The technique would then usually evolve into what was called an open chair technique where the person in the middle of the room would imagine a person in an open chair and begin a conversation with this imaginary person about some unfinished business or conflict that the student would want to work on.

The technique would continue until at such time the person with the assistance of Richard was able to resolve their problem or they reached an "impasse". Impasses were generally achieved when the person realized that they might get what they wanted and so they make a decision that they do not really want to change after all. This results in what is known as being stuck. Impasses were sometimes able to be resolved by using group members to play out designated roles having to do with the persons conflict. This procedure is often called psychodrama, and is where most of the fun of the class came in because you were given the opportunity to do outlandish things in the name of personal growth.

Often Richard would direct a student to intensify a feeling and that feeling would then lead them into a historical search where they would go back to an earlier unresolved experience. Richard would then use this technique called psychodrama and assist the person in having a dialogue with parts of themselves or their imagined family members until they could integrate the conflict that had arose. The technique would often evolve into a "busting" thru their blocks and having metaphorical breakthroughs.

When considering the building blocks of NLP you first need to consider also the two individuals who generated this incredible methodology. The personalities of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. NLP is as much an attitude as anything else. It was once written in a psychology magazine in the United States that NLP was Richard Bandler and John Grinder and that it was their personal charisma that achieved the results not the NLP.

The technique would continue until at such time the person with the assistance of Richard was able to resolve their problem or they reached an "impasse". Impasses were generally achieved when the person realized that they might get what they wanted and so they make a decision that they do not really want to change after all. This results in what is known as being stuck. Impasses were sometimes able to be resolved by using group members to play out designated roles having to do with the persons conflict. This procedure is often called psychodrama, and is where most of the fun of the class came in because you were given the opportunity to do outlandish things in the name of personal growth.

Often Richard would direct a student to intensify a feeling and that feeling would then lead them into a historical search where they would go back to an earlier unresolved experience. Richard would then use this technique called psychodrama and assist the person in having a dialogue with parts of themselves or their imagined family members until they could integrate the conflict that had arose. The technique would often evolve into a "busting" thru their blocks and having metaphorical breakthroughs.

When considering the building blocks of NLP you first need to consider also the two individuals who generated this incredible methodology. The personalities of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. NLP is as much an attitude as anything else. It was once written in a psychology magazine in the United States that NLP was Richard Bandler and John Grinder and that it was their personal charisma that achieved the results not the NLP techniques. The attitude of NLP is more overtly demonstrated in Richard's training and therapeutic personality. The attitude is one of GO FOR IT! It is one of assertiveness which is often confused for aggressiveness. It is one of lust for life, experimentation and if that doesn't work, do something different.

Richard was conducting a workshop at the university, and also conducting several external workshops and classes throughout the Santa Cruz area. Some of these were weekend courses, some were night courses. It was through these courses that Richard developed his incredible perceptual skills. He principally used Gestalt Therapy some deep massage techniques, Reichian Therapy, and then later on Family Systems Therapy primarily from a model which Virginia Satir developed.

One of the weekend workshops that Richard taught was a Gestalt Group in Soquel a small town just outside of Santa Cruz. The venue was at Bob's house who was one of Richard's employers and was settled in nicely amongst the redwoods. After the "who wants to work" ritual was completed the shuttling and psychodrama exercise would begin and the person in the "hot" seat would begin with "Now I am aware........" and comment on their internal and external awareness.

In one such exercise I ended up blowing out some metaphorical blocks. Richard had me first take a deep breath and take hold of his wrist. As I squeezed his wrist I was instructed to breathe out and say no at the same time. I did this and apparently Richard was not satisfied with the result so he had me kneel on the floor and as he bent over me to hold me down, I repeated the breathing and shouting noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The result was quite astounding. I lifted Richard up and tossed him five feet in the air. Richard then asked me what I was aware of and I said that I wanted to do it again. He just looked at me with a smile and said, "You're done," and so went the Gestalt Groups of that era.

Richard promoted his own groups around Santa Cruz thru word of mouth. He was very good at what he did and often had to limit his group sizes. He was aloof, in fact I often wondered if he actually knew the names or had any contact with the people in the groups outside of the group areas. Richard was not really considered a loner but he had few choice friends that he associated with.

He was presenting groups that were quite different from what was normally being presented around the university area. There was a lot of groupy, groping activities going on in the "Encounter Sessions" of the era. Richard's groups had very little to do with that kind of activity as Richard was quite a different kind of personality.

John Grinder in his role as course supervisor became aware of the brilliant behavioral skills of Richard Bandler, and the suggestion was that if Richard taught John what he did then John would help him model it and one thing led to another.

They chose some of the geniuses in behavioural communications of the current era. With John's background in linguistics the most logical place to start was verbal communication. They listened to and watched audio and visual tapes of key people in the fields of communications and therapy. Some of these were Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and later on Milton Erickson M.D.

John brought to the stage of NLP the dual characters of the striving professor of linguistics and the covert operations officer who worked for the army. In his formal training he used deep trance identification to increase his ability to blend in with his immediate environment and had experimented with modelling in the learning of languages.

The idea of "parts" began to play a key role in our training workshops. Specifically the polarities of what was called the "top dog" and "under dog" models of Fritz Perls' Gestalt Therapy. Perls pointed out that the topdog-underdog split is one of the most frequent splits in the human personality. The topdog is the righteous conscience. He always says what you should or should not do. The topdog attempts to lecture, urge and threatens the underdog into "good" behaviour. The underdog is the placating, accommodating manipulator who says, "Sure, I promise," or "I agree, if only I could..."