Yoga To Go: Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Personal Growth
Most people become aware of NLP through marketing or therapy. These are places where it has gained great acceptance but it is also found in many other contexts. Actors often use NLP to learn how to create emotions and how to identify with their characters. Artists often use NLP to enhance creativity. You may be familiar with the attorney, Jerry Spence. He uses NLP to choose and influence juries in Court cases.
For those of us already familiar with the discipline, NLP provides astounding possibilities for personal growth and development. Using the tools developed in the context of NLP, it is possible to attain meditative states that would otherwise take years of practice. Memory can be enhanced and levels of sensory awareness can be increased significantly. Richard Bandler, the creator of most of these techniques has repeatedly stated that NLP makes available levels of choice and experience that were until recently only available to people who spent years in esoteric disciplines.
The following is a program of personal growth. It has been worked out and tested with hundreds of persons with astounding results. It worked for them because it is designed to awaken the deepest and best potentials within each person. It is a program about personal evolution and choice. It enhances personal awareness, self-esteem and confidence. It enhances memory, concentration and makes ecstatic experience available almost anytime and anywhere.
Beyond NLP, the program itself is rooted in the works of Carl Jung and Abraham Maslow. Both men believed that human beings had a call to fulfill a unique potential that is buried within each of us. This calling is known by many names. It is a life direction. It might be the task or work that will give your life meaning. In Zen fashion, it may simply be the ability to be fully present with full intensity to whatever task comes to hand. On some level, as Scott Peck has suggested, it is knowing your place in the universe. Here, we are using the tools of NLP to awaken that potential.
The name, Yoga to Go, needs some explanation. First, and most importantly, this is not a course in yoga. There are some affinities in what we do with mindfulness meditation but our approach is purely Western and purely psychological. Since 1998 this program has been provided for free to Probationers, Parolees and Supervised Releasees in the Federal Court System. It has been used as a mandatory drug treatment class (in which drugs were never mentioned after the first session).
As time went on, the program improved and the depth of the experiences that people had grew deeper and more consistent. After practicing our techniques for about 12 weeks (In the Court system it is 16 weeks long), one participant with esoteric experience realized that the states that he was achieving were as powerful as any he had attained in Yoga. These states had the added advantage that they were available everywhere without silence or postures or special breathing. As he thought about his experiences in the group, he blurted out: "Do you know what this is? This is Yoga to go!" Hence, the name.
The course consists of a series of exercises which we will practice in the course of four days or eight sessions (depending on the frequency that you choose). We also like to include at least one one-on-one session to help refine your skills. The skills are incremental and build one upon the other. In the first session we will learn the rules of memory enhancement and the techniques of submodality manipulation. Using these as a foundation, we will waste no time in getting to states of powerful ecstacy and deep peace. Building on these, we will create a series of five tool states: focused attention, confident decisions, awakening to learning, fun, and personal confidence. We will enhance each of those states to an ecstatic level and then connect it to a simple gesture using techniques from classical (Pavlovian) conditioning. This gesture will make each state available everywhere and any-when. After some practice, you will be asked to keep a journal of your daily experiences with the states and later to create your own. Towards the end of the first half of the course, we will use the five initial states to create a deep, centered sense of who you really are and who you have always been. In Jungian language we will be constellating an experience of the deep Self. This will become your compass and guide through the rest of your journey.
The second half of the course spends time enhancing the depth of your experience with your own Self by adding connections to all of the positive potentials that are part of you and have always been part of you. Continuing from there we begin a series of exercises aimed at designing a future that is uniquely yours; one that literally flows from the depths of your being. In the last session we will all participate in an initiatic exercise of personal integration and growth into the future.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM PARTICIPATING
The first thing noticed by participants is a surprising capacity to enhance memory. The basic skills taught in the first two lessons have a wonderful effect on memory retrieval, attention and focus. One participant in a workshop declared that he had been unable to meditate for years but using the basic techniques in the first two lessons, he was able to attain a meditative state quickly and easily. A second surprising effect that appears early on is the learned capacity to make emotions something that you can do consciously, not things that just happen to you. As early as lesson one we learn that we can use memories to evoke emotion and then use the emotions to reach ecstatic states of consciousness.
Lesson two begins to develop some of the more subtle aspects of these states and refines your capacity to discriminate between powerful states of positive affect. Here you will discover how a simple emotion can be magnified into a deep meditative state. You will discover the subtleties of various experiences.
In lesson three you will learn to create conditioned responses that will allow you to evoke the felt states automatically, powerfully, anywhere and any-when. Beyond this, the anchoring technique that you will learn becomes a powerful tool for enhancing the states in new ways. You will also begin to discover how the five simple tools that we will have learned to this point can be used not only as powerful meditative and restorative states, but also to enhance choice and consciousness.
In lesson four we will review some of the basics of the previous lessons and learn several new ways to increase the intensity of the states.
Lesson five brings us into solidly Jungian territory. Here we will create an experience of your deep Self. For many, it is a first encounter with all that is best about who you really are. Past participants have often remarked that they were unaware that they could feel any thing quite so deep, so refreshing and positive. It is the first step towards awakening your deepest, purest identity. We call it the NOW Anchor.
In lesson six you will be asked to keep a diary with regular appointments through the week or through the rest of the course in which you will be asked to record the results of using the states consciously in your every day experience. It is a place where you will begin to experience new levels of choice and control, new confidence and new relationship styles. You will discover what it means to take a few minutes everyday to stop and take care of yourself.
Lesson seven asks you to take control of the process. Now that you are an expert at enhancing resource states (memories) and creating anchors, you will become responsible to create a set of your own anchors. For most people it is a milestone in enjoyment. It is one of the important places where we emphasize that these resources are yours.
Lesson eight asks you to find some new examples of positive past experiences. It is designed to unify your experience on a significant level. It is also designed to make deeper and more personal resources available through the NOW anchor.
In lesson nine we create a new set of anchors from the experiences assembled in exercise eight and add them into NOW. With these additions, NOW deepens and becomes a personal compass with direction and depth. You will discover new directions from your personal history and a meaningful call to a felt sense of your won future.
In lesson ten you will discover the rules of motivation and goal setting. Using the deep sense of personal direction created in the last exercise, you will explore your future experiences of spirituality, relationships, employment, health and intellect. We will then use time tested NLP tools to make those outcomes, real, believable and accessible. In the course of this exercise we will work with a foolproof method for creating motivating futures.
Lesson 11 reviews the future that you created using a special technique called ImageStreaming. The technique itself is believed by its creator to enhance IQ. We will use it to invoke the power of the waking dream to add depth to your future.
The final lesson, lesson 12 creates a dramatic encounter with your future. Rooted in the works of Robert Dilts and Steven Gilligan, the exercise will transport you into a place where forgotten potentials become an important part of your ongoing reality. Participants have described it as having the feel of an initiatic rite.
In the end, it has been my experience that participants come from the program more comfortably themselves, more powerfully themselves with many of the characteristics of Self Actualizing persons as described by Abraham Maslow. Some people have spiritual awakenings. Some people have spiritual experiences that relate to their own traditions. All participants awaken to new levels of who they really are and what is important to them. In a consistent manner, everyone awakens to a newfound sense of their own place, their unique place in the universe.
WHAT NOT TO EXPECT
This is not therapy. While we have extraordinarily positive results with many people, we make no promises of cures or treatments. This is a personal growth program. If you are under the care of a psychologist, psychiatrist or psychotherapist, we suggest that you discuss participation with them before starting. We would hope that you will have them contact us and discuss the program contents before hand.
While this is a deeply spiritual program, it is not religious and does not foster any particular view of spirituality. We will help you to establish the physiological states associated with spiritual experience, their ultimate meaning is up to you and will be defined within the context of your own path. If you have been involved with a specific tradition we encourage you to feed these practices back into those traditions. We will not endorse any specific spiritual program. If you have been involved with a twelve step program, we encourage you to consider these exercises as a way to operationalize one meaning of what your higher power can be.
As we are teaching personal autonomy and individual growth, do not expect to become part of a cult or other organization that will provide answers without your input. All of what we do is designed to place control in your hands.
At no time will you be in a state that is not fully under your control. Our purpose is to enhance consciousness, choice and personal control. The experiences that you have will be yours and yours alone. They are safe and totally voluntary. At no point will you ever be in anything but a controlled, safe environment. If we believe that the program is inappropriate for you, you will be advised of that and discretely asked to leave.
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