NLP Training Courses | NLP Practitioner training | Kendal, Cumbria

The following is a summary written by a participant on a recent NLP Practitioner training, Stuart Smith, as a report of his experiences.

NLP Practitioner Course – Map Reading For All

NLP; Neuro Linguistic Programming, sounds a very fancy title for a course. Let me first explain what the terms mean. It is the awareness of our thoughts, words and deeds which when brought together ultimately heightens our awareness of our actions/ relationships within everyday life. Neuro; is our thoughts, Linguistic is our language and Programming is the unconscious action that get us through the day.  I asked Neal and Ben at Sugar NLP if I could attend a practitioner’s course to try and enhance my professional life as a full time freelance Outdoor Development Coach. I am currently an International Mountain Leader, (www.baiml.org ), Accredited Practitioner with Institute of Outdoor Learning, (www.outdoor-learning.org), Certificate in Further Education and Youthwork Qualified and have several other National Governing Body awards.  As my work is primarily face to face with my client in a potentially challenging environment, I have to use all my skills to help coach and enhance the experience.

NLP has given me a greater depth of “tools to put in my toolbox”; strategies and process, to enable me to do this. The course is designed to enable everyone to partake and learn through their own preferred style. Some people like to learn “hands on” some through reading and others listening. The balance for me on his course was just right. Ben and Neal are both very well informed on the subject and entertaining in their delivery. The content of the course is very open and honest and the other candidates helped with this process immensely, there were a few revelations that came out for me and with NLP being able to be practised without content; I felt greatly at ease with the situation. The learning is intense and rightly so, as the outcomes are immense. I have had my slightly sceptical eyes opened by some of the course content that I have witnessed. I saw one person’s phobia of spiders completely allayed; I have seen the power of my own unconscious mind at work. I have seen people complete huge great goals. All of these things I thought of as highly improbable before attending the course.

The course enabled me to meet and network with a new group of likeminded people from all walks of life, learn new skills and deepen my knowledge.    You would like to be a better coach; you know the benefits’ of having rapport with clients. Clients then bring more clients and the drop in the ocean ripples outward as your reputation grows. For my own development, I am better able to understand my client and their individual needs by building a rapport and sustaining it through a potentially challenging experience. Abseiling off a 100 foot cliff in the Lakes is not everybody’s cup of tea but with correct coaching the experience is positively rewarding.

As language is the only real means of communication with my clients I feel I am now more aware of how to handle a person or group through techniques and models. Such as being able to match their body language and tone/ words to lead to a desired outcome; using a platform of where a person is coming from to be a start point for the change to occur. This is known as a person’s map, a representation of all that makes up the person.  As an Outdoor Development Coach reading and interpreting a map is a fundamental skill. Second to that is the ability to teach people how to interpret their own map and how to navigate successfully around it to reach their desired aim.

Stuart attended a Sugar NLP Practitioner training in October / November 2007 in Kendal, Cumbria. For hard and soft skills Outdoor Development he can be contacted by emailing aim@adventureinmind.co.uk or telephone 0776 021 8804.