By Jason Wyse

I'll begin this review by saying that this Master Practitioner program with Richard Bandler and John LaValle was the two-year anniversary of my first Neuro-Linguistic Programming training, and what an anniversary it was – truly magickal in every sense of the word! This year's program had a somewhat smaller attendance than most training seminars I've been to, about sixty people in total. So I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work with every single person at least once and often much more than this.

The program lasted for twelve days (ten for the Practitioner program), hosted by the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, a charming if somewhat eccentric place just across from Mann's Chinese Theatre along the Walk of Stars. Apparently the city of Los Angeles has recently instituted a hundred million dollar project to improve and renovate downtown Hollywood, as evidenced by the newly installed streetlights, street cleaning crews, and other changes. I felt much more comfortable walking out to find something to eat late at night than a year ago, when the streets seemed to grow rather seedy after about nine or ten at night.

Hollywood abounds with ethnic and traditional restaurants a short walk from the hotel, and if the meals at one shop seem too expensive for your budget there is probably a similar store just around the corner serving the same food at half the price. The average meal in Hollywood will cost you anywhere from $5 - $20, depending on where and how much you eat. The Hollywood Roosevelt has a charming, antiquated feeling to it, and is a convenient place to stay for those who can afford it. The staff is quite helpful and usually friendly, although I still haven't figured out why the last couple hotels I've stayed at keep a grand piano on display outside the seminar room but refuse to allow anyone, even skilled musicians, to play it. Rooms at the Roosevelt are very comfortable, running from $79 upwards per night depending on size and how many people you'll be staying with. I've also found it's a good idea to ask hotels what the room tax is if you're going to be staying for a while because they usually don't bother to mention it when you're making reservations. Hotel room tax is generally between 7 - 12%, depending on the city you're in, and this can add up to another hundred dollars or so over several weeks. I should also mention that many of us who stayed at the Roosevelt during the seminar received free "suite upgrades" which was a nice added bonus. My room had a table and several chairs for entertaining visitors, as well as a desk so I could write and work during the wee hours of the night. For those who are on a tighter budget, the Hollywood Hostile is a block away and has both individual and group rooms available for about $25-$39 per night.

Our training time was split relatively equally between Bandler and LaValle, with Bandler usually training in the late afternoon and evenings installing generative strategies and big chunks, and LaValle working in the mornings to fine tune the details and teach language patterns (which he does so elegantly). Several other trainers were also available to lend their assistance and answer questions, including Chris Mülzer from Germany, Roni Senior from Switzerland, and Domenic Luzi from New Jersey, which is a foreign country in its own right, and of course Brahm von Huene. As a most welcome surprise, Stever Robbins and Barb Stepp also joined us for the second week. I'm usually a bit amnesic after one of Bandler's seminars, but I'll enumerate the skills we learned as best I can and add some of my own subjective experiences.

Richard Bandler was on fire, as usual, and ran several marathon sessions which was quite an accomplishment considering he'd had twenty-some-odd teeth pulled the week before we began. Regaling us with stories of his recent trip to India, metaphors galore, magickal tales, and a strong dose of math and physics, he seemed to be working a lot on expanding our beliefs and building in generative recursive programs. Two of the major themes were liberation and developing our ability to feel good. To this end, many of the exercises he gave us dealt with using submodalities to elicit resourceful states and stacking these together to create propulsion systems, with a healthy dose of deep trance phenomena added in for good measure, including a wonderful exercise on age regression and changing personal history. We also did several exercises on building state chains and nesting loops, as well as energy work to fill ourselves up with "good goo" and spread it around to others.

At times Bandler was unusually explicit in demonstrating patterns such as the swish, phobia cures, building and blowing out compulsions, and the like, or perhaps I've continued to improve my sensory acuity? Either way, the patterns seemed very explicit and I found this to be very helpful. My impression is that he was experimenting with some totally new strategies as well, and he dropped hints that he may be teaching a new model sometime in the future (but avoid quoting me on this one – it may just be my imagination!). I'm happy to say that Bandler appears to be much healthier than when I first started training, and also that he's packaged more information in a shorter span of time every seminar I've been to. I believe we easily accomplished more in the first week this year than we did in both last year!

John LaValle has also improved tremendously since I first trained with him two years ago. He told us numerous stories about his recent adventures in Europe and Africa and included many useful tips and ideas for the businessWoMen and consultants among us. Many of LaValle's exercises centered around comparing the submodality differences between experiences, eliciting and installing strategies (i.e. making good decisions, feeling very motivated, learning more easily, etc.), generating language patterns, trying on multiple timelines, and using anchoring. He also oversaw a couple sessions in which we broke up into small groups and worked on skill building drills in stations around the room. The station work covered many areas very rapidly, including multitasking, use of an oscilloscope, precise anchoring, meta-model challenges, more dynamic analogue communication, becoming aware of spacetime predicates, rapid trance inductions, using linkage words and generating language patterns, and a host of other skills.

No seminar with LaValle would be complete without morning aerobics (dancing to disco, blues, pop, and Funkadelic tunes) and exercises to build rhythm skills. He has a wonderful sense of humor with a compassionate heart sheathed inside the New Jersey attitude, and spent a considerable amount of his time working with individual members of the class and answering questions. Goddess Kathleen and John Sebastian LaValle also joined us on the fourth day of the training and both added their incomparable charm and wit to the seminar as well.

We also had a guest appearance by none other than the esteemed author and genius of expanding reality tunnels, Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson lectured during several afternoons during the second week and covered broad topics ranging from the writings of James Joyce and Aleister Crowley to Timothy Leary's eight-circuit model of consciousness evolution, to the movies and plays of Orson Welles, to the latest conspiracy theories, and included most everything in between. His combination of Irish wit and practical experience added to his vast knowledge database make him a fascinating speaker. His new book Everything is Under Control was available too and even has an entry that speaks about NLP – check it out!

Of course, a seminar day does not end when we leave the classroom at seven or eight most nights (although we ran to between eleven and midnight on a few days), and I must mention I feel this was possibly one of the best group of people that I've ever learned with. We often continued playing well on into the night, going through exercises, telling each other stories, listening to the guitar and writing poetry, or cracking jokes at the bar. We were also a multicultural group, with attendees from England, Germany, France, West Africa, Switzerland, Greece, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Argentina, and other countries as well. I love working with such diverse cultures and interests and find the mix of different strategies teaches me to be more flexible and increases my respect and appreciation of people as individuals and their belief systems.

I met many new friends and some old friends as well, and had a great time getting to know them better. As usual, the participants hailed from a variety of professions: salesWoMen, doctors, lawyers, consultants, musicians, writers, teachers, therapists, real estate brokers, and others. Everyone was very willing to help each other out, and several people changed so miraculously in the two weeks that I wouldn’t believe it possible if I hadn’t seen it myself. I’m amazed too at how people seem to look younger and healthier every day they’re attending one of Bandler’s seminars – wrinkles fade, faces fill with color, and bodies relax a lot.

The final day of the seminar we held a tournament in old medieval style, groups of participants jousting with ambiguities, fencing with language patterns, and dancing their rhythms around the Maypole. I was amazed to see how far and how quickly everyone had progressed in developing their skills, and during the deep trance-a-thon some of these wizards even evoked full body catalepsy in each other! You can probably find pictures of the tourney on LaValle's websight, "http://www.purenlp.com".

Congratulations also go out to Holley and Dave Gonzales who were married on Father's Day under the auspices of the Summer Solstice by Robert Anton Wilson. It was a small and intimate candle-lit wedding with pagan overtones, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Best wishes to the two of you!

As for some of the changes I’ve noticed in myself during and after the seminar, the first thing that comes to mind is that my writing has improved tremendously across the last several months, in writing both poetry and fiction. I’ve also found myself experimenting with art and drawing from time to time, with unpredictable and sometimes surprisingly good results (honestly – the hand just draws the picture while I watch!). During the seminar I noticed an immediate difference in that the precision with which I was able to apply techniques increased dramatically, and I had a much easier time keeping track of multiple layers of communication at the same time. In the month or so after the seminar I’ve also noticed during conversations that I’m exploring new ideas and trying out new ways of helping people change. (It’s been my experience after other seminars with Bandler and LaValle that this process continues to evolve in the weeks and months afterwards, with new skills and language patterns manifesting as if by magick.) I also felt very good, laughed a lot, and enjoyed the company tremendously, which I believe is an important aspect of any effective NLP seminar.

In sum, we learned many new things, changed each other and ourselves, and enjoyed a great time in Los Angeles! Their trainings are not for the faint of heart or people who like to make excuses, but excellent for the curious, the explorers, and those who are willing to jump in with both feet and find out how much is possible, and I highly recommend both John LaValle and Richard Bandler’s training for both newcomers to Neuro-Linguistic Programming and experienced people as well.

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