By Silke Scheidereiter

Hey, don’t you think some things are just too good to keep to yourself? I do...and that’s why I want to share some of my awesome experiences I had in London last December.

I’d attended an NLP Practitioner training earlier on last year and felt that I still couldn’t get my new NLP skills to work the way I wanted them to. I’d become sort of a weekend practitioner with a box labeled "NLP Skills" stored away neatly on a shelf and slowly but steadily gathering dust...waiting to be integrated more fully into my day-to-day life. So, when I got Jonathan’s email announcing an NLP Skills-Builder-Weekend here in Europe I couldn’t wait!

The venue was the Columbia Hotel in London, located somewhere near Marble Arch and facing a beautiful park (please don’t ask me which one...my knowledge of London’s geography is quite limited...). The seminar room we were in was very nice with a huge balcony and a whole front of windows facing the park and enough room to space ourselves out for the exercises. Tee, coffee, water and snacks were provided throughout the whole training. The hotel bar turned out to be one of the favourite meeting places to continue the training until late at night whenever Jonathan felt like sharing some more of his knowledge...and he always did!! A whole paradise of restaurants, pubs, shops etc. was just a 5-minute-walk down the road.

The general outline for the weekend was:

• Day I – Rapport
• Day II – Influence
• Day III – Motivation

Although these were the main subjects we were working on, we did a lot more than this...

The first day was all about rapport.....we startet off with simple mirroring exercises, like mirroring posture, gestures, walks, different rythms, like breathing, blinking and more. Then we covered matching and then moved to the fun stuff....using all of this and lead the other person's experience. I remember Jonathan mentioning something like when you're in deep rapport with someone and you become aware of the other person following you it sends shivers down your spine....and although I'd learned a lot about rapport before - this was the first time I really felt it. Anyway - we never really stopped learning about and practicing rapport skills over the whole weekend. Lunch breaks , the usual couple of drinks after the training, etc. all turned into a fun experimental experience. A great side effect of this was, that by the end of the first day rapport among the group was (and still is!) excellent! As for results - I've noticed that I'm using what I've learned a lot without even thinking about it and I've found that I get "my way" more frequently and with more ease and fun than before. Cool, eh?

Day II - Influence....that was a blast! The main focus was on Sleight of Mouth (SoM) patterns and I was especially curious about this simply because it was brand new for me. And what's the best way to learn SoM patterns? Well, it's all about changing beliefs and that's exactly what we did most of the day - working together in small groups, someone would come up with some belief and the others would do their best and change it to something else. Thinking back now, the picture that comes up is something like a political debate...a fun debate, though <grin>. I found being aware of these patterns and being able to use them myself extremely useful! All around us people are more or less effectively trying to influence us, being aware of this helps me to keep a lot of the garbage out and being able to use SoM myself enables me to influence me and/or others in a positive way....and it makes discussions so much more FUN!! Most of us agreed later on that it would've been great to spend more time on this subject, simply because the day just flew by and there was still so much interesting stuff to learn! I've since been working through the print-outs we got and am practicing every single pattern...

The last day was about motivation and that's when it all came together - how Jonathan managed to incorporate everything we'd done the previous days and ideas/questions that had come up during the training, breaks or in our "evening sessions" into this last day remains a miracle for me... We just about covered everything from submodalities, to eliciting strategies, to calibration exercises, some wild energy experiments, anchoring and the show down was installing the best anchor for motivation ever (hearing voices has never been so much fun...). I'm not gonna give this away, if you want to have a blast and an anchor for motivation that really works....go find out for yourself! I'm sure Jon's doing another weekend soon...

Ok - about the trainer...I love Jonathan's style of teaching! In my opinion he finds the right balance between "installation" and explanation. He has a gift for explaining complex structures and always had the time to go completely off topic whenever additional info was needed. What I found incredible was how well Jonathan managed to keep track or calibrate to everyone in the group continuously, check whether everyone was keeping up, have endless patience when we got stuck and the way he really walks his talk. We were an extremely heterogeneous group ranging from children to adults and from NLP novices to experienced NLPers - and I think it takes a skilled trainer to have everyone benefit at different levels. Another great thing is, that Jon's never off duty...he was always around during breaks and in the evenings to answer questions, socialize, bring up new ideas....let's put it this way -- it never gets boring when he's around! ;-)

For me a training is great when I get results and that's why I'd recommend Jonathan's Skills-Builder-Weekend to everyone who's interested to take his/her NLP skills to a new level - whether it's that you've just read books and want to get some hands-on training or you're already trained in NLP and want to find out how to do it even better! Here's some of my "results":

I'm a lot more confident and creative in using NLP. This weekend helped me to reactivate previous learnings, get leads of new ideas and become more confident in my own ability to do NLP. Not think about it or talk about it, but develop the attitude of adventure, curiousity and motivation to just go out and use what I've learned.....and continue learning.

I've become more aware of what's going on around me and I'm using my senses in new and exciting ways...

I'm "getting what I want" more easily and more often even with people that I found difficult to deal with in the past. Believe me...that's fun! (especially using SoMs on some jehova's witnesses on the street....or politicians....)

Just a couple of days after the training I got a glimpse of what really effective communication feels like. I had an appointment with a guy who definetely was in a less-than-positive state and who had no intention of giving me what I wanted -- and I got my way!! I was in the right state, alert, got my language spot on (...did I tell you that I love sleight of mouth?), had the tonality right, paced and then led led led led him to feeling great about my demands... WOW... talking about flow!!!

All in all....I've enjoyed myself tremendously, laughed at lot, learned a lot and I recommend this course to anyone who wants to improve! If you've got any further questions feel free to email me at SilkeSch@aol.com or just see Jonathan's web page at http://www.altfeld.com