By Jason Wyse

What skills were taught?

Master Practitioner: Reality strategies, magick, high-level chunking, training skills

Practitioner: Multi-level communication; form, content, form of content, tacking multiple patterns, modal operators and sequences, strategy elicitation and chaining, using submodalities to drive strategies. Tonal and kinesthetic anchoring, state-chains, propulsion systems through posthypnotic sug. Hypnosis, mixed-state communication, eliciting trance phenomena, integrating Milton model with basic techniques of NLP, stacking presuppositions to create change, Magick, receiving and projecting energy / states, seeing auras, meditation and deep trance Strategies.

Trainers: John LaValle and Richard Bandler

Where to start: to begin with, the Master Practitioner was my 4th training seminar in NLP with Richard Bandler. I've studied and practiced hypnosis for about ten years, and first learned about Ericksonian Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming two years ago. I consider myself a newcomer to a rather broad and information-dense field, and my previous experiences in acting, stage magic, and public speaking have proven very useful when applied to the learning from my NLP trainings.

The group of participants at the seminar came from a diversity of backgrounds and I found interacting with them fascinating. To begin with, many people whom I first met a year ago at the Practitioner in Los Angeles or DHE in Minnesota returned for their Master Practitioner certification this year. Looking back at the skill levels we had last summer, each person had made amazing progress! Many demonstrated their skills and ability to teach NLP conversationally in our free time. I was thrilled to have the chance to see and work with these friends again! Many people also came to Los Angeles for their first NLP training (some for the Master Practitioner) and quickly slipped into the groove. One of the things I found most exciting is how easily the first time trainees acquired new skills and then demonstrated them constantly, even without realizing it. Many times when a first timer asked me or someone else a question about how to do or apply a technique, he or she would demonstrate, through apparently unconscious use of the technique while asking the question or telling stories, that he or she already knew and the answer and could demonstrate it as well.

The training was conducted with Richard Bandler telling nested stories and installing the major elements of the techniques and packing in a lot of information and processes at multiple levels, and John LaValle teaching many of the finer details about language and multi-level communication and giving business and consulting tips. Richard looks many years younger and healthier than he did a year ago, and he was on fire and throwing lightning while he was training. Some of the many things that Richard taught include multi-level communication and recursive structures, strategy elicitation and installation, using submodalities to drive strategies, eliciting, creating and chaining powerful states of consciousness, using hypnosis and mixed-state communication to make changes and elicit deep trance phenomena, and integrating hypnotic communication and NLP techniques to create changes. To many of us, the hours seemed much longer during the daze, and I'd often find myself forgetting what day of the week it was. As usual, there were also a number of surprises packed into Richard's training. John has improved his training and packed in more information each time I've trained with him (or maybe I'm noticing more, or both)! He has a wonderful ability teach the finer distinctions in language and technique that give NLP that extra punch. Among other things, John taught kinesthetic and tonal anchoring, multi-level communication, including recognizing and tracking multiple language patterns simultaneously, using modal operators and sequencing them to create propulsion systems of change, stacking presuppositions to create changes, and how to use all the aforementioned techniques conversationally.

In addition to Richard Bandler and John LaValle, there were a number of experienced trainers at the seminar to answer questions. Some of these were Brahm von Huene, Michael Breen, Kathleen LaValle, Stever Robbins, Domenic Luzi, Phoenix Morgan, Chris Mulzer, and Dave Gonzales. One of the most inspiring trainers was a woman who cured herself of a terminal illness - applause and cheers: take a bow Barb Stepp!!! All of the trainers were patient and readily willing to help by answering questions and demonstrating techniques for the less experienced participants.

Robert Anton Wilson also put in an appearance during the second week, told numerous stories, conducted a few though experiments, described Tim Leary's eight circuits-of-consciousness model of evolution, and demonstrated some of the strange "coincidances" and holographic language patterns reflected in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

The Master Practitioner and Practitioner programs were held concurrently over the course of twelve days at the Hollywood Roosevelt in Hollywood, Los Angeles. An average day of training ran anywhere from 8 to 12 hours, averaging 4-5 official exercises per day, with several food breaks provided. Hollywood, or "Hollyweird" as some of the locals call it, is a pretty good place to hold a seminar. There are a wide variety of places to eat and shop within easy walking distance, and many nightclubs and bars are only $6-$8 by taxi. Hollywood is a bit on the expensive side, though, with a meal at an average restaurant costing anywhere from $7.50 to $20 and up. Everyone at the seminar stayed very busy during the two week in Hollywood, but if you're interested in sightseeing, it'd be best if you scheduled some extra time if you're planning to go to one of Richard Bandler's seminars, because you won't have much time off during the workshop.

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel has both advantages and disadvantages. Rooms there are fairly expensive, costing $80-$130+ @ night plus an additional room tax. I found that the hotel staff acted quite unprofessionally. They neglected to mention the room tax when I made the reservation, which added up to a couple hundred dollars for 15 nights. Our hotel room was serviced, even when we specifically requested that it be skipped because our usual maid had the day off work. The hotel also has a policy of charging your credit card when the room balance goes over a certain amount. This would have been fine with me, except that they charged my card and just gave be a copy of the bill, rather than telling me about the policy and asking me first. In addition, several items were stolen from the conference room and possibly from several individual rooms, raising doubts about the security and credibility of the hotel and staff. On the positive side, the hotel is quite old and beautiful, and has a magickal sort of charm, having served as the residence for numerous Hollywood actors and actresses over the years. And our room maid, Reina, talked to us frequently and accommodated our schedule, she kept our room fabulously clean, and was the best room maid I've ever had during a hotel stay. If you're planning to stay at the Roosevelt, ask for Reina - she's fabulous!

To give you a better feeling of what went on during the seminar, I'll share some of my own reactions and impressions during the two weeks in Los Angeles. To begin with, I'm constantly amazed how Richard Bandler seems to pack more information and teach more things in a two week seminar than I learned from any given year in college. Every time I've trained with him, it's felt as though he's taught more and he's taught it faster than the time before, and the Master Practitioner seminar continued this trend. Some of the themes for the two weeks were "magic, magic, and more magick", "we want magick and we want it now", and "always make sure you go first when you're working with a client". As these themes indicate, certain other things were taught at this seminar, and doesn't it seem a bizarre coincidence that the full moon and the summer solstice occurred during the middle of the seminar.

I find Richard's methods unconscious installation far more effective than simple rote learning. My experience from previous trainings with Bandler and LaValle is that the biggest changes start happening in the weeks and months following the seminar. I expect this will continue to be the case, so I'm very excited to see how my life goes in the next couple months, especially considering the changes I noticed during the two weeks I was in Los Angeles. The exercises felt easier than they did last summer, even if I didn't really understand the instructions, and the groups I worked with always seemed to finish early, when last year it always seemed as though my groups finished late. I feel as though there is a much stronger integration between all the various aspects of my communication than there was before the seminar. One of the last nights of the seminar, two of my friends and I ran a series of hour and a half long double-inductions on each other, and the results were mind-blowing! The degree by which our skill had progressed in these two weeks was obvious and far more than we'd expected. One of the other fascinating things about the seminar is that Richard or John would often give the instructions to an exercise, have us take a break, and then have us do the exercise. Typically with this sequencing, the seminar participants (myself included) would do the exercise conversationally with each other during the break, whether they were consciously aware of it or not. This being the case, the exercise would usually go quickly and easily when our groups reassembled to do it.

One of my favorite things about training seminars is meeting and working with a wide variety of people, and I was very excited when I arrived in Los Angeles and had the chance to see my old friends and meet new ones. Chris Mulzer brought a number of people from Berlin, and there were people from a number of other countries at the seminar as well. I find it fascinating to do exercises with people whose native language isn't English, and their English always seems to improve very rapidly over the course of the seminar. I also find it extremely challenging to estimate the ages of the various people at Richard Bandler's seminars - with the age-regression and healing that he does with his audiences, many people look anywhere from five to twenty years younger than their actual ages. Another interesting fact is that at the tender age of twenty-three, I figured I'd be one of the youngest people at the seminar. Au contraire! Tom ??? and Devon White both came to Los Angeles for their first NLP training, and the two of them are still completing their undergraduate degrees in college (and learning about strategies so they can go back and tutor other students to learn more quickly and easily). I learned many things from talking with the other seminar participants, such as how to use energy in healing work, tips and strategies for business consulting, and the basics of playing a guitar and making it sound musical.

Overall, I've been highly satisfied with my previous trainings with Richard Bandler and John LaValle, and the Master Practitioner in Los Angeles has been my favorite training so far. Richard and John's methods of training are very unusual and I took a little while to become accustomed to them, and it's been well worth the effort. I get such a high when I can use the skills I've been learning and see them positively affect people. The Master Practitioner seminar a tremendous amount of fun and a great way to learn to do NLP rather than talk about NLP, with lots of new material for people in all stages of development.