Questions and Answers. Call Recording.

Five changes: NLP Questions and Answers

If you missed the call/webcast  last Friday you can still catch the recording at  Recording of Call

We only had time to answer some of your questions. So here are a few more.

Thanks to everyone for your participation and energy. Most of these questions have a relevance beyond NLP, or our Five Changes NLP training. There’s a bigger picture here that has to do with change, transformation, and healing of all kinds.

Q: What are the possible negative outcomes for taking the training and doing this work?

This will apply to any genuinely transformational work that changes you from being the victim of circumstances to living your life at choice. Think of all people who have done amazing things in their life, sometimes against all odds. Some may be iconic heroes, like Mandela, or Oprah, or Cesar Chavez, others may be people you know. You may even be one of them yourself. Think about it! Think of people who have beaten the odds to do something extraordinary.

At some point they refused to put up with excuses for not doing what they knew they could do, what they had to do .. whether it was changing the world or dealing with some personal misfortune.

When you change what you are willing to tolerate in your life, whether it’s a bad situation or negative people, some doors may close. But others will open. When it becomes more important to you to face your challenges, than to continue hanging out with the situations and people who reinforce your excuses for not changing, you may lose some of those friends. But that may not actually be a bad thing, It may not be a negative outcome. You may have to change some of the things you do and places where you hang out. That may not be a bad thing either. But anyway, consider yourself warned ..

Five Changes Soul Work and Classical NLP Certification Training

Q: Are NLP and hypnosis the same? How are they related?

Yes and no. Hypnosis and NLP are certainly related, and share some common ground. But you can practice NLP without any formal reference to hypnosis, and there are numerous styles of hypnotherapy that make no overt use of NLP techniques. Consider hypnosis as simply the means to bypass the rational mind in order to effect deep long-lasting healing and change by accessing unconscious mental and neurological patterns. Based on that, then NLP and hypnosis certainly have a lot in common.

Some people are intrigued by hypnosis. Hypnosis may seem exotic and mysterious. Actually, hypnosis is a daily occurrence for all of us. As the great Milton Erikson said, “Most people walk around in a trance of disempowerment, our work is to change that into a trance of empowerment.” We are using the words hypnosis and trance interchangeably.

You will learn more about the amazing Milton Erickson during our training. His use of Conversational Hypnosis is very much a part of our NLP curriculum.

Q: I’ve heard people speak of ‘NLP magic’ and would love to know what that means.

It used to take weeks, or even months, to get people to overcome a phobia. In the traditional behaviorist methodology curing a phobia is a long process of gradual desensitization.

With NLP we can effectively remove a phobic reaction in just a few minutes, permanently. People find it hard to believe that something that used to take so long can now be done so quickly; but in NLP rapid permanent positive change is commonplace.

Q: What else can NLP change?

If you can quickly and permanently change a phobia, something that used to be considered so hard to change, do you think it might be possible to identify and change a limiting belief? Or a deep-rooted negative emotional pattern? Or compulsive or addictive behaviors and habits? Do you think common fears, like fear of public speaking, might also be something you might be able to change pretty easily?

One of the things we teach students of NLP is the importance of letting go of negative expectations of their clients. Studies have shown that clients and patients tend to fulfill the expectations of those they go to for help. Even completely unexpressed expectations are like self-fulfilling prophesies.

This may be one of the fundamental problems with traditional diagnostic approaches. Diagnoses are valuable, but only as ways to identify problems. If the diagnosis defines the client, or patient, it places them inside a box. But the client is always more than that box. Likewise, the cure, or the transformation, is always more than the conventional prognosis.

You don’t have to believe in miracles. More than fifty percent of remissions from ‘in-curable’ illness is unexplainable by conventional means.  These are already ‘miracle’ cures. In other words, for those fifty percent something changed on an unconscious level to make healing possible.

NLP has always been very curious about how this happens..

Q: How’s is NLP done?

We don’t have time to cover all the details. But the simple answer is that we all create our deepest reality, our inner landscape, our responses to the world, through the words and images that we use for mental access and recall. It is much easier to change those words, images, and the meanings associated with them than anyone realized back in the days when behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and related disciplines, were the only games in town.

NLP uses very specific ways to help people change how they represent and perceive the world they live in. We use a wide range of inductive techniques.In the NLP training we teach you how you can continue to develop ways to do the same for yourself, and others. You may take NLP into a therapeutic situation, a classroom or training room, or you may use it from the stage. The tools and techniques are applicable to almost any situation.

If you are working with clients you will have the tools to effectively change the physical, emotional, behavioral, social, professional, and even spiritual dynamics of their life.

Q: Can I talk to Caitriona or Michele about this training before I register, and will I still get the special price?

If you have worked with either of us privately in past the couple of years we do have a special offer for you if you would like to join us for this. The offer is good through the end of this month. So call us before March 31^st

A Story

Once a client came out of desperation – as clients sometimes do – having exhausted all other options. She had chronic back pain from an auto accident years before. She had had several surgeries; had been to neurologists, acupuncturists, and pain doctors. She had been to a psychiatrist at a well-known Los Angeles university hospital who gave her pain medication on condition that she had sex with him. He told her that she would have back pain for the rest of her life. He also told her that if she ever mentioned his sexual abuse he would claim that she was psychotic and delusional.

She came to me for hypnotherapy. After one session her pain was gone. A year later she reported that she had no recurrence of the pain. Such cases help me remember how powerful these tools for change really are. Does that mean her pain was not real? Of course not! It had been very real for her .. for years. Does it mean those other healthcare professionals were incompetent? Aside from the psychiatrist, they were all probably very good at what they did. It is simply that she came to me at a moment when she was truly ready for change. Fortunately the tools I have were able to catalyze that change in an effective and permanent way.

The deepest change is often not about the symptoms. Effecting change is often a matter of helping people to claim their power back, and remember who they are. People may come with ‘incurable’ problems. But those problems are incurable only because the person had learned to believe them to be so.

We do not claim that hypnosis or NLP trumps every other healing or transformational modality. Amazing transformation takes place in many contexts and through many healing modalities.

We do say that there are huge possibilities for the deepest sort of healing outside of the traditional paradigm; and that deep healing often takes place beyond known and familiar territories.

Five Changes Soul Work and Classical NLP Certification Training

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