03/05/2025
I have started a new journey this year and finally enrolled in an intensive, fully embodied NLP certification with NLP trainer Amy Bell in Melbourne. I've just completed the first 8 of a total of 22 days, and already it's been awesome bringing these skills into the clinic.
NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)
How did I first encounter NLP?
At the end of uni and just before I shot out to Beijing to study Tuina, I had one single NLP session. It was the most transformative experience I’ve ever had in a patient–practitioner dynamic. I was asked to switch chairs—and observe myself from the outside: “How would YOU help this person if they came to you for help?”
This blew my mind. I had no idea how I looked to the outside world. I was dressed in black and wondered why I absorbed every single vibe out there. “There’s too much black!” was my first reply.
“What would be the right colour then?”
I thought for a while. I saw pink and peach and then settled on yellow. I left the clinic space, walked into the first op-shop I saw and bought a beautiful yellow t-shirt. Even writing this makes me smile. Who wouldn’t feel smiley wearing bright, sunny, warm yellow?
Years later, in a fertility workshop with Kirsten Wolfe in Australia, a colleague was describing blocks she was having in her business. Kirsten asked if she’d like to delve deeper, and whether she’d be open to sharing in an NLPing experience.
Again, with some perceptual positioning, my colleague had in clear view what was blocking her—and saw clearly how she could shift it. The change in her posture and the brightness in her eyes afterwards was remarkable.
What was this magic?
“NLP,” said Kirsten, “and we’re so lucky to have an extraordinary trainer right here in Melbourne—Amy Bell.”
What even is NLP?
Richard Bandler and John Grinder were the co-developers of NLP back in the 1970s. They’d been transcribing audio cassettes of Fritz Perls performing Gestalt therapy with his clients—over and over for hundreds of hours. They absorbed so much unconsciously while doing this that they were eventually able to impersonate Fritz Perls—his accent and all. Miraculously, when they demoed the entire experience with friends and volunteers, they found they were able to achieve even bigger results than Fritz Perls himself.
Having their respective backgrounds in mathematics, linguistics, it turned out they had picked up all of the unconscious moves Fritz used in his sessions—his use of voice, body language (neurology), language (linguistics), and patterns (programming). They took this insight to the great Gregory Bateson (anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist) and asked if he could mentor them as they figured it all out. This was the birth of NLP.
It all began at the Esalen Institute in California, where many great minds and thinkers passed through during the human potential movement—Joseph Campbell, Ida Rolf (the grandmother of Rolfing and structural integration, with her understanding of fascia), Moshé Feldenkrais, Alan Watts, to name a few.
As NLP evolved, they found they could model not only Gestalt therapy, but any kind of behaviour. They also spent a lot of time modelling Milton H. Erickson, who was known then as the "Wizard of the desert” for the incredible, out-of-the-box work he was doing with patients.
And on it goes.
This observation of systems and patterns resonates deeply with the Taoists, whose philosophy underpins Classical Chinese Medicine. Chinese medicine is applied philosophy.
Are Daoists NLPers?
It makes me so bloody excited I'm learning this (like meeting the Wizard of Oz) and can do this magic with YOU!
