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The missing pieces

For me the crossroads occurred when I began attending body-work seminars and workshops in 1984-5.

I'd been using NLP for a few years, was sold on it and had experience of how it could produce results in my own life and with people who came to my stress management classes and counselling sessions.

BUT...  I did not feel completely at ease with it. There was something missing. And when I began attending the bodywork events I realised that what was missing was warmth, friendliness, fun and humour!

Also missing was a physical involvement - after all 'neuro', which refers to our neurology, is the first part of the name Neuro-Linguistic Programming... 

And as a result of this recognition I almost decided to part company with the world of NLP.

Touch for Health

I'd spent a couple of weeks at a Touch for Health Instructor training. (Touch for Health is a lay form of Applied Kinesiology). At the training I'd had a great time, learned lots, become quite skilled and learned a lot about me through my body.

Then I attended a seminar in London at which most of the participants were NLP-oriented.

Dave Dobson's seminar

The seminar featured the wise and wonderful Dave Dobson and was great. (So great, in fact, that I still use material from it. In fact, I think that I pass on more of what I learned from Dave then than from any other trainer I have encountered.)

And yet this was the point at which I was initially turned off NLP. Because I mistook the medium for the message. 

Dave Dobson exhibited warmth, friendliness, humour and a deep interest in other people. Most of the participants did not. They knew lots - and they said so. They talked a good talk - but didn't walk it.

Some of them were attending the current extended training - at that time the UK equivalent to the NLP Practitioner Certification Programme. However I did not see nor experience much rapport. Nor did I discern much interest, on their part, in other people - apart from their continuously trying to analyse people according to representational systems, congruence versus incongruence, etc.

Bodywork

The contrast between this rather analytical, intellectual and humourless bunch and the people I had made friends with at the Touch for Health course was marked. And it caused me to question whether or not to continue with NLP. The questioning and wondering went on for about a year and a half.

It was a very valuable period. I explored some fascinating routes to personal change (and made a few important personal breakthroughs) including Applied Kinesiology, Educational Kinesiology, Clinical Kinesiology, the work of Dr. Sheldon Deal, Neo-Reichian bodywork, and the very interesting field of Bioenergetics.

But bits of NLP kept creeping into what I was doing in these areas too, almost as if my unconscious mind was reminding me that I couldn't just drop NLP. And then a few things occurred to me.

The medium is not the message

Through meeting and chatting with more NLPers I began to realise that the majority of people at the Dave Dobson seminar and a few others that I'd attended were just a majority - not everyone in NLP at the time was like this.

They were simply reflecting what they had learned (and, perhaps, what they thought they had learned). This did not mean NLP had to be like this.

Instead of jettisoning a wonderful process because of how it was being manifested in the UK I should do something about making NLP more fun, more human, and more grounded in the physical.

So I have been working on the latter ever since. From that point forward I devoted my interest and enthusiasm to NLP and kept the physical side of things to myself - until mid-1999. That is when Pegasus NLP began to introduce indoor and outdoor physical activities into our NLP workshops and courses. 

The "Neuro" in NLP

For me the very important element was being reactivated. The 'neuro' part of the name 'Neuro-Linguistic Programming' was being been re-activated. John Grinder's had started it, Scout Cloud Lee and her team have been enthusiastically working with it ever since. No doubt other training organisations have been doing the same, quietly and in their own way.

At Pegasus NLP, we began exploring the use of play, fun, and physical involvement and challenge in NLP workshops. The result is our Practitioner Certification Programme which seamlessly integrates these elements.

The fun...

We have also found that engaging in physical activities with other people has made the workshops and training more fun, more humorous, and has enabled people to break through a lot of the heavy-serious adult patterns that they had become trapped in.

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