Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)

NLP was developed in the 1960s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the US who studied models of excellence, that is, people who were successful in all walks of life but particularly in making a difference to other people’s lives through therapy such as Virginia Satir, the family therapist and Milton Erickson, an expert in language patterns. They found that by extracting all the beliefs these people held, they could come up with a code which when used by other people, brought about great and positive change.

This code comprises a number of pre-suppositions or beliefs of excellence.

• If you always do what you’ve always done you will always get what you’ve always got
• The person with the most flexibility has control of the situation
• You have all the skills to do whatever you want to do
• If someone else can do it you can too
• There is no failure only feedback
• If you  only try you won’t succeed
• Everyone's map of the world is different
• There is a positive intention behind every behaviour
• The meaning of the communication is the response you get
• Mind and body are one

We work with these beliefs in mind when we work with children and teenagers.

• We help them find their own excellence and transfer it to where they need it now.
• We encourage them to be flexible in how they respond to people and situations.
• We help them understand their own positive intention and find other behaviours that will work better for them and still meet this positive intention.
• We show them how to use their mind to create more resourceful beliefs that will enable them to meet their objectives.
• We guide them through more resourceful language patterns that will help build rapport with those they care about.
• We help them understand how they learn best so they can apply the best learning techniques at school.
• We set compelling outcomes with them and show them how to achieve them.
• We show them how they can change themselves rather than expecting others to change.

These are just some of the many ways we work with children using NLP but we also teach them some quite specific techniques such as anchoring, reframing, Time Lines, visualisation, Circle of Excellence, submodalities and SWISH which they can take into their lives and use to change state and create resourceful states where they can be successful in what they want to do or be.

EFT 

Often called 'tapping' this technique allows us to connect with and acknowledge our emotions, locate them in our body and give them a colour, texture etc. We then tap round the tapping points as we say a short reminder phrase such as "red anger in my tummy" and as if by magic, the feelings fade. It's great for symptom management and when combined with Matrix Reimprinting, we can completely get rid of beliefs that have been with us since early childhood. 


Children can tap on their cuddly toy at bed-time, projecting onto it, their own feelings "bear is afraid of the dark" tap tap around bear's face for fear of the dark and maybe "black fear in his head". 

I'm aiming to introduce tapping into as many families as possible, into schools and places where employees are under a lot of stress. Tapping has been introduced into doctors' surgeries with great effect on a wide range of symptoms and greatly reduced the prescriptions bill. 

Tapping is quick and easy to learn and when children have a tool they can use independently it gives them huge self-confidence to manage whatever comes up for them, tapping under the desk at school during tests and tapping for focus when they are confused in lessons. 
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Matrix Reimprinting

During your time in the womb and during those early years when you absorb all that's going on around you, your 'ECHO' (your baby or child self) gives meaning to these experiences - "she doesn't love me", "I'm not good enough", "I'm not important", "I can't trust anyone" and so on. 

Because these beliefs haven't been made by the conscious mind because that only fully develops after the age of 6yrs, we don't have the ability to question and reason with these beliefs. They simply exist in our body at a subconscious level and rise up in the form of emotions when something happens to trigger it. This will happen because that belief is so imprinted that we carry it around like a label as part of our identity almost looking for evidence that it's true. So say if you've imprinted a belief that mummy prefers your younger brother, when she makes spaghetti bolognese which you know your brother likes more than you, you will see it as evidence of your belief (regardless of how much you also like it!). You'll constantly be on the look out for evidence of that belief that was formed in your early years even though you may have no specific memory at this point. You will delete evidence that doesn't fit your belief, generalise "she always cooks his favourite and not mine" and distort the meaning to be 'that means she doesn't love me as much as him' which is of course a mindread. 

When I use EFT Tapping on how you feel now, where the feeling is in the body, it's shape and size, colour and so on, and we start tapping on the body's energy meridians (like acupuncture but without the needles) the emotions shift and move and we find the core belief underpinning it. When we hit that target, and I ask you to guess when you first felt this, you will know when it was and what happened. 

Using Matrix Reimprinting techniques I can gently help you to heal that younger child and create an empowering belief in place of the old belief. We don't change what happened but we can change what your younger self made that mean. After all, that was simply your perception at that time, it wasn't a fact. 

When we change the belief we can then move forward with a different tape playing in our head. Whilst NLP is an excellent talking therapy and has some great techniques which are life changing for my clients, I find that EFT and Matrix will replace limiting beliefs that NLP doesn't touch and it can be incredibly fast so rather than gradually change patterns that aren't working for you as in NLP, EFT and Matrix will rewrite your script. 

I am also trained in Matrix Birth Reimprinting and Matrix Past Life Reimprinting so if you think either of these techniques will be helpful, please get in touch. Many women experience trauma giving birth, during their pregnancy or in the early days afterwards, many have post natal depression and EFT Tapping and Matrix Birth Reimprinting can really make a huge difference. Imagine creating the birth experience you wanted or being able to connect with your baby in the womb in order to ask it to turn round?! 

There is almost no limit to how we can connect to our child self, our baby self and even with people who have passed over, in order to gain resolution. 

Why do children respond so well to NLP?

- Children are like sponges, they soak up new ideas and embrace change and choices. They have not become numbed by bitter experience or resentful. They are open and ready to learn.

- The NLP techniques and exercises are simple and easy to do and to replicate anywhere so kids can use them at school, home, anywhere

- NLP is positive, it is about focusing on what we do want not what we don’t want, focusing on when things are going well, modelling excellence, what we do well and the structure of excellence.

- We even teach that there’s no failure only feedback, how empowering is that for a child?!

- We do not prescribe, we give children choices and the more choices they have, the more flexibility and the more control they have in every situation.


If you have a question about NLP and want to know how it will help your child or teenager or those you are responsible for please use the contact form or contact me directly by phone, email or text.