PPT - Helping the Body Work - by Matthew Wingett

 

Doctors Ron and Edie Perry are a laid-back husband-and-wife team with an amazing angle on NLP. They have studied with Dr. Richard Bandler since the 1980s, in which time they have been perfecting PPT to work as a highly effective extra tool for the NLP toolbox, and they teach PPT alongside Richard Bandler, John La Valle and Kathleen La Valle on their Practitioner and Master Practitioner course in Orlando. 

 

I met them one Thursday evening at a London practice session where they were doing a short workshop on PPT, demonstrating their techniques and asking us to practice on each other.  

 

The question I was dying to ask was: what is PPT?  

 

The answer from Edie Perry was that essentially it is a methodology for kinesthetically applying the techniques of NLP.  By doing so, it is possible to directly teach the client's brain to change what their body is doing.  This change can be achieved quickly and easily - in much the same way that NLP changes the way the brain processes information in the main visual, auditory and kinesthetic rep systems through techniques of visualization and deliberate auditory manifestation.  

 

I found the possibility of being able to change the body easily an intriguing prospect. What Ron and Edie were stating was possible with PPT was definitely something qualitatively different from "standard" NLP. So what was the difference? From what I could work out, it was essentially their starting point. Dr Ron Perry explained to me how it all began:

 

“I began studying with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais in 1981. In response to my questioning about the ramifications of his work that were occurring in addition to the movement changes,  Feldenkrais told me of the clever work of Dr. Richard Bandler.  Bandler had taken Feldenkrais to experience Dr. Milton Erickson. Upon witnessing Erickson's work, Feldenkrais was astonished that he witnessed the same physiological signs of improvement as he saw in his own work. He was amazed that someone could get those kinds of changes without actually putting hands on and touching. Bandler and Feldenkrais both led me to believe that there exists a conceptual unity between these two very dissimilar methods for communicating with the brain and nervous system. I took that idea to heart and began experimenting with how to translate all the various linguistic and non-verbal patterns into hands-on techniques, as well as attempting to translate Feldenkrais’ techniques into linguistic patterns. Edie and I would make things up and test them out over and over again and present them for Dr. Bandler’s continuing feedback. Eventually he told us that we must teach these transformative techniques. We’ve been doing so ever since.”

 

The techniques Ron and Edie demonstrated to us seemed quite straightforward, involving the gentle manipulation of the fingers and joints in order to pace and then lead the body into a more relaxed and better-functioning state. It seemed to me, during the course of the bodywork practice that we did with a partner, a very pleasant technique. However, I couldn’t see how it would help people with more serious physical problems, as a friend who had been treated by them had avowed it could. In her case, a painful and locked neck that had needed physiotherapy or acupuncture every six months had been permanently cured after a single session with Dr Ron Perry. Could it really be this effective?

 

Well, I was soon to see for myself. During our practice session, I happened to be standing near to Dr Ron Perry when he was approached by a man from the group who explained that he had injured his arm in a motorbike crash many years before. His arm had extremely reduced motor capacity: his shoulder was painful, he was unable to turn his arm, and he had no feeling in his fingers except for tingling - describing himself as having a "sandy hand". He had undergone physiotherapy for years to try to get full movement back in the arm, but to little avail. He also said that when he came out from the physiotherapy sessions, he felt like he had done "several rounds in a boxing ring" because he felt so raw.

 

I watched Ron work with him for just a few minutes - gently manipulating his arm and hand, giving a gentle lead to his fingers, and seeming to softly coax them back into life. To my amazement, a few minutes later, the injured biker had regained nearly full rotation and extension of the arm, and the sensation of "sandy hand" had been confined to only one part of his middle finger. The biker looked down at his hand as he repeatedly clenched and stretched his fingers, with a puzzled look on his face. That look of disbelief reminded me very much of the look that a previously phobic person gives you when you have just removed a phobic response from them. They haven't quite adjusted to the new reality, and are still expecting to have some vestige of the old problem. But it's gone. Completely gone.

 

The change was so extreme that it reminded me of the opening of Richard Bandler and John Grinder's book "Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H Erickson Vol 1" in which the authors quote Arthur C Clarke's famous maxim that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".  I really does have to be seen for the full impact to be appreciated.

 

Ron and Edie are running their classes in PPT all over the world. They are currently about to run two courses in Bournemouth, UK. The Foundation Course in PPT starts on 19th June 2009 and runs to the 21st. Their PPT Level 1 Course runs from 22nd to 24th June 2009.

 

To find out more about PPT, read Dr Ron Perry's article about PPT, The Different Difference That Makes The Difference, which gives a more detailed discussion of its methodology, aims and objectives. 

 

For further information visit the PPT website: www.PatternsOfPhysicalTransformation.com.