By Colin Vermont

Wow!

That's the best word to sum up a weekend with Jonathan Altfeld. When you go, expect some incredible personal breakthroughs.

I've known Jonathan for over a year. And it has been truly amazing to watch how rapidly he has mastered and integrated his NLP skills. I think one of the reasons for his incredible growth and natural understanding of NLP is he possesses that rarest of qualities in a trainer- The Man Walks His Talk. He has an intimate familiarity with everything he teaches, because he's fully explored its use in his own life. Added to this are his background in expert systems (knowledge modeling), and his cutting edge training with the top names in NLP.

Jonathan brings a very playful attitude to his trainings. His style is natural and refreshing. He keeps throwing new things at us to keep us just enough off balance and keep our minds sharp. He entertains with many stories and anecdotes, and does dead on (& flattering) impersonations of a number of trainers.

The seminar was held in Los Angeles, just 10 minutes from the airport. It went from Friday to Sunday, from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm.

We started out with some simple matching and cross matching exercises. This led to a discussion on Rapport and how quickly it can be created. Next we learned some tools to control out state- anchoring, circles of excellence, and resource triangles. Once he demonstrated and we played with these techniques, he his shared with us his own personal touches, the little tricks he's discovered that make it quick, easy and elegant.

The advanced exercises touched on time-distortion (temporal predicates), values elicitation, structure of beliefs, swish, & logical levels.

To keep us lively and alert, Jonathan led us in some cross crawling exercises every morning and afternoon. His light and sound machines were also available whenever we wanted to use them.

The weekend was very experiential. No lectures or handouts. It wasn't about head knowledge. Just a brief description, stories, and anectdotes, and we jumped into the exercise.

During the seminar, the exercises were often tailored to the individual. Jonathan suggested before each exercise that he would think about what one of his goals or challenges was, and working with that would be his demonstration of the next tool we would learn. It was in this that Jonathan showed off his modeling skills. Sometimes one of the participants didn't understand a tool's description, and he would present the information in a way that made most sense to that person. Jonathan has an excellent ability to see to the crux of an issue and present the simplest solution. In my own case, Jonathan allowed me to clear up some long standing misconceptions I had, simply by suggesting an exercise where the group would go to the mall and say "hello" to people (don't laugh, I chose to do it, and it worked!).

As a result of the seminar, I personally gained many very powerful personal insights. I would say "about how I sabotage myself", but Jonathan does a very good job of framing everything in a positive light. "Sabotage" has a connotation of self blame and bad intentions. Not a very resourceful state. Jonathan truly believes that people aren't broken, they just do things that don't work. I used to think that I had to work on my "Identity issues". But I know realize that any definition of my "Identity" is actually a limitation. My feelings and my beliefs aren't my "Identity", they are just something I do, and I can chose to do something else. For me this is a profound insight. Working on my "Identity issues" isn't solving a problem, it's CREATING one.

The seminar finished with some coaching in finding our natural voice, walk, and way of moving.

All in all, one of the best, most varied, and personally impactful seminars I've ever attended. I highly recommend him.

Colin Vermont, Student

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