Master At Work: An Evening With Richard Bandler - by Carole Powell
Richard Bandler's Introduction to NLP was held on the evening of 15th April 2010 in a packed room in the Ibis Hotel, Earl's Court. Carole Powell describes a great event, and how her daughter may have changed her mind about NLP...
Whenever I told friends that I was looking forward to spending an evening with Richard Bandler, I had to explain it wasn't just me (unfortunately!) but I would be part of an audience of 300 at The Ibis Hotel in London, gathering for the opportunity to meet a unique man who is a master of communication.
Richard Bandler is the Co-Creator of NLP and therefore without doubt 'the horse's mouth' on the subject. There are many exponents and indeed great masters, but to hear the original thought behind what Richard has described as an 'education process' is an experience not to be missed.
Arriving early (as I have a habit of doing - perhaps I should use a bit of NLP to overcome my lateness anxiety), I had the choice of sitting in the front row. However, accompanied by my 18 year old daughter, Nicola, who was convinced she would be hypnotised against her will, we compromised and sat on the second row in front of the middle of the stage. My daughter had a rudimentary understanding of NLP prior to the occasion (I'm a Practitioner but it is notoriously difficult to work with family members), but she still began the evening under the impression she was about to see some sort of stage hypnotist. In actual fact, for the vast part of the evening you simply enjoyed being in the company of a great raconteur as Richard enthralled you with story after story - or should I say stories within stories. Richard uses the technique of 'nested loops' whereby stories are begun one after the other and finished later after ideas and suggestions have been embedded thus enabling a greater capacity for the audience to sub-consciously understand and learn. Not that the uninitiated would necessarily have appreciated that - or indeed needed to - and so ultimately the evening was a rollercoaster journey of humorous and fascinating tales that didn't always appear to reach a conclusion thereby keeping the audience mesmerised by every carefully chosen and ordered word.
To some extent there was an auto biographical element to the evening and certainly Richard has had a varied and fascinating life which has included being a scientist, inventor and teacher. He explained how he worked on his original ideas and created models for success which is a fundamental NLP technique. He then described how he developed these models and subsequently applied them. If you have been lucky enough to have been trained by Richard, as indeed I have, then you would have enjoyed the opportunity to hear again some of his most interesting case studies such as the poor girl who kept thinking she had murdered her parents and the deliciously amusing treatment of the man who thought he was Jesus - made all the more entertaining by Richard's chuckling as he relates the story with the panache of Peter Ustinov.
My daughter favoured the second half of the evening over the first as there was some much anticipated audience participation. You could have heard a pin drop as a brave volunteer took to the stage sitting opposite Richard and revealed how she spent several hours of every day fretting over a past deeply unpleasant experience. Our heart went out to her and I'm sure none of us could think of a more deserving recipient for a touch of Bandler magic. Using NLP techniques and hypnotism we witnessed an apparent transformation in this lovely young lady and we all silently willed this lifting of her demons to last a lifetime. Certainly the demonstration of the power and benefits of NLP could have been no better served for us all to see. From my daughter's point of view and probably quite a few people in the audience, further practical demonstrations of NLP techniques would have been more than welcome. To many it seemed like pure magic but for those with some insight into the techniques being used it was an opportunity to watch a master at work.
I always feel there is so much wisdom and common sense in NLP and all throughout the evening I could detect muffled exclamations of "That's just SO true!", and none more so than when we were told that if we look for things to worry about we will surely find them. Yes, of course we know that but we still do it all the same and in fact we realised over and over again that human beings can be incredibly stupid a lot of the time. By the time the evening finished, we all felt wise beyond our years and empowered to live our lives in a better and more fulfilling manner. Audience members dashed to shake hands with the great man and acquire his autograph on their Richard Bandler books or simply just to thank him for introducing them to a new way of thinking. In conclusion we all left wanting more - including my daughter who rather wished she had been hypnotised after all . . .
NEW DVD OUT NOW: AN EVENING WITH RICHARD BANDLER - INTRODUCTION TO NLP
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