During the middle seventies when the Vietnam War was coming to an end there were a lot of anti war demonstrations going on throughout the US. The University of Santa Cruz was not much different from other universities. Protest marchers would get together to march against policies of the USA in Vietnam whenever they could find the opportunity.

One protest march that stands out in my mind was an organized march that took place on the streets of Santa Cruz. One of the organizers of this march was none other than John Grinder. John was a bit of a radical at this time in his life with his t-shirt, denims and longish hair. He took on the responsibility of organizing what he called "infinity groups", which sounds like something left over from his military service days. These groups consisted of three people, who were to look after each other as they went thru the protest march.

John and his troops were stationed at the intersection of Highway 9 and Mission Street to blockade the highway. To counter the blockade were police officers from the Santa Clara Tactical Squad with their batons and tear gas.

So imagine if you can the infinity groups marching down the road, towards the blockade with everyone reassuring each other and John telling everyone to stay together and watch for your infinity group members!

Meanwhile Richard Bandler was doing a personal protest of his own on the streets of Santa Cruz Mall. In his Super Sport Malibu he was roaring up Front Street, the main street of Santa Cruz, driving so close to the Santa Clara Tactical Squad that they literally had to jump out of the way of the approaching car. The police were diving off the road left right and center. For awhile after this episode Richard and his yellow Malibu SS kept a very low profile around Santa Cruz.

Looking back, it is this type of scenario which truly reflected the approach to life and attitude of the two key players in NLP.

A new dynamic occurred in the relationship of John Grinder and Richard Bandler at one of the groups held at Mission Street in Santa Cruz. The Mission Street house was taken over by several students who were attending the university. The group was initiated by a person named Ken who continued his association with NLP and later went to work with the Santa Cruz Community Counselling Centre before going onto bigger and better things. Some of the attendees were David, Devra, Frank, Ken, Leslie, Judith, Richard, John, Paul, Katherine, Debbie, myself and others.

The skills we were learning were couple counselling and some family sculpture stuff and a little Gestalt thrown in here and there. One group night Richard was teaching couple counselling techniques. The primary people involved in the couple counselling session were Frank, Judith and Leslie. Frank was going thru some separation conflicts with Judith and he was living with Leslie. Frank was a student at the university and lived in student housing with Leslie who was also a student. Frank wanted his cake and to eat it too. So there was some problems between Frank, Judith and Leslie, and Richard was the facilitator.

What I remember about Frank was he seemed to be very nervous. Not surprising considering the situation. He had very short fingernails because he used to chew them a lot. Leslie was your classic, voluptuous blonde. She responded dramatically to her association with Richard and went thru some very powerful changes in a relatively short period of time. Richard had a very strong influence on her. Judith seemed to keep in the sidelines. Her involvement from what I remember was minimal, as was John Grinder's who was the ever present overseer, progressively changing from a passive to an active instructor.

The emotional shifts and expertise of skill in working with three people in this situation were mind boggling. However Richard pulled it off and Frank, Leslie and Judith reached an amicable understanding.

It was at the Mission Street groups that we first began acquiring our information gathering tools that were later to become the meta model patterns. The foundations of the information gathering tools began with the how, who, and what questions from the Gestalt framework, deleting that unspoken question, why.

We used to get yelled at and sometimes bopped on the head for saying why. In a very therapeutic way of course. The meta model patterns and some of the counselling techniques were derived from watching and listening to video and audio tapes and transcripts of Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls.

The dynamics were very interesting during that time, as group participants worked together and shared emotional issues. Richard was introduced to Leslie Cameron and John was introduced to Judith DeLozier. Later on Leslie became more and more interested in the therapeutic process and stuck around for further groups. Judith never seemed keen on therapy. She was studying religious studies at the time and continued her interest in that area.

The weekly group fees were going up and we were now paying $50 a month. It's now 1974 and the groups are beginning to evolve. One, probably the most interesting of these groups, was a group that was held in the Santa Cruz mountains. A primary forum of this group was Gestalt Therapy with some couple and family systems counselling techniques using Virginia Satir's work as a basis of development.

The importance of this group was that it was the group that was the experimental grounds for the meta model. The group took place in a house just outside of Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was a large wooden mountain house which lent itself very easily to a large group meeting. Frank, Leslie and Judith all lived there. Frank was able to resolve some of his conflict, and he was living with Leslie in the house, and Judith was in attendance at the granny flat. It was during these groups that Judith became more involved with John Grinder.

The meta model developed thru trial and error over a period of several months. The group members were the trials and errors. The application of the language patterns was a Gestalt Therapy context. We were taught one meta model pattern a week.

The meta model was designed as a process tool to complement other forms of information gathering skills and adapt very easily to other forms of counselling and psychotherapy, and in the near future, business and educational applications. However some people were getting the wrong impression of what the meta model was all about. Robert Dilts and I had a course participant show up at one of our introductory seminars having heard that the meta model cured schizophrenia. He was very adamant about proving us wrong. We quickly dispelled these claims and got on with teaching NLP.

Richard originally supplied the therapeutic expertise and John the model using his linguistic background in transformational grammar as a starting point.

The structure of the group proceeded in this way. The group members would pair up, one person would be a people helper and the other would have the presenting problem. We would go into various rooms and gather information concerning the presenting problem and how it fit into the person's model of the world. We were given some theory on deep structure and surface structure relationships and the distinctions between the map and the territory.