NLP and Neuroscience

Well I’m mindful that two months have passed since the last audioboo, and it’s been an extraordinarily full time, a curious mixture really, but good to be back on track now. Of course, that period initially, with the death of my mother, and everything that goes with the death of a parent, and then moving into a whole raft of new developments, which I think will be just bearing a lot of fruit for a lot of people actually, and the one perhaps to begin by flagging would be the final coming together of NLP and neuroscience, which has been a dream of mine for longer than I care to remember to be honest.

It’s one of these curious things, you know, there’s been research taking place of neuroscience for certainly thirty years and it’s as if much of the work has stayed in the lab. Which is funny if you happen to be a researcher.

But there really is a practical dimension to understanding the way a brain works and therefore to neuroscience, because, hey, we’ve all got one and it could be kind of useful to have a more profound understanding of just what’s going on. And there are many examples, I think, of how more recent research could be extraordinarily beneficial if it was out there, if it was known about. So, for some years now, I have actually been actively looking for somebody who had the kind of background and credibility with whom I could partner to effectively begin the process of enabling both disciplines to come together. Because there seems to me, a lot of what NLP has done over the past thirty years is almost like applied neuroscience, without any science, you know, in the strict scientific sense of that word. If we’re talking about doing things that work, then NLP’s absolutely been right at the forefront delivering evidentially. However, I’ve been very interested in the conversations that I’ve been having more recently with Professor Patricia Riddell, who has been, herself, aware of what NLP has contributed to our understanding of practical technologies for change, and as a result of that we’ve been able to see how, you know, there really could be a way of integrating some of these elements, whilst allowing each to be its own province, its own field, of course, still.

And so, very recently, we actually did; well we do an open evening looking at habits, because there’s an area that is part and parcel of everybody’s experience. We have them or we like to acquire ones, you know, habits can be good, they can be bad. Or they could be things we would wish to have. But there is a structure to habits, which is how we come at it from an NLP point of view. And what’s going on in the brain is really fascinating, to enable one to understand how could you develop better habits, and how could you also become free of ones that are constraining.

So, we did this very brief opening really, which was received very well and we got very positive feedback about it. And in fact, come the NLP conference in November, we’re going to be doing something at somewhat greater length, focusing on exactly that area again, habits, and integrating what we understand from neurosciences, and what we now understand from the practicalities of habit change courtesy of NLP, and more recently, a couple of weeks ago, Trish and I did a one day event where we were starting to look at how could you take some of the basics of NLP and understand them through the filter of neuroscience. Well I have to say, it was an absolutely fascinating day. We were packed to the gummels, full house. And it was really very encouraging to see how there was benefits from both sides, and people were telling us that they had been looking for something like this… well no need to look anymore, there’s a lot more coming down the track. And we’re actually in process at the moment of, this summer, preparing new materials for new programmes. So I’ll keep you posted, but it’s good to be back, and there’s so much happening that you’re going to be hearing about very shortly.

So, ‘till the next time.

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