...for I have sinned: it's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post! And what a time it's been! I've completed my latest training course and qualified as an NLP Master Practitioner, which I am extremely proud of. The training was very intense and challenging and I learnt a huge amount from it, not least confirmation that I really am rather good at this stuff, even if I do say so myself. I decided before the course that I would challenge myself even more by volunteering to be a team leader if the opportunity presented itself, and it did, which added beautifully to the pressure that I put myself under. Even more to be learnt by me and my team, who are a lovely bunch of folk if a little exasperating at times *grin*. We didn't win the team challenge, and they are all still winners in my heart - corny perhaps, and true all the same.
So what else have I been up to, other than 12 hour days of training...?
I seem to have cracked at least part of The Secret, attracting simple things like lifts on the couple of days I was too tired to walk from the training back to my hotel, to winning the mp3 player I've been craving, to just happening to sit next to a lovely lady at the Oxford Yes Group who just happened to have a booking for the Happy House for New Year that she couldn't make, which I have since bought from her. So I'm off to Austria for New Year, which I am terribly excited about! Yup, Sarah the seminar junky strikes again, and why not pick one that's also a spa retreat?!
One of the highlights of the NLP Master Practitioner training was the glasswalk - a 10 foot walk over broken wine and champagne bottles - yes, real glass, and a real danger of cuts. This was done as a modelling exercise, which is one of the NLP techniques: find someone who is an expert at what they do, then model yourself on them to grow towards their level of expertise. What this meant in practice was that our team coach first walked the glasswalk, then we had half an hour to question him on his physiology, values, beliefs and strategy. He was not allowed to volunteer any information, only answer the questions that we asked. Then we got to do it ourselves, using the information we had learnt from him, and modelling ourselves on him. Each coach had subtly different ways of doing the glasswalk: one said that they thought of the glass as only sand. Ours said that when he heard the sound of the glass breaking, he knew that it was real! I'm not going to go into any more detail than that except that to say that it was an intensely spiritual experience for me that I would have loved to have continued. And no, I didn't cut my feet (though some did)!
The training culminated with full breakthrough sessions on the last two days, once as a practitioner, and once as a client, which all our previous training led up to. This was the time when we had to pull together all of the tools and techniques we had learnt and utilise the most appropriate ones to help our clients to break through their limiting beliefs and values, and creating new and more empowering ones. This often involved revisiting painful memories from the past: significant emotional events, and working through them with new resources and views. It is not possible to change what has happened in the past; it is possible to change the way one looks at it, and the meaning and beliefs that were created. These sessions were exhausting as both client and practitioner, and the results were truly remarkable. This is what I am now able to do for others - yes, I can still help with simple things like phobia cures, and now I can do so much more! Oh, and I now know about conversational change and more advanced hypnotherapy techniques such as rapid induction and deep trance, so watch out!
Now to grow and build my therapy business - any more takers?!
Comments