One refined model that was developed in 1976 was a six step and two part reframing model to apply to simultaneous and sequential behaviours respectively.

Other techniques that were developed were the use of synesthesia overlaps in representational systems. A synesthesia is the blending of the senses. Each representation in one sense has a corresponding representation in another sense. For example, heat in the feeling sense leads to warm colors in the visual sense. When we speak of synesthesia overlaps we are talking about a bridge that enables you to take any content and be able to experience it in a multiple of senses. Synesthesia overlaps are represented in language by phrases such as a warm color, or a bright sound or a loud shirt.

By late 1976, individuals who had been attending Richard and John's workshops for the last three or four years began presenting their own workshops, using the techniques that they had learned from both Richard and John. Two of these individuals, Steve and Paul, were conducting elementary hypnosis workshops. Byron Lewis and I (Byron wrote Magic Demystified with Frank) were conducting Gestalt, NLP and hypnosis workshops. That association stopped because Byron got a job. Then in 1976, Robert Dilts and I formed a partnership and began teaching rudimentary NLP groups in Santa Cruz.

Another person with a refreshing approach was David Gordon, whose field of expertise was therapeutic metaphor. His book Therapeutic Metaphors was prepared as he was going thru his Masters Degree program in San Francisco. Richard supervised him in the development of his thesis on therapeutic metaphor and David later not only presented it as a thesis but then put it in book form which Richard later published under Meta Publications.

Richard and John were calling up university faculties right and left throughout the country, and organizing venues to promote their latest techniques the meta model, representational systems and anchoring.

They were what you would call, booked out solid. Something like ninety-nine out of one hundred workshop participants signed up for another workshop after a program they conducted in Las Vegas. Their humorous approach to psychotherapy and their ability to utilize existing contexts elicited comments such as this is the best show in town.

However it was not until Leslie and Judith started presenting workshops did they really start getting a following of women. Richard and John had the adaptive skills, however the era of the feminist was not ready for the male dominance and the sometimes sexist Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Leslie also gave them the Virginia Satir caring approach that was very different to the detached hurry up and humorous approach. Leslie was good and solid and appealed to those content people who needed to walk thru everything before they feel they have learned. She and Judith appealed to many people who could not grasp the subtleness of John and Richard's presentation.

Everybody was on the road. Robert and I began teaching throughout the US in 1977 and developing introductory and intermediate NLP workshops. Our first workshop on the road was promoted by Steve Stevens, now Steve Andreas in Boulder Colorado. Our rule was never to teach the same workshop in the same way. We taught simulated television game shows called "guess my rep system" and "groovy deal therapy", a precursor to six step reframing. We had a great time, however our creativity was not always looked upon as genius by some of our sponsors.

David started an association with Maribeth Anderson. After several trips to visit and study with Milton Erickson they wrote two books together, the most well known being Phoenix.

Paul and Steve began a successful partnership that lasted several years. They also followed the road of Milton Erickson and refined and developed a teaching model of hypnosis throughout the United States and set up an Ericksonian Hypnosis Institute in Europe. Steve was very much into modelling Milton.

Milton mentioned that he taught seminars almost every day because it helped him forget the pain that he experienced. He was confined to a wheelchair and would do pain control exercises on himself every morning for a few hours before he taught.

Steve wanted to model Milton so he confined himself to a wheelchair and this was his mode of transportation from class to class at the university. When he found out about this, Milton was very unimpressed by his protege's behaviour, fearing that Steve would develop some of Milton's chronic symptoms. After this Steve limited himself to modelling the gross postures of Milton as well as his numerous communications patterns and therapeutic intervention styles.

Robert was commissioned by John and Richard to write NLP Volume One which was later published in 1978. Robert went up to visit John one afternoon and reluctantly let me come along. He was very guarded with his friendship with John. Robert showed John his paper titled NLP: A New Psychotherapy. John was impressed to the extent that he then rang up Richard and suggested that Robert assist in writing the book and both John and Richard could serve as supervisors or oversee the written work.

It was initially said that Leslie was supposed to be writing this volume of NLP, however at this time she was more involved in her own work with couple and family therapy and so the commission was given to Robert. As John said besides Richard owed him a favor for helping get his Bonny Doon house.

The idea of cognitive strategies or the sequences of sensory representational systems came together and the last piece in the NLP puzzle fell into place. Strategies were the next logical sequence of the development of the model of NLP. They happened more as an evolution as opposed to an event.

After the very nature of development of strategies the idea of notation came into effect and over the next couple of years, notation changed very rapidly.

Strategies have fantastic applications to modelling and education in general. Most people don't take the time to learn them properly because they can't find an immediate application. They would rather do change history or nowdays the swish pattern.

An evening that was a turning point in my understanding of strategies was a visit to Richard at the Bonny Doon house. He was working on techniques to spin out belief strategies. The technique needs to be very thought out before doing. It is one of the few NLP techniques that you cannot predict what the results of your intervention are going to be. It was used when nothing else worked; or in my case if you wanted to find out what would happen if you had your belief strategy spun out.

Richard was telling me that you cannot know where it will lead you if you have never been there. He led me thru a strategy to understand which inevitably led to confusion, at which time he covertly anchored me visually by mimicking my facial expression, facilitated connecting the end of my strategy to the beginning until the strategy was self initiating and I was on my way. Strange colorful dreams and all.

The first thing that happened was I passed my Family Counseling Licensing test under very unusual circumstances. You see the test was mostly multiple choice and when I didn't know the answer, my internal dialogue would answer aaaaaaaaaaaaa or cccccccccc. A great way to take a test. It was as if the person behind was giving me the answers. What I didn't know was that I had incorporated into consciousness an auditory representational system which was just the resource I needed. After that none of the skills that I had made any effect on settling things down. It was a very uncomfortable time for awhile, however one that I would do again, given the opportunity.