Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder as part of University research in the 1970s. They looked at people who they considered to be excellent, such as top communicators and therapists, and began modelling them. They were able to duplicate the "magical results" of the likes of the Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, gestalt therapist Fritz Perls and family therapist Virginia Satir. Since then, many others have contributed to the growth and development of NLP, which is a collection of techniques which can be used to tap into your own natural resources to make you truly excellent.
Today, NLP is used widely in business to enhance management skills, sales, interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence. With its techniques to understand learning styles and build rapport, it is used extensively in education.
It probably has the most profound impact in the arena of personal development, allowing us to understand how we see the world. The filters we have which distort this picture, what our values and beliefs are, the memories we have, the attitudes we have and the language we use, both externally and in our own mind, our earliest 'programming' all impact our behaviour on a day to day basis. Understanding this and using the NLP techniques to modify some of these mean that we have the opportunity to change our picture of the world and our world itself.
At The Balance House we mostly use NLP as part of our life coaching sessions as well as our business services.