As NLP continues to grow and evolve over the last 30 years, it has become more difficult to give a precise definition that captures the spirit of NLP entirely. It is also this spirit that makes NLP stand out from many other modalities.
So the text book definition is:
Neuro: Our nervous system, brain/mind and how that interacts with the body.
Linguistic: The words and language we use. Language can be verbal and non verbal.
Programming: Is the habits of thought (often unconscious) that lead to habits of behaviour. By discovering these with NLP you can then decide whether they work well for you or lead you to be unhappy and unfulfilled. This places you in a great position of CHOICE about whether you would like to change them.
Neuro Linguistic Programming was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Bandler, a psychologist and philosopher and Grinder, a psychologist and linguistic, worked together and observed that what people processed in their head, was being displayed by their eye movements and wrote about it in their lecture transcript called ‘Frogs into Princes’. This allowed the more observant onlooker to integrate the external information and assimilate what was going on with the observed thought patterns. One of Bandler and Grinder’s other early books was ‘The Structure of Magic’ and was published in 1975. This paperback was a more detailed investigation of language and applications in therapy and became the bedrock of what we now more generally appreciate as NLP today.
Many lecturers and therapists have further developed and enhanced the techniques and thereby helped create and document one of the most powerful series of tools available today, sort of like today’s open source software. NLP is well known for it’s applications in the field of therapy and counselling but there are many other areas in which NLP can be applied including:
- Counselling, coaching and therapy to accelerate changes with clients by looking at the processes that underlie a particular pattern, emotion or habit.
- Education and training to promote and accelerate learning and memory. NLP is also a valuable tool when it comes to training and teaching design methods.
- Personal development to remove negative emotions and patterns and promote confidence and self esteem. NLP also has tremendous applications in goal setting.
- Business to promote good communication and negotiation strategies including sales and management skills.
- Sport to enhance performance.
- Parenting, learning how to foster good, clear communication with your children right from the start.
- Communication, to acquire excellent communication skills.