The NLP Center of NY has just started an online training site. There are some nice free previews you can check out. I recommend it highly! You can check it out here.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
'Now just memorize that list...'
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I can still remember my french teacher asking us to memorize our vocabulary every day. I can remember what she looked like, and exactly what her voice sounded like. Unfortunately I can't remember the vocabulary. I can also remember just how frustrated I was that I had no idea 'how' to memorize the vocabulary. I'd usually get about 70% out of good luck, but I was clueless about how to intentionally get that number any higher. There are many aspects to learning and memorization. One factor is when you study something and when you do subsequent review sessions. Here's a fascinating article about some of the research that's been done over the years on timed reviews and some software that's been developed to help this process called Supermemo.
Enjoy!
Article Link-Supermemo/Wazniak
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Awareness Test
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This is a fascinating awareness test that someone pointed out to me. Love to hear how people do with it. (It's a good one during the NBA playoffs!)
Monday, April 28, 2008
Exploring Identity
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Here is an interesting article from Psychology Today about Identity and how someone can explore and grow into a new identity over time.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Finding Center
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There are many ways to center oneself. In this piece I’ll mention several ways to center your self. First and foremost, I hope you can begin to notice the many places where you already do this in your life. Also, perhaps you can find some new things to explore. As they say, all roads lead to Rome and certainly many roads lead back to one's center.
There are many practices that explore different methods of centering. Aikido, yoga, mediation, dance, self-hypnosis and tai chi are just a few modalities that explore this topic in depth and with their own subtleties.
For myself, being centered means being in a calm and alert state of mind and body where I’m able to respond well to whatever comes up in my life at the moment. My breathing is calm and my posture, whether seated or standing is fairly straight. I’m not leaning forward or backward or to either side.
At first glance, centering may not seem particularly interesting or useful. In time I’ve come to find it an incredibly useful resource state from which to respond to life and various challenges that may arise from time to time.
Here are a few things to try out if you’re new to the idea of centering or meditation. Take a moment to center your posture as I mentioned above. Allow your spine to be upright and relaxed as opposed to stiff. Notice your breathing and allow yourself to breath fully in and out in a relaxed way. I recommend keeping your eyes open and lightly focused in front of you. Take a moment to notice what’s in front of you and in your peripheral vision.
Notice if you’re leaning forward, back or to one side and bring yourself back to the middle. I like to imagine grass and how it’s able to sway in the wind and then find it’s way back to a nice resting place. Notice if you’re standing on your heals or the balls of your feet. Take a moment to try out both of these and then find a place in the middle.
If you notice yourself thinking about anything in particular, simply watch the thought as opposed to getting caught up in the particular thought itself. Is your thinking fast, slow, calm or turbulent. Take a moment to come back to the sensations in your body and in your breath.
If this is all new to you, you may want to take 5 or so minutes a day to play with this until you begin to get used to the process of slowing down and becoming centered. In other posts I’ll discuss many ways you can explore this in the context of change work. Also, feel free to contact me if you’d like other suggestion about how to play with this or other resources for exploring this.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Charlie Badenhop-Seishindo
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Whenever I visit Japan I have the privilege of visiting with my good friend Charlie Badenhop. Charlie has a background in NLP, Hypnosis and years of studying and being an instructor of Aikido. Charlie is one of the most skilled change work practitioners I know. His work, Seishindo is a wonderful combination and expansion of these various modalities. What I've observed in seeing Charlie work with individuals and working with me is that he interacts with the person both verbally with great skill and by responding to and working with the person's physical presence. One thing that I've taken from my experience of Charlie's work is the belief that centering the body and the thinking mind has a tremendous capacity to heal the overall system and bring new solutions and insights to whatever challenges a person is facing.
I highly recommend visiting Charlie's site http://seishindo.org/ which is also in my link list. The site has pages of wonderful material and many practices that you can try out for yourself. Charlie also has a great newsletter where he shares insights and exercises on a regular basis.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Stephen Gilligan
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This is a video of Stephen Gilligan being interviewed from YouTube. Steve's work is incredibly rich. I highly recommend going to a training with him if you have the opportunity. Although this video is a bit of a promotion, it's a treat to get to see him. Steve has developed a way of working with people that moves well beyond his background in NLP and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Multiple Perspectives
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When I was a kid in school, I would sometime sneak out a bit early and start walking home down a path through some woods behind the school. This was exciting for me because I new I was breaking a rule, but that path meant freedom for the afternoon. This went on for a couple days fairly smoothly. One day I ran into a teacher of mine who I really liked and respected. Quite casually he mentioned to me that he knew I had been leaving school early. I was shocked and very embarrassed. I asked him how he knew and he let me know that the teachers lounge overlooked the path that I took through the woods each day. He said that he and the other teachers had enjoyed a good laugh watching me take off daily. He didn't really need to tell me to stop at that point.
This was one of the first times that I became aware of multiple perspectives. There are very few tools in life that can contribute so much to learning and growing, whether it's benefiting from a different teacher, culture or activity. Some change methods teach this explicitly while other do so implicitly.
Unfortunately, because of competition, some schools or methodologies discourage studying from other teachers or in other schools. This is unfortunate because it can really deprive someone of a rich learning experience. In the Feldenkrais method, although there seems to be different factions, it is required that you are taught by several trainers. I believe Moshe Feldenkrais saw the wisdom of this approach and included it in the initial course design. This is also true in Aikido to some degree although you'll tend to see mostly teachers from one lineage collaborating.
In my experience, the most skilled change agents that I've met have almost always come from a variety of teachers, disciplines and contexts. One colleague, for example benefits from a background of NLP, EMDR, Painting and Drumming. Each of these modalities colors the way that he works with Clients. As a result, his work is extremely rich.
Although I still like to skip out of 'school' occasionally, I benefit from the idea that one of my teachers has my back.
Friday, March 14, 2008
A Simple Diagram of Change
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This is a hugely oversimplified diagram of change. I'm putting it here mostly because I may reference it over time and hope others will as well. It's not meant to be exhaustive, but merely a jumping off point for conversation. From time to time I'll make adjustments to this post as seems appropriate.
The beauty of this diagram is that virtually any change modality(NLP, traditional psychotherapy, coaching or Feldenkrais) can be looked at in this way. The shortcoming of this is that it doesn't really give you enough information at a detailed level to use. What I'm hoping for is that it will serve as a coat hanger for ongoing conversation about change.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Permutation
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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
per·mu·ta·tion [pur-myoo-tey-shuhn]
1. the act of permuting or permutating; alteration; transformation.
2. Mathematics.
a. the act of changing the order of elements arranged in a particular order, as abc into acb, bac, etc., or of arranging a number of elements in groups made up of equal numbers of the elements in different orders, as a and b in ab and ba; a one-to-one transformation of a set with a finite number of elements.
b. any of the resulting arrangements or groups. Compare combination (def. 8b).
1. the act of permuting or permutating; alteration; transformation.
2. Mathematics.
a. the act of changing the order of elements arranged in a particular order, as abc into acb, bac, etc., or of arranging a number of elements in groups made up of equal numbers of the elements in different orders, as a and b in ab and ba; a one-to-one transformation of a set with a finite number of elements.
b. any of the resulting arrangements or groups. Compare combination (def. 8b).
I was first exposed to the concept of permutation when I was studying jazz guitar as a child. My teacher had me practice a series of notes in all the various combinations I could put them in like in the definition above.
ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBA
Practicing in this way I was able to get comfortable playing this sequence of notes in any order. There was a side-effect of getting extremely familiar with the series of notes that I was exploring.
Over the years I found that there are many wonderful side effects to practicing just about anything using this concept. One of these side effects is that this helps me review material endlessly without getting bored. Every new permutation brings a fresh perspective to whatever I'm studying.
I've found that this is a great way for people to teach and absorb information. In studying Aikido, I've noticed that the way the classes are taught is by demonstrating endless permutations of a core set of moves.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Feldenkrais Video
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This is a video that provides some of the background information on the Feldenkrais Method. It's quite good and you get to see some of Moshe's first students and footage of Moshe teaching. I highly recommend it especially if you're unfamiliar with this excellent work.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Pacing and Leading
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This is a short piece that was sent to me by my colleague Ofer. Ofer is a Master Practitioner of NLP. I'm not editing this with the exception of defining a term. I will incorporate changes over time if Ofer changes it.
One of the key principles of NLP is pacing and leading. Its a fairly simple principle. At its core it states that before you can take a person in a new direction, leading them, you first need to meet them where they are at, pacing. In NLP, the main place where this principle is emphasized is in rapport building. Inherently the practitioner meets the other by matching them, in their body, voice, breathing, language, etc. In matching, the two form a connection, an unconscious one, that allows the practitioner to now move in a new direction and have the other follow. Those who have experienced being led from a place of strong connection know how powerful and unconscious an experience it can be, and how effective being there with the other is for facilitating change.
If we delve deeper, we find that pacing and leading permeates many other aspects of NLP as well. For example, consider the classic "change personal history" pattern. The basic structure of the pattern has the person connect to a state/memory from the past and once there take a new direction, possibly by reframing or adding a resource. The pacing in this pattern is connecting to that old state/memory. If we think of our minds as a very large state machine (in the loosest sense), with our consciousness being the window to a current state. We might also conceive that the mind is only able to change the states that we are actually connected to. Then, the act of connecting to that old state/memory is actually the pacing that opens the door for changing that state and its impact. To make a martial arts analogy, you can't affect an ukei without engaging them first. It is by meeting the ukei that different outcomes become a possibility. Thus, in "change personal history" the pacing is in directing the mind to the place where change needs to take place, the old state/memory, and the leading is redirecting the mind from that state to a new possibility, a new way of perceiving that old state/memory, and in such changing it.
One of the key principles of NLP is pacing and leading. Its a fairly simple principle. At its core it states that before you can take a person in a new direction, leading them, you first need to meet them where they are at, pacing. In NLP, the main place where this principle is emphasized is in rapport building. Inherently the practitioner meets the other by matching them, in their body, voice, breathing, language, etc. In matching, the two form a connection, an unconscious one, that allows the practitioner to now move in a new direction and have the other follow. Those who have experienced being led from a place of strong connection know how powerful and unconscious an experience it can be, and how effective being there with the other is for facilitating change.
If we delve deeper, we find that pacing and leading permeates many other aspects of NLP as well. For example, consider the classic "change personal history" pattern. The basic structure of the pattern has the person connect to a state/memory from the past and once there take a new direction, possibly by reframing or adding a resource. The pacing in this pattern is connecting to that old state/memory. If we think of our minds as a very large state machine (in the loosest sense), with our consciousness being the window to a current state. We might also conceive that the mind is only able to change the states that we are actually connected to. Then, the act of connecting to that old state/memory is actually the pacing that opens the door for changing that state and its impact. To make a martial arts analogy, you can't affect an ukei without engaging them first. It is by meeting the ukei that different outcomes become a possibility. Thus, in "change personal history" the pacing is in directing the mind to the place where change needs to take place, the old state/memory, and the leading is redirecting the mind from that state to a new possibility, a new way of perceiving that old state/memory, and in such changing it.
Note: Ukei is the person offering an attack in martial arts like Aikido.
The Middle
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As I mentioned in some of my initial posts, this blog is about an ongoing exploration of various change methodologies. Unfortunately I can't bring everyone up to speed on all the background of this exploration or dialog, so the place I'm beginning is the middle of the topic. That being said, here are a few points that people may find useful.
I recommend that anyone interested check out the links to other sites that I have posted. I add links with great care. I only add sites that I believe have excellent content so please check them out. There is so much to be learned from these alone.
Over time, I will do my best to organize my posts into useful categories so people can spend time exploring specific topics of interest to them. Please feel free to add your suggestions by adding comments to the posts. I'll do my best to consider them.
Monday, March 10, 2008
How this is coming about
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For most of my life, I've studied martial arts, music, dance, architecture, NLP, Coaching, the Feldenkrais method and several other modalities to explore how people create change or develop new abilities in their life. With many of my colleagues I've explored the intersections of these various modalities. The idea of this blog is to create a dialog about these overlapping principles, techniques and methodologies. As NLP developer David Gordon says, experience has structure. This site is an exploration of that structure.
The Beginning
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This blog is an exploration of what I call Mind Body Structural Dynamics. This is a site where I'll explore ideas from several disciplines that look at how people live, relate and create change in their lives. This blog will look at ideas from NLP, Coaching, Feldenkrais, Organizational Development(OD) and just about anything that touches on change and development. I encourage comments and posts from people excited to contribute to this dialog.
