Reviewing the NLP Assistants in London

After I had asked in an earlier post which NLP trainers you would like to hear about, I received several emails from people who wanted me to comment on certain assistants on Richard Bandler's and Paul McKenna's NLP courses in London.

They asked about

- the psychic vampire who everybody tried to avoid

- the top assistant who was thought to be so good at getting people into trance because his breath could stun a rhino

- the NLP Master Trainer who got her certificate because she sucked up to Richard

- Richard Bandler's "Apprentices" who ranged from highly impressive and skilled to total morons

I thought about commenting on those people, but really, none of them are household names in the field of NLP (maybe the "Master Trainer"), so any comments from me would just be mean and nasty and I would hope that I've got most of the nastiness out of my system.

I might actually mention one of them, but need to do a bit of research, so no names at this point:

As far as I know, Rhinobreath actually took somebody's gig to run an NLP course abroad, because he was not bothered about certain ethics, whereas the trainer who was first invited to run the course, was.

If I got the story right, then the foreign promoter wanted the original trainer to cut some corners, which he declined to do.

So the promoter kicked him out, and all of a sudden, Rhinobreath was announced as doing the course, and if my information is correct, ran at least 2 of those courses and finally stopped being invited back after he tried to push his "own" courses, which apparently were not very well received.

For now, I will focus on the more well-known NLP Trainers and the next one coming up will be Wyatt Woodsmall.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Joseph Riggio

Maybe you also agree with the statement that it is okay to be the smartest person in the room, but that it is not okay to let everybody know it.

Whenever Joseph is in the room, it is pretty obvious that he is the smartest person in it (even if I am in the same room....).

And that is the main problem I have with him: he comes across as an incredibly arrogant asshole.

But that is actually the only issue I have with him, and, honestly, this might be more of a problem with my own self-esteem than him being overbearingly confident.

He is a treasure trove of knowledge, his speech at the ANLP conference in 2007 (I think) was one of the best speeches I have ever heard. He was mixing NLP, Spiral Dynamics, and Mythology into a work of genius. I think this is what he calls the Mythoself Process, but I actually have no clue what it is about, because whenever I ask people who attended his seminars on it, they get a tranced-out look on their faces and say that it was fantastic, but they can't explain why.

No matter, Joseph is an exceptionally skilled hypnotist, NLP trainer, speaker, and coach.

Very highly recommended!

Which NLP Trainer would you like to hear about?

Just checking, because I only seem to find the time to write about one blog post every few weeks.

The trainers on my shortlist that I will review soon are

• Richard Bandler
• John LaValle
• John La Tourrette
• Michael Breen
• John Grinder
• Michael Hall
• Shelle Rose Charvet
• Rodger Bailey

There are dozens of trainers I met over the years, mostly from the UK. If there is anyone who you would like me to look at, do let me know. I might have met them or might have heard some interesting gossip...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Tom Vizzini

Tom Vizzini is the guy behind Essential Skills Seminars and the 3D Mind technique/process.

I never met him in person, but we had quite a few fights on the old alt.psychology.nlp message board. The closest I got to him was (if I remember correctly) one time in Manchester, where I presented to an NLP practice group and one of the attendees asked me if I had met Tom, because he had presented at the same venue the day before.

So my experience with him and his stuff stems from video tapes (tapes, yes, he's been around for a while...).
I am not privy to any inside information, so I don't know how much influence his partner Kim McFarland has/had on the whole Essential Skills and 3D Mind thing, but I will just focus on Tom Vizzini for now.

Would you like to hear the good stuff or the bad stuff first?

Sorry, I'll be starting with the good stuff:

The 3D Mind technique is fantastic! One of the best change techniques I have ever encountered and I recommend it unreservedly. I hear that he updated the technique a few years ago, but even without an update, it is an essential tool for every NLP/Change/Whatever practitioner.
Really. No snarky comment from me. Go out and buy it!

Now the bad stuff:
Tom is an absolutely horrible presenter. Granted, he might have improved (the last info my spies gave me was from 2008), but he certainly used to be so bad that I nearly missed the greatness of the 3D Mind technique, because I was so annoyed with his presentation style. Horrible sense of humour, always laughing at his own jokes - just awful. And, Tom, here is a piece of advice from someone who is a good presenter: STOP FIDDLING WITH THE PEN!

Rant over.

His Essential Skills tapes are very basic, probably far too basic for anyone who has attended an NLP intro session, but again, the 3D Mind stuff is fantastic, and you can easily tweak it to fit your own style. Highly recommended!

Update:
Tom was kind enough to point out that the tapes I was talking about are not available anymore and they now ensure that only their newest stuff is available on their website.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Michael Carroll

Bwahahahaha!

You can't be serious!

Alright, I have not trained with him. Only met him twice during an event his company organised with Overdurf and Silverthorn down in Croydon. He came across as the most arrogant twat in in the world of NLP.

During a break in the (really good seminar) I attended, he got up on stage to sell some further seminars and I have rarely seen a so-called NLP Master Trainer be so bad at selling. Very obvious and very easy to see through. I was not the only one who left his presentation early.

The one time I talked to him was in the men's room. I was doing my business when he planted himself next to me and started up a conversation about whether I would be interested in attending an NLP Trainer's Training.
When I replied that I already had a trainer's certificate from a different certification body, he stopped dead in his tracks and ignored me from then on.
It is possible that he shut up because he caught a glimpse of our respective magic wands, but that is just conjecture on my part.

One thing I have to admit, he is probably among the top three most successful NLP Trainers in the UK, at least from a financial standpoint.

From everything I have seen and also heard from others, he is blatantly and pathetically obvious about his motivation. Money, money, money. Yep, back then he drove a Maserati or something, and his students regaled us with stories about how quickly they made back the money they spent on his seminars, but from everything I have seen on videos and in person, he is just not very good.

Of course, we all know that being good doesn't count for much in the world of NLP...

What is an NLP Master Trainer?

I once presented at an NLP conference in the UK and after my presentation (which was very well received, he stated modestly), I sat in on some other seminars and generally had a good time listening in on other people's stuff and learning about their approaches.

I am not 100% (would have to look at my notes), but I seem to remember enjoying a presentation by Penny Tompkins on clean language and a seminar on sub-personalities by a trainer whose name I forgot (but who I seem to remember was very pretty).

Then there was this guy I'd never heard of before who presented on something called Thought Pattern Management. Turns out that TPM is a very interesting concept and I will be writing more about it in another post. The guy who presented it was not very impressive, but since I was interested in the topic, I introduced myself and asked him where he learned about it and whether he was an NLP trainer. His indignant answer was: "I'm not an NLP trainer, I'm an NLP MASTER trainer!". I was quite shocked that this guy who I had never heard of before should be one of the chosen few. A Master Trainer? Wow! 

So I researched  bit and found that you can actually attend courses to become a Master trainer. You also have to present a certain number of events before they let you get the tattoo, golden underwear and whatever status symbols are bestowed upon NLP Master trainers (I'm just guessing here, as I am only a lowly trainer). I think this procedure is similar for ANLP and INLPTA, two of the largest NLP organisations worldwide. Not sure if the people certifying you are Master Master Trainers or Meta Master Trainers, but at one point your title wouldn't fit on your business card anymore.

If I got my history right, Wyatt Woodsmall was the first NLP Master trainer, because he handed Richard Bandler a certificate stating "Master Trainer" and Richard signed it. Wyatt is grumpy, but very good at what he does and he really contributed to the field of NLP, so he probably would be a good choice for a Master trainer. 

On the other side of the coin, the SNLP side, you can't attend courses, but you can be liked by Richard. Which helps. Allegedly, some SNLP Master Trainers received their certificates because they helped Richard move house, kissed his ass, or just because he likes them. Not a lot of quality control there. 

Truth be told, some of the Master Trainers I've met are really, really good. Many are not and it taught me not to look for the label, but to evaluate a trainer on his or her own merits. Titles in the world of NLP don't mean that much and Bandler seems to think along the same lines, as he once said that we shouldn't take these things too seriously, because, after all, he himself is not even an NLP Practitioner...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Tad James

I had read books on personal development for years and had also already encountered NLP through the books of Anthony Robbins, but I had never attended a live seminar until I traveled to London to see Tad James deliver "The Secret of Creating Your Future".

This was sometime in the early 90s and since I had not heard of Tad James before and just went because I liked the title of the seminar, I had no idea what to expect.

Here is my review in a nutshell:

Seminar: excellent
Trainer: patronising

The seminar was really good and I learned a lot of tools, some of which I still use.

It went like this:

find out about your time line
clear past blocks/limiting decisions
clear past negative feelings
align your values
put good stuff into your future time line

Looking back at the seminar with my current knowledge, the biggest complaint would be that it was a 3-day seminar. I normally teach all those things in maybe half a day, including different applications and methods of using your time line.

My biggest complaint back then was that I and other delegates felt quite unsupported when we had questions or challenges.

And I really hated that the whole course seemed to be a setup for selling us other seminars, books, and tape sets (remember audio tapes? Yes, I am that old!).

As I was so inexperienced, I fell for it and bought some tapes, books and also  attended an intro day on Huna, which was just not very good. I trained with several other people in Huna and they would eat Tad James for breakfast.

Oh yes, Tad James, let's see: Back then I did not know better, so thought he must be quite good, but listening to his tapes now and having seen him since, I must say that he is the most patronising NLP/Personal Development trainer I have ever encountered! 

He talks down to you. He does not answer questions properly. He is obviously so happy when he uses "clever" language patterns. He is constantly trying to upsell stuff (not as badly as his disciple David Shephard, but it still gets pretty annoying).

I met his son Matthew once at an NLP conference and while he had good rapport skills, he came across as a lightweight.  

One last thing about Tad: in 2000 he (well, Matthew actually did it) bought the web domains www.richardbandler.com and www.johngrinder.com and had them forwarded to his own web page. However, he did not know that Grinder and Bandler had their names trademarked and so they had him hand over the  sites pretty quickly. 

Still, quite a despicable and unethical act, methinks.

Make good decisions!


Update: Here is a very interesting comment by Gerrith Wil Lassen on a LinkedIn Group about Time Line Therapy:

"I think there is some confusion here. Interesting to read the story of Tad and his wife from a Wyatt Woodsmall perspective. He brought Timeline to Hawaii 3 years after the discovery in a Workshop about Metaprograms and Beliefesystems in 1982 with Leslie Cameron in Illinois. There was two students: Anne Linden and Frank Stass who did discover the timeline whilst exploring their Metaprograms In-Time and Trough-Time. They asked all the other students, how they experience time. A idea was born. A year later it was demonstrated by Steve Andreas on the 2th NANLP conference and at the same time Robert Dilts was also working with exploring the timeline on the west coast. They did not know from each other. No Bandler involved at all! In fact Timeline was discussed already intensively in the 20s and 30s by Huserl and Heidegger in Europe.

 About 3 years after the workshop in Illinois, Woodsmall started a practitioner group on Hawaii and Tad James and his wife Ardie did participate as students. Tad was immediately fascinated and did explore the Timeline with Marvin Oka and Richard Diehl in a little group, together with Wyatt Woodsmall. Before Internet, nobody had a clue about whats happen in Santa Cruz, in Boulder Colorado or Illinois and Tad seems he was very clever when going to the patent office on Hawaii 5 years after he heart about it and protecting the Timeline on Hawaii. It was never his in first place.

 The guy in the office hasn't heart about NLP at all and nothing about what the other groups have explored the last 8 years already. So Tad James got the patent on Hawaii - and only there! It was a lousy chess move by an Practitioner, who did not understand the rules in our field. Ego wins over the Soul from time to time. NLP belongs to those who carefully learn it and using it and comply with the ethical rules and prepositions."

Just another interesting tidbit about Tad's ethics (and excellent business sense!).

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Paul McKenna

I went on the first large-scale NLP Practitioner course that Richard Bandler conducted in the UK and he was promoted by Paul McKenna and Michael Breen. This was in 1996 or so and there must have been something like 350 participants on the course and the three trainers took turns in being on stage.

Paul was the odd one out. He was obviously the most famous one to the audience (Paul used to be a radio DJ and TV personality), but as a trainer he was just not very good. 

He was given the easiest techniques to demonstrate, but even there he often fell into the trap of picking someone from the audience who was his "type" (blonde, long legs) and who had deer-in-headlight-syndrome. 

I remember one time where he tried to get this girl relaxed on stage and every time she was about to close her eyes, she looked at the audience, started giggling and exclaimed how excited she was to be on stage...

On a personal level, Paul is very friendly. You can talk to him about lots of different things, the only problem is that he has absolutely no attention span. But that might just come with the territory when you are a celebrity...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Jamie Smart

Jamie Smart is excellent at marketing. His company, Salad Ltd, has put out lots of products and he has marketed them very well.

I haven't been on any of his courses, so can't review Jamie Smart's seminars, only his products.

Do I like them? Not really. Maybe it is because I am actually quite experienced in NLP, but I think that everything he has put out (alright, I have not seen all his stuff, just bought some of the "advanced" things) is basically for beginners. Since there are more beginners than experts, it's probably another proof that Jamie is great at marketing.

I guess I would say that he is okay. He knows his stuff and seems to be a good teacher and a caring guy. You could do much worse.

On a personal level, he is a very nice guy, as we had a few beers together at different conferences.

One thing I don't quite understand is his silly little feud with Eric Robbie about submodality eye accessing cues. There are several blogs out there where they are engaging in one-upmanship which is very annoying, as the three of us had several drinks together and it always seemed to me that they got along quite well.

How to stop snoring

Let me start by saying that this is not supposed to be medical advice and neither should it be used if you are suffering from sleep apnea.

This is just a little technique that has worked well for me and for some friends of mine.

Unfotunately, I can't remember where I heard about this technique, so I can't give proper credit. I expect that it was either Donna Eden or John La Tourrette, but even if they weren't their stuff is highly recommended!

And the technique is - drum roll please - sucking your thumb!

That's it!

Sucking your thumb for about 30 seconds before going to sleep will relax your throat muscles considerably, which often will lead to a measurable decrease in snoring.

Tune in next time when we learn about how to stop sucking your thumb.

Good luck and sleep well!

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Overdurf and Silverthorn

I always liked "Training Trances", "Beyond Words", and "Dreaming Realities" and was always intrigued about how Julie Silverthorn and John Overdurf would be on stage, because I had heard reviews that they come across unbearably sweet and cuddly.

Well, they did come across as the Ken and Barbie of the NLP world, but they were aware of it and made it fun to watch their interaction. This was probably the best team presentation I have ever witnessed, because they were amazing at switching between each other, thereby utilising quite an interesting level of nested loops.

The seminar was on coaching and it was fun. They are very good teachers, covered not only basics, but also quite advanced stuff and went from everyday applications to spiritual implications, which I really enjoyed.

Not sure if their work is so different that it warrants a new name: "Humanistic Neuro Linguistic Programming" but I guess differentiation is important.

Biggest negative about the course: it was a four day event and I really think it could and should have been a two day event.

Biggest personal shock: I met a lady on the course who charged (then) fifteen times my rate for a personal sessions, which really rattled my mindset about my self-worth, especially since I thought that she was utterly useless as a therapist or coach...

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Rintu Basu

With all the rapport skills in the world, and all the tools to change your state, you sometimes meet people you just don't like. I met Rintu Basu four or five times and never got along with him.

He always came across as very secretive and having his own agenda, which I guess was the case, because he actually audiotaped several seminars and used some of the things he learned for his own book. Nothing wrong with that, but one thing I really don't like is that he does not acknowledge any of his teachers/sources.

His "Black Book of Persuasion" is good, but if you have ever attended a (good) NLP Practitioner course, you will know this stuff.

I do have to admit, though, that I appreciate his little chapter on the ethical use of language patterns.

I can't review or rank him as a trainer, because I have not attended any of his seminars, but there are some videos of his on youtube, so you can make up your own mind about his skills as a trainer.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Ross Jeffries

Honestly, I hate the whole idea of using NLP, etc for seduction purposes. I think if you are willing to use NLP to get laid, I would only trust you as far as I could throw you. Yes, I know, I'm boring and prude. On the other hand, I have a wonderful girlfriend and got her to like me by just being myself...

I have never attended any of his courses, so I can't review Ross Jeffries' seminars, but I met him twice, once at a Richard Bandler seminar, and then at a John La Tourrette seminar.

Ross Jeffries is a very interesting and intelligent guy. When you get the chance to talk to him away from his hangers-on and disciples, he is great to talk to. Widely read and interested in many different things outside of NLP, he would be an excellent dinner guest.

I used to have two of his audio programmes on tape (yep, long time ago) and had a chance to watch some of his new stuff recently at a colleague's place and despite my reservations about the aim of his products, I must admit that he is fantastic at what he does. Excellent language patterns, good understanding of human motivation, innovative techniques and a good teaching style.

As good an opinion I have of Ross, as bad has been my experience with his students. Just about all the people I have met who only studied with Ross (or other seduction gurus) were, in general, total idiots. Vastly inflated sense of self-importance and feeling incredibly clever about their limited knowledge of NLP/Hypnosis/Magick, etc.

Suggestion: Once you have a good grounding in NLP, try out some of Ross' stuff, if only to see how good he is at teaching and using NLP. And he is very good!

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Eric Robbie

I once heard Eric Robbie say that if Richard Bandler is the Pope of NLP, he would have to be a Cardinal and while this might sound like bragging, I believe that Eric is a masterful trainer and that his contributions in the field of NLP are vastly underrated.

Eric is an incredibly astute observer. If you learned about SMEACs (sub modality eye accessing cues) during your NLP Practitioner or Master Practitioner course, he is the guy who first noticed that they exist. His sensory acuity is off the charts!

Very neat party trick, where he tells you about the submodalities of your internal images, sometimes even down to the colours you are thinking of. And the cool thing is that he teaches this skill and after I had learned it from him, I was able to teach it to others, which makes him a fantastic trainer in my opinion.

Other really valuable contributions by Eric are the discovery of Meta-Programme accessing cues and my personal favourite, his revised structure and way of teaching the Meta Model, which is a thing of beauty.

If there are criticisms, they are that he sometimes could speed up his trainings and certainly that he should get off his ass and publish more!

I have read several of his articles on NLP and he is so knowledgeable and has such a different way of looking at things that the NLP community is poorer for not having more of his stuff widely available.

So, come on, Eric! Publish, publish, publish! Please? The next G&T is on me!

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: David Snyder

David Snyder might be an unusual guy to review, partly because I had never heard of him before until a few weeks ago. David is an NLP trainer and hypnotist out of San Diego, who is also an experienced martial artist.

I stumbled across him on youtube and was really impressed with his presentation style (which I felt is quite similar to my own. We even share the same dress sense....). Lots of good stuff and some very long and detailed videos on stuff like pain control, language patterns, hypnosis, even dating.

Again, I don't know the guy at all, but he comes across as very likeable and very skilled.

Update: Just noticed that he has an alter ego and also puts out stuff under the name David Van Arrick, which seems to be mostly focused on stealth hypnosis. And he is also known as David X, who I am pretty sure I have come across when I was researching stuff on speed seduction.

I think I have written about my dislike of speed seduction and the whole PUA community before, but just based on his youtube channel, I would say that he is really worth checking out when it comes to NLP.

Here is the address: https://www.youtube.com/user/SanDiegoKarate/videos