About NLP...

In the Mid 1970’s Richard Bandler, a psychology student in the University of California, Santa Cruz and John Grinder, an associate professor of linguistics, began to “Model” and analyse the works of some leading therapists of the time ,Virginia Satir (mother of Family Therapy), Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt Therapy) and Milton Erikson (Psychotherapy/Hypnotherapy). They began their study with the intention of discovering what it was that made these leading therapists more successful than other therapists of the time. Through modelling Bandler and Grinder developed a series of techniques that formed the basis for the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).

NLP is the name given to a set of techniques originally proposed to describe the relationship between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic, both verbal and non-verbal) and how their interaction can be calibrated to affect an individual's mind, body and behavior (programming). NLP is formally described as "the study of the structure of subjective experience", and is predicated upon the assumption that all behaviors have a practically determinable structure. Individuals considered to be highly successful in a field can be "modeled", or studied with the aim of separating out the various key factors which make them more capable than others. This allows the creation of techniques for changing habitual thoughts and behaviors so that others can also emulate.
 
The NLP theory behind modeling does not state that anyone can be Einstein. Rather it says that know-how can be separated from the person, documented and transferred experientially, and that the ability to perform the skills can be transferred, subject to the modelers own limits, which can change, and improves with practice.

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Optimal Learning 2005