our internal life, and it cannot be verified by anybody but us. I think this is a really powerful distinction here when we say that we are looking at this whole area of what happens in our whole inner world of experience. Now, we say it is the study not just of the content of that experience but of the structure of that experience. Of how we experience things and I think this is a very important part of what NLP is about. Sometimes we like to say that these three things are in NLP. It is an epistemology, it is a methodology, and it is a technology.

Meaning that as an epistemology, epistemology is it means it is kind of a philosophy. It is a system of principles and distinctions by which we organize our knowledge about ourselves and our interaction with the world. Epistemology literally means it is a system of knowledge. It is about how do we know something? So how do we know ourselves? How do we know our own experience? Secondly, NLP is a methodology. It is a process and set of procedures for gathering and applying this knowledge about ourselves and about how we interact with our world. Then thirdly, we say it is a technology. NLP is known around the world primarily because of the many tools and applications that have been created in order to help people get particular results. Things ranging from working with fears and phobias, to accelerated learning, to effective communication, sales and leadership, etc. So NLP is pretty much widely applied anywhere where human beings are needing to communicate with other human beings. Any places where we are helping each other to try to improve in some way. Again, we will be saying a little bit more about that later in this master class.

Slide 2: What is NLP?
When we say what is NLP, first of all I guess we should say obviously, the name is “Neuro-Linguistic Programming”. Neuro has to do with distinctions in our nervous system. Not what we will see not only in the brain throughout our whole nervous system and interactions between our nervous systems and the nervous systems of others. Linguistics has to do with language both verbal and nonverbal communication patterns that influence and are influenced by the functions of our nervous system. Programming has to do with how these things work together to create some kind of applied results some kind of consequence. Obviously, the terminology comes initially from the notion of computer programming and this idea that we could say that NLP in some ways is about our internal software. How in our inner apps, you might say, for how we run this the nervous system of our body. One thing that is very key is that we said that NLP is about the study of the structure of subjective experience. So it really emphasizes this notion of process as opposed to content. So somebody might say, "Well, I am thinking and I am having a difficult emotion." We would be less concerned with, "Well, what exactly is that emotion?" than we would be with "How are you having that emotion? What is it that is creating that emotion and sustaining it?" So we are really looking at that level as you will see as we go through this.

So we are looking at these patterns of processes within our nervous system and our communication systems in our language system. NLP is very pragmatic. Very practical. We try to make it simple so that anybody can learn it. In fact, I was teaching NLP to my children when they were very young because so much of it is really valuable to practical ways of knowing how do we guide ourselves in this world. Again, looking for these patterns in the nervous system by observing patterns in our verbal and nonverbal communication systems and then vice versa, we influence what is happening in a nervous system through these patterns of verbal and nonverbal communication. And of course we are working then to organize these. The idea of a program or organizing these into practical exercises, techniques, tools, and practices that can be used to influence or make a positive difference in people's experiences or of behavior. That is really why NLP has become very well known throughout the world.

Slide 3: What Were the Influences on the Development of NLP?
Now some of the background of NLP, the founders Bandler and Grinder, started by doing a process called modeling. They looked at the patterns of effective people and they first started by looking at the patterns of such people as Milton Erickson who was very famous for his work in hypnotherapy. He is one of the founders of the American Hypnosis Society. There is still a very active community of people around the world to study the works of Erickson. Also, one of the other key people that was important in the beginning of NLP was Gregory Bateson who was an anthropologist, but also really was one of the founders of or considered one of the founders of modern systems theory, cybernetics. Bateson also did work in Psychology not only looking at cultural patterns, but looking at individual patterns is considered by many also one of the key nations and founders of modern systemic therapies. Given this notion of systemic therapy, Virginia Satir who was very influential and one of the founders of Modern Family Therapy. And finally Fritz Perls who is founder of Gestalt therapy. So here we see that there is a lot of course in the in the early history of NLP about therapy and I think this is important because even though therapy was its foundation, NLB has certainly gone to many applications beyond that. It began in looking at what were the differences that made the difference?

This is actually a statement by Gregory Bateson. One of the claims he would like to say when he would look at something, a system as it was interacting he would say, "Well what is the difference that is making the differences in how things are functioning?" And so one of the things that Bandler and Grinder did early on was to look at how did these very successful therapists who were able to positively influence the lives of many people - what was it that they were doing? How were they using their language? How were they using their nonverbal communication in order to make a positive difference. These people are still strong forces in the epistemology of NLP today, although, of course, as I said, NLP has expanded to many things beyond that.

Slide 4: NLP Learning Community

One of the things, then, about NLP University is we really want to support what we call a learning community. For us, NLP is more than just a system of techniques or toolbox of techniques. There is a vision that it supports and a kind of a mission, and that is that NLP is here to bring positive transformation in the world to empower people to have more, to be more of the best version of themselves, and to support others in that as well. We will see there is a series, I believe, of really core values that represent what NLP and the proper expression of NLP is about. There is a spirit, a community spirit we find in our NLP University. Even people who have been there, now because we have been going for many more than 25 years, so that anybody who has been to NLP University from any part of the world when they meet anybody else from NLP or has been in an NLP University course immediately has the same sense of camaraderie. A sense of spirit. We also have a very strong sense of purpose. We want to make a positive difference.

All the people that have been involved in NLP University are people that have a strong sense of commitment to bringing positive change in education and health, in organization and business, in families and our personal interactions. You have come to this course, this is something we are going to be really inviting you to be thinking about. We support the sense of belonging, that we belong to a community of people who share a common purpose, common language, common interests, common values. And one of the ways that we like to describe the overall mission purpose or goal of our NLP University is we really want to support this idea of creating a world in which people want to belong. More than just belong, but also in which they can thrive and to which they can contribute. So we hope this is something that comes through and as you continue these master classes, that it is something that you feel also becomes something that is strong for you. We often like to use this quote by William James, considered one of the founders of modern psychology and cognitive psychology. "The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." I think this is part of what we want to do. We are certainly hoping that NLP and NLP University outlasts us, outlasts its founders, and goes on to continue to make a positive difference.

Slide 5: Goals of NLPU’s Practitioner Program
So when we think about our practitioner program here, for which this is our introduction, what we are wanting to do is, of course, help people to enhance their perceptions that is that we are able to see, hear, feel, sense more than when you start. So one of the goals that we emphasize in this course is that you will be more sensitive. You will recognize more things. You will be more aware of what is happening in you and in the world around you. Second thing we say is it is about enriching our inner maps, our maps of what is possible for us, our maps of who other people are, our maps of anything that we do. One of the things we like to say in NLP is that having more choices is better than not having them. If we do not have choices, we are really stuck with only one or two ways to do things. So when we have a richer map of the world, we have more possibilities. In fact, in the first book that Bandler and Grinder wrote, "The Structure of Magic", when they were writing about things like therapy, but I think this can be generalized to all positive change, they pointed out that let us look not... It is one of the interesting paradoxes of therapies. There are so many different therapeutic approaches, many of which seem to even contradict each other. They said rather than looking at just the therapy or even just the therapist, let us look at what happens inside of the client when something changes, when something is healed, when something is transformed. That seems to be the key thing. What is it that is happening inside their subjective experience and one of the things that was completely obvious and common to all of the people that have some successful change is that their map of the world and their choices available to them become enriched and that is precisely what NLP is about and what this practitioner programs about.

Another thing we say is this idea of developing metacognition. Now what “meta” means is usually “about” something or “between” something. So metacognition means more awareness of our own selves. How we think, what we were thinking, but also how we are thinking. Metacognition is about self-awareness. Today the whole notion of mindfulness is very important and I think this notion of metacognition was really a beginning of that sort of whole mindfulness revolution. So metacognition is a way of becoming more mindfully aware of who we are and what we are doing. Another thing we want to support in our NLPU practitioner program is this idea of dreams and dreaming. If we are going to create a world in which people want to belong, we need to dream. We need to dream about what is possible. For many years when people ask, "Well, what is a simple definition of NLP?" and of course because the name sounds very complicated, Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

I usually like to say if I was to give my simplest definition, NLP is about providing tools for dreamers. So that people have their dream. A dream for their lives, a dream for their family, a dream for the community or the world. They have the tools by which they can bring that positive dream into some kind of practical expression, so bring it into reality. So these are some of the things that we will be doing and they will be part of what these classes are about.

Slide 6: Principles of NLP – Reality is Constructed Via Filters
One of basic principles of all of NLP is this idea that what we are calling our nervous system, the different parts of our nervous system, our senses but also the different parts of our brain and all the other parts of our nervous system, are types of filters. And these filters, we can say, they transform the quantum world of possibilities into classical reality. If we look at how the world has changed, so much has changed, even since the beginning of NLP in 1975. So many things exist today and possibilities exist today that did not exist then largely because people use their imagination. They dream up possibilities and then find the way to make those into tangible expressions. And that is this idea again of "tools for dreamers." Again, we are going to be working, especially in this next generation of NLP, with all these three types of filters. Cognitive filters that relate primarily to our brain and the way we use our rational and conscious mind. Somatic filters which have to do with the way we use our body or emotional intelligence or somatic intelligence, which is everything that is below the brain, which also has intelligence in it. Then what we call a "field" intelligence, which is the intelligence that exists in the interactions between us. Between each other as people, as human beings, but also between us and our environment, other animals, but also nature. There is an intelligence there. What we say in NLP is that all we know is what our filters produce and those filters of course can open and bring in something new, but they can also close. They can filter things out as much as bring things in. There is this idea that we will be really getting very clear about is that our map is our reality. The way that we perceive something in that moment is our reality. That is what we say the difference between subjective and objective reality.

Now the key thing is that we can work generatively with these filters, creatively with these filters. A couple of the images on this slide, one is showing the classical Leonardo DaVinci Vitruvian man where he was looking at this whole way in which the human is designed. DaVinci is a great example of somebody who had a very active imagination and a way of turning that imagination into many concrete expressions. I used to like to say and still like to say that one of the goals for me of NLP and our NLP practitioner program is to keep turning us all more and more into a Renaissance people where we can do many things.

We can excel in many ways. The other image here, of course, is the idea of a prism where we take white light and it comes through those filters and it's broken into many different colors. We can say this white light is like the quantum possibility. There are always all these possibilities there but until we bring them to our filters, we are not able to actually perceive them or express them. So this is going to be part of what we are learning to do. How do we get to use these filters in order to create better realities for ourselves and others?

Slide 7: Cognitive Mind

Again we say we start with the cognitive mind. A big part of NLP is about the brain and learning how to use that brain. Our visual system, our hearing auditory system, our kinesthetic system, our olfactory system. And of course how those fit together in our frontal lobe, where we integrate things. In other places, we separate them. And how do we use them in order to influence one another. Because this is where our fundamental maps of our world are created and stored and re-accessed. But it is not the only place.

Slide 8: Somatic Mind
We do have other parts of our intelligence that are processed through other parts of our bodies, for example around our intestines. That is called the "enteric" nervous system. There is a whole system of nerves that is actually developed even before our brain is as we are growing and this enteric nervous system has something like over a hundred and forty million different cells and I think something like three trillion connections. Neuroscientists will tell you it is roughly the number of synapses in the brain of a cat. We have got an intelligence there. The same thing with the heart. That whole field of neurocardiology shows that the heart is not just a mechanical pump. There is a whole series of nerves that are both connected to our brain but are also self-organizing. This is another seat of intelligence. In fact, studies of people who have had heart transplants show that they pick up very interesting personal characteristics and even memories from people where they have these heart transplant. Also we have a spine. There is a whole way our brain is interacting with everything else through our bodies all the way to our feet. So there is an intelligence throughout the body and we use the body a lot especially in what we call our third generation of NLP, but it is been through every generation, of using our body through what we call accessing cues. Also what we will call somatic syntax that this is a very important part of our intelligence.

Slide 9: Field Mind
Then this third part we are calling a "field." Field is, you could say, it is kind of more related to a system. It is more energetic. It is a relational intelligence. It is not something that is as directly perceivable through our five senses, but it is there. We know, if we think about it, we are surrounded by fields. We use our cell phones. We have 4G, 5G. We have wireless internet. We are constantly surrounded by these fields that are communicating different kinds of information. And the same thing can happen also between us and others. There are all types of information where we create what we would call a "collective intelligence" rather than simply an individual intelligence. Gregory Bateson, who we were mentioning earlier, used to say, the individual mind, he called it imminent. "It emerges through the interactions of all these different systems in us." He says it is "imminent" but "not only in the body, it is imminent in the pathways and messages outside of the body," meaning that our mind, our individual mind is shaped and is expressed through all of these interactions. He said, this individual mind is also part of a larger mind. And this larger mind is maybe what some people mean by God or call God, but it is still something that is imminent in the whole planetary ecology - this whole sense of all of these [interactions] in our social systems. So this notion of a field mind is that our mind is part of a much bigger mind. There are people like Carl Jung who talked about a collective consciousness, an archetypal intelligence. So these are also part of what we will be working with and exploring in our NLPU Practitioner program.

Slide 10: Key Premises of NLP – Holons and Holograms
Now one other big key, especially to our third generation NLP, is this idea of what Arthur Koestler many years ago developed called "holon". Holon is a simple concept. It means that everything in the universe, everything that we see and know, is whole, but it is also made up of smaller wholes and part of bigger wholes. So if I take myself, for example, I am a whole person. But I made up of parts. I have a head. My head is made up of other parts eyes, nose, mouth. Those are made up of other parts different kinds of tissues cells. Cells are made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms and you can keep going. We still have not found the smallest one. But I am also part of bigger systems. I am part of my family system. I am part of a community system. I am part of an ecosystem. I am part of a racial system. So, we are all parts of bigger systems as well part of a global environmental system. So this is a very important notion because there is something Gregory Bateson would really emphasize strongly that the idea that each part of the system has an influence on the others, and in many ways, each part of that holon is also, we can say, is like a hologram. It contains the whole and each can recreate the whole.

Now we know, for example, every cell in the body has the same DNA. This is the kind of idea of a hologram. So every cell in our body has that same DNA and in fact, we know from cloning that could take any cell of this body and you can actually recreate a whole thing from that one cell. We would say the same thing is similar as an individual member of, for example, of the human race. Anything that every other human can experience, I can experience. The whole of the human race is in me. We could even take that farther in some ways. The only reason that I can experience anything about a bigger universe is because in some ways that bigger holon is in me. And certainly the way I understand it must be through what is in me and my filters. So I think this is very key.

Slide 11: Holon and Holarchy

My colleague Antonio Meza, who illustrated a number of my books, came up with this beautiful picture of this idea of the holon. And we can see that here we are taking that Vitruvian Man, playing on that in that center person, who is made up of a brain, a heart and a belly. Those are made up of tissues and cells and atoms, molecules, atoms, but part of a family system, a professional system, social system, an ecological system, even a solar system.

And one of the key things that is principal in this notion of holon is that whichever part of the holon is ignored is going to start producing predictable problems. And I think this is very important for when we do our work with NLP. That we say that oftentimes, if we experience a problem or a symptom, it is a communication about something that is being in some way out of balance or that is being ignored or not paid attention to.

Slide 12: Core Value – Ecology

Then finally, as we say, Ecology becomes a very important part of our whole approach at NLP University. This idea that we want to acknowledge and respect many different maps of the world that we want to have the sense of identifying with the whole system. One of the one of the shadows that you have probably heard or that is out there about NLP, is this notion of "manipulation". That is that somebody uses their NLP knowledge to either take advantage of or to, some way, control another person. Manipulation is a classic example of disconnecting from a bigger whole. It is no longer about us and we, it is about me versus you and I am going to get something. And this is the idea of a win-lose. For us, of course, any tool, we like to say that the tools of NLP, like any tool, can be used to help somebody or hurt somebody. I can take a hammer and build a house or I can hit somebody with it. So the tools themselves have no morality. No ethical sense. It is us who use them and it is important that we use them in an ecological way. And a big part of this is, as we will be exploring in the NLP Presuppositions Master Class, is this notion of what we call a positive intention - that generally we are acting from a positive intention. But when we become disconnected, that intention is only for us or only for even some part of us. So it is really important that we kind of look at that and we will be exploring these other - we call these presuppositions of NLP.

Also, we are seeking to watch out for one another. So I would like to read this very beautiful comment by Thomas Berry. He said, "The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence." And I think we can say that for any part of the holon - whether it is our family, or whether it is male against female, or one race against another race, or one belief system against another belief system - we are looking for a way to be able to deal with challenging things, but from an inclusive perspective. So these are some of the basic background of our NLP work.

Slide 13: Practice

The last thing I would like to say is that NLP is that is not something that is simply intellectual. We are speaking about all of these different intelligences. To really use all of those intelligences, one of the things that we need to do, is to put it into practice. So the last thing I wanted to share is a final slide here. It is about putting this into practice. A big part of what we will be doing throughout this program is practicing. The practice part cannot be done in this way, virtually. One of the things that we are going to be doing is we will have these master classes which you can watch recorded. And you can re-watch them. There are probably many things you can do to get the most out of them. But when we practice, we are really putting this knowledge into action.

One of the favorite things that my colleague Judith Delozier and I like to say is this proverb from New Guinea, "Knowledge is only a rumor until it is in the muscle." Martha Graham, who we will be referring to along the way, is considered one of the founders of modern expressive dance. She says, "Practice means to perform over and over again, in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, faith, desire." Practice is a means of inviting perfection - not trying to be perfect, but inviting it. This idea, she says, we learn by practice whether it is learning to dance, which was her expression, by practicing dancing or learning to live by practicing living. The principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God, or you can say an "athlete of the universe."

One of our fellow NLP trainers who has also been on our faculty at NLPU, Lynne Conwell, says, "You are what you practice." And as Gandhi pointed out, it is important to be the change we want to see in the world.

So this is going to be kind of an introduction. This is our first Master Class. We are going to be taking all these things and going into much more depth with them. So I look forward to this journey ahead with you of this next generation of NLP with our NLP University International.

Thank you.