Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

[Meg]

I ran across some videos about this as it relates to the media. The creator of the videos takes a 2 minute segment with Hannity & Colmes interviewing Kevin Barrett, a University of Wisconsin professor/9-11 researcher. Prof. Barrett is being interviewed for his choice to include conspiracy theories and 9/11 in his Islamic Study course. The creator of the video describes, in short segments, the non verbal gestures/body gestures, redirecting, anchoring, linking, control, word usage (i.e conspiracy nut) subconscious and psychological manipulations and the lengths they go to disrupt the professor's thinking during the interview and discredit him. There's a segment in the 2nd video about 666 and the okay hand gesture that's seems a litte odd. I couldn't find a website that confirmed that.

Videos in 3 parts - 30 minutes total

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOHK8qK-Ajw

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYZu2Fudp4U

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQOqnXQb9o

Neurolinguistics: Neurolinguistics is the science concerned with the human brain mechanisms underlying the comprehension, production, and abstract knowledge of language, be it spoken, signed, or written.

Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP): Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a set of techniques, axioms and beliefs that adherents use primarily as an approach to personal development. NLP was influenced by the ideas of the New Age era as well as beliefs in human potential. The initial ideas of NLP were developed around 1973 by Richard Bandler, a student, and John Grinder, a professor of linguistics, in association with the social scientist Gregory Bateson. The term "Neuro-linguistic programming" denotes a set of models and principles meant to explore how mind and neurology (neuro), language patterns (linguistic), and the organization of human perception and cognition into systemic patterns (programming) interact to create subjective reality and human behaviors.

http://www.cassiopedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Neuro-linguistic_programming#Overview

A branch of behavioral psychology developed in the 1970s called "neuro-linguistic programming" not only provides a scientific basis for the neural origins of gestural responses but teaches its practitioners how to program people through them. As defined by its founders in their seminal work, Neuro-linguistic Programming, "NLP offers specific techniques by which a practitioner may usefully organize and re-organize his or her subjective experience or the experience of a client in order to define and subsequently secure any behavioral outcome" p59

Neuro-linguistic programmers also use disassociation to achieve the same results. By nesting one story or idea inside another, a programmer can bypass our rational defense mechanisms. In the moment that we move from one frame of awareness to another, we are no longer able to determine the veracity of the nested concept.p60

Above is from the book Coersion, Why We Listen to What They Say. _http://www.amazon.com/Coercion-Why-Listen-what-They/dp/1573221155

Three examples of specific NLP language patterns in three different contexts. The first is an example of using covert hypnosis to start a training course, the second is about hypnotic seduction and the third is for networking in a business context."
An example of Hypnotic Seduction, an NLP persuasion:

So you are into the conversation, built some rapport and have your subject nicely going into a powerfully erratic state (I know it should be erotic, but you haven't seen my love life), and you are now looking to future pace, amplify and bind that to you.

"You ...Like Me probably see look back from the future to see the start of the great things in your life (if you are up for it at this point be pointing at your groin…remember the anchoring).

What I mean is, when you look back on your past to certain events you can realise that this is the start of a great new adventure (notice the change in tenses and the ambiguity here am I talking about now, this event, a past event or what?)

This happens to me often, when you do this (switching referential index) it’s funny how much the more you try to let go of the event they more you keep going back to it, getting more and more excited about what you are starting now… (more do (x) then more (y) happens pattern…a great cause and effect bind).

…Starting now with me I meet someone that you just want to spend time with, get to know more closely and just know you are having a great time with (run on sentence, switching referential index, and embedded command galore).

When I do this, you find yourself thinking of that person (pointing to yourself of course) at odd moments of the day, like every time you step into the shower, or whenever you switch on a light switch (here is the bind…suggesting that they think of you every time they do a very common action…you sneaky people…but let’s amplify this a little).

When I have met someone I really like this feels really good because every time you picture them and realise all the things you like about them you just get that great feeling deep inside and it just gets stronger and stronger every time you take the step or flick the switch.

Now I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to suggest that is happening to us now…but wouldn’t it be fun if you could look back from the future and see yourself as having this as the start of a great new adventure?_http://www.thenlpcompany.com/nlp/hypnotic-seduction.php

A few Sott threads identifying NLP in action:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1979.msg11199#msg11199 (Superman Returns: WING TV repels Pathological Pirates AKA Rense & Co)

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=1093.msg4991#msg4991 (What Rense.com is not talking about)

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6988.msg49280#msg49280 (COINTELPRO: Morgan Reynolds Makes a Federal Case of 9/11)

Some links to discussions of NLP:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6984.msg49081#msg49081 (Mankubus/Bogachev NLP Cinderellas trapped in Kingdom of crooked mirror)

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6757.msg47039#msg47039 (REVIEW OF ALAN WATT interview -- Part 3 of 3)

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7679.msg54720#msg54720 (Ericksonian hypnosis)

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=6667.msg46014#msg46014 (Mind Control & HAARP - Comments from a reader of SOTT)

Certainly prompts further reading & studying on the subject of NLP.

As Richard Sauder said in his podcast interview with Laura: "Very much so. And the mind control aspect of this is crucial. Now mind control operates on many levels. You have the electronic mind control technologies, eh the ones that I discussed for example the patterns in the Kundalini Tales and similar technologies, and then you have HAARP, and the twin towers, and microwave technology and the cell phones which appear to have very bad effects on the human mind and the human brain but it's eh... it's ubiquotuos (???) now, this technology is, it's everywhere and everyone seems to have one um... though I refuse on many grounds so far to have a cellphone um... almost everyone does these days. And then, you have other forms, more prozaic forms if you will, of mind and social control, such as the public school system and the university system, then you have instititional religion like eh... christianity, islam, judaism, hinduism, and so forth, eh... then you have other means of social and mind control such as television, and on and on it goes. There's just an onslaughter of stuff and the average person does not understand how thoroughly controlled he or she is.

L: Right. And it happens, when you begin to wake up, there's no end to the scales that continue to fall from your eyes... eh... you make it to the first one or two or three layers, only to discover, seemingly there's no end to it. This planet is controlled and locked down up, down and sideways, and has been for centuries if not for millenia."

edit: addt'l link & more data

 

[luke wilson]

Hi guys,

I am thinking of picking up evening classes on NLP in my town. Wikipedia describes it as pseudoscience but then it would. I don't know much about it but reading about it, it ticks the boxes of what I want to improve:-

"Learn how to communicate better, free yourself from fears, increase your confidence, change problem behaviours, feel happier ,build better relationships and make better decisions."

I know we have other tools to deal with some of the above, e.g. the psychology board, the 4th way etc.. personally, what I need to work on is better in-person communication skills and organising my thoughts whilst verbally communicating.

Again, why NLP? It's the only class of its sort near where I live that I know off i.e. why I started this thread. It's not because I did research on the internet, came across it, looked it up in my area, then started the thread...

So, is NLP a red flag area or a good use of £50 for a 5 week course?

 

[Mr. Premise]

Red Flag. It's about how to manipulate people to do things for your benefit, how to hypnotize them without their consent. It can be useful to learn a bit about it so you know when someone's using it on you but you can find out enough for free on the internet without giving them any money.

 

[foofighter]

What Mr Premise said. It is immensely popular here, but for the reasons mentioned. Mostly sales wanting to have better ways of persuading prospect customers. Good to know as a defense, but I wouldn't study it too much or you may be tempted to use against other people. If someone tries it on me, well that's the end of that acquaintance.

 

[Deleted member 4320]

Hi guys,

I am thinking of picking up evening classes on NLP in my town. Wikipedia describes it as pseudoscience but then it would. I don't know much about it but reading about it, it ticks the boxes of what I want to improve:-

"Learn how to communicate better, free yourself from fears, increase your confidence, change problem behaviours, feel happier ,build better relationships and make better decisions."

I know we have other tools to deal with some of the above, e.g. the psychology board, the 4th way etc.. personally, what I need to work on is better in-person communication skills and organising my thoughts whilst verbally communicating.

Again, why NLP? It's the only class of its sort near where I live that I know off i.e. why I started this thread. It's not because I did research on the internet, came across it, looked it up in my area, then started the thread...

So, is NLP a red flag area or a good use of £50 for a 5 week course?

I've never been to this type of training but I suspect that it's easier to understand and learn to apply these techniques after such training. If you are interested in this and the school has a good reputation and some of the students actually has profited, instead of were manipulated, go for it.

We manipulate others by smile and cry. Influencing someone being to him nice and take care of a good relationship with someone, already is manipulation. NLP allows to do it professionally. Also, awareness of what is manipulation, gives the ability to see what serve manipulation and don't do it when we don't want manipulate someone and how to don't be manipulated by others. I think, if that school actually learn something, instead draw money from gullible people and you are sure about their fairness, such training can be a valuable experience. Finally, the most important are the intentions, we manipulate people anyway.

 

[luke wilson]

Hi guys,

I am thinking of picking up evening classes on NLP in my town. Wikipedia describes it as pseudoscience but then it would. I don't know much about it but reading about it, it ticks the boxes of what I want to improve:-

"Learn how to communicate better, free yourself from fears, increase your confidence, change problem behaviours, feel happier ,build better relationships and make better decisions."

I know we have other tools to deal with some of the above, e.g. the psychology board, the 4th way etc.. personally, what I need to work on is better in-person communication skills and organising my thoughts whilst verbally communicating.

Again, why NLP? It's the only class of its sort near where I live that I know off i.e. why I started this thread. It's not because I did research on the internet, came across it, looked it up in my area, then started the thread...

So, is NLP a red flag area or a good use of £50 for a 5 week course?

I've never been to this type of training but I suspect that it's easier to understand and learn to apply these techniques after such training. If you are interested in this and the school has a good reputation and some of the students actually has profited, instead of were manipulated, go for it.

We manipulate others by smile and cry. Influencing someone being to him nice and take care of a good relationship with someone, already is manipulation. NLP allows to do it professionally. Also, awareness of what is manipulation, gives the ability to see what serve manipulation and don't do it when we don't want manipulate someone and how to don't be manipulated by others. I think, if that school actually learn something, instead draw money from gullible people and you are sure about their fairness, such training can be a valuable experience. Finally, the most important are the intentions, we manipulate people anyway.

The school sells itself as a self-funding charity that seeks to help the community. It offers a wide-array of different classes. From art, photography, yoga, meditation, puzzle solving, languages, dance etc. I was thinking of taking up evening classes and came across the NLP one which to me seemed more along personal self-development, I was also thinking about other classes as well but the NLP one is one which sort of stood out to me. After reading about what has been said about it and manipulation, well, I'll have to think about it. I'm not into manipulation but I am interested in effective communication and clearly seeing when others are trying to manipulate me.

 

[Deleted member 4320]

The school sells itself as a self-funding charity that seeks to help the community. It offers a wide-array of different classes. From art, photography, yoga, meditation, puzzle solving, languages, dance etc. I was thinking of taking up evening classes and came across the NLP one which to me seemed more along personal self-development, I was also thinking about other classes as well but the NLP one is one which sort of stood out to me. After reading about what has been said about it and manipulation, well, I'll have to think about it. I'm not into manipulation but I am interested in effective communication and clearly seeing when others are trying to manipulate me.

I think, it's always better to learn, whatever it is, directly from the teacher than from books and the like and it may be worth for you to invest in such training. Merely, I think that you could look for more professional school clearly specialized in the NLP, if you are decided to spend money on it. On the other hand, equally well in this type of centers can be found qualified and interesting teacher.

 

[Michal]

Hi,
I have gone through practitioner, master practitioner and advanced master practitioner training.

I think that NLP is a tool. You may use hammer to build something and to destroy something.

Those courses are relatively expensive which I think is strange and basically mostly well off people are prone to spend 4000 euro per course. In Poland approx. 4000 - 8000 PLN.

What I have learned was to work with the language, body, gestures, voice, posture and understand influence of those on communication.

What is important is that there are in a fact no tricks and knowledge is not coming just by sitting on the course. Course is just a beginning and as I understand good teacher is very important I also think that he/she is only a guide. Person who wants to learn need to explore and experience and work him/herself.

Without previous reading I think it would be rather waste of time for me for example with metamodel. There is some practical exercises on the courses for sure but it is just to get You the feeling of the matter. Things taught by NLP are not really belonging to the label. For example eyes cues or so Called sensory acuity is a fact - example movie "Lie to me". I may say that NLP maid systematic approach for classification of signals from our body/language.

Other thing which was developed on master practitioner was but maybe not necessarily is practiced on other "masters" is work with beliefs. How to recognize them, how to install them, how to change them. It is not that easy and one course will probably not be enough to give enough practice with that.
With The Work and self-observation, self-remembering I think is basically the same thing needed for doing this programming. First You need to be aware of something in order to approach it. You need to identify program/belief, be aware of it.

I had quite a lot of practicing with "personalities" during my courses. And this was/is very interesting as it resembles for example spirit attachment therapy. This was rather shown in context of commercials and self promotion - like who do You want to be in front of Your customers, who should they see when they look at You, or maybe who do they see when they look at You.

Submodalities and their variances are not difficult to learn even without courses.
Metaphors are difficult even with courses :). And it is also interesting, how beliefs and translated into symbolic language and this further acts as matrix for other beliefs. Or filter for reality. How it connects or disconnects us from experience.
I think that again The Work offers similar knowledge by directing attention to reality or practicing being in associated state which is quite powerful thing when it comes to destroying beliefs. At least some of them.

Curing phobias is possible with NLP however it is not that difficult to learn basics.
In my opinion NLP is not a miraculous way of making magic. Basic concepts are simple and no-one will teach us anything if we would not do it ourselves.

Manipulation is one usage of NLP. I think that in politics and marketing it is kind of basic knowledge. Maybe not for everyone but at least for planners like the guy in the movie "Ides of March". Comes to mind also super skills in manipulation acted by psychopaths described in book "Predators" by Ann Salter. Observation and pratice.

Other usage is to know Yourself. But as I said I think that practicing it Yourself with guide book would be quite good beginning and spending big money for that is not good option as I see it now.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Luke before you spend your money on this, you might want to read this:

_http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/16/nlp-10-ways-protect-mind-control/

 

[axj]

I think that manipulation of others is indeed what NLP focuses on. It does have a few useful tools for self-development too, such as changing your own beliefs, curing phobias , etc. But there are many other systems out there that do the same without having that manipulation focus.

At the same time, I do think that it is useful to be aware of how this sort of manipulation works to be immune against it. When you notice someone doing it, you can then take the necessary action to distance yourself from them.

 

[Bluestar]

Luke before you spend your money on this, you might want to read this:

_http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/16/nlp-10-ways-protect-mind-control/

This was great info Mr.Premise, thanks.

It never cease to amaze me how many tricks and traps that are out there in the world.

I can think back at some times where this NLP may have been taking place. One in particular where my husband and I were at a time share expo some years ago and it was part of a requirement to stay at this particular hotel where they were selling week long vacations for life.

Making a long story short, the man was a pro at sales and had us almost convinced this was the perfect plan for us. Even touched my shoulder once. Which disturbed me cause I don't like people I don't know to touch me. It worked the opposite for me cause after the touch I was huzzed out. But there was a few minutes that I was almost convinced. It sounded reasonable right? No my shields went up as did my husbands and we excused ourselves. If I had known about NLP then I may have known his game better. I am thankful that I was able to go with my gut, but before the touch I was almost hooked. Wow!

 

[luke wilson]

Red Flag. It's about how to manipulate people to do things for your benefit, how to hypnotize them without their consent. It can be useful to learn a bit about it so you know when someone's using it on you but you can find out enough for free on the internet without giving them any money.

Thanks read it word for word. So it is manipulation... but then I ask myself, what is manipulation? Isn't it trying to manoeuvre people into a certain direction, a direction of your choosing? If so, a huge percentage of everyday communication is just nothing but subtle and not-so subtle manipulation. Conversations with a manager, a teacher, a sales person, even friends are loaded with manipulative cues.

If anything I'm interested to learn what this whole thing is - not NLP, communication/rapport/influence/manipulation etc... I think the lines between what is genuine and what is outright evil are quite narrow and vague when it comes to communication in general. I'm not sure but at only £50, my body is telling me to sign up and learn about it ------ as long as I don't unwittingly get manipulated and co-opted, but rather just increase my knowledge repertoire of another manipulative technique out there.... Still thinking, classes begin in June so have a number of weeks. Will also research more on the internet.

I realize I may be unwittingly playing the role of the kid who was told not to do something, went and did it anyway, then regretted it afterwards... So that is a risk I'd be carrying by pursuing this. I'll get pro-active and look at other evening classes round my area around this sort of stuff - communication/self-improvement. Most tend to be the standard boring ones though - presentation skills, other generic topics from self-development books that are just money-making machines for the authors.

Lastly, I'd like to say thanks Mr. Premise, for letting me know about NLP in general. I had no idea what it was other than some way to just be better at communication taking into account brain circuitry etc... Bad communication skills leads to a rather stressful life...

 

[axj]

I think the lines between what is genuine and what is outright evil are quite narrow and vague when it comes to communication in general.

I guess in some ways, pretty much all communication can be called 'manipulation'. It depends on how you define what exactly manipulation is.

I think it really comes down to the intent behind one's communication. Is the intent to genuinely help? And did that person ask or request that help? In other words, are you respecting their free will?

 

[Mr. Premise]

I think the lines between what is genuine and what is outright evil are quite narrow and vague when it comes to communication in general.

I guess in some ways, pretty much all communication can be called 'manipulation'. It depends on how you define what exactly manipulation is.

I think it really comes down to the intent behind one's communication. Is the intent to genuinely help? And did that person ask or request that help? In other words, are you respecting their free will?

Yes, and here's where I think NLP is worse than other ones. It's not appealing to the other person's interest, it tries to shut down thought, and it's basically hypnosis, which should never be done without consent. So even though all these types of things are manipulations, some are worse than others. On a spectrum, I think something like Dale Carnegie techniques, while also manipulative, are less insidious than NLP.

 

[mkrnhr]

In theory, everything is worth learning. However, some things require more attention. NLP is designed and used for the manipulation of others. One can argue that most of our social interactions contain some traces of manipulations. For example, most people would behave instinctively in such a was as to induce sympathy or whatever (leaning the head on the side is a classical example). But that's happening on a completely different level.
Now, if one has to learn such a powerful technique as NLP, the question is under which circumstances one will use it. We can say "it's just to protect myself from manipulation", which is fine as long as the learning doesn't become training. The thing is that we can decide consciously not to use the technique, what about our subconscious? Putting such a weapon in the hands of the predator mind as long as we haven't completely controlled it (will it even happen?) can be an auto-sabotage from the point of view of the Work. Therefore, it also depends on the personal Aim, the knowledge we have about our 3D human condition in an STS world, and whether one can use such a knowledge in a way that respects or restricts freewill. OSIT.