I consider myself very fortunate to have trained with Richard Bolstad for my NLP practitioner and master practitioner courses. Along with Judith DeLozier, he stands out for me as one of the most personally and professionally congruent people in the field of NLP. I got this audio program many years ago and got a whole new level of understanding by listening to it again after a gap of many years.
The audio program was produced by the NLP training institute, Transformations, which also included the trainers Margot Hamblett (Richard’s partner who passed away several years ago), Bryan Roads, and Lynn Timpany.
This audio program offers many of the best examples of using NLP to teach NLP that I have heard or seen. Richard is a powerful communicator who has thoroughly integrated the presuppositions, language patterns, and techniques of NLP into his own trainings. He introduces many of the techniques through multi-layered metaphors and nested loops and uses Milton language throughout to help students to learn at both a conscious and unconscious level. An indirect teaching through metaphor is always followed by step-by-step explanations to facilitate conscious learning of the process.
Richard and his partner, Margot, also use many memory devices such as memory pegs which are used to help the students quickly learn the patterns of the Meta Model. Richard trained with Tad James and while Tad James’ influence is still clearly evident, he has improved that already effective approach in many ways that have made his teaching very much his own.
The website describes the product as follows:
Sixteen 45 minute CDs recorded at the Transformations Practitioner course, as taught in New Zealand and Japan. Covers an introduction to NLP, rapport building, sensory system use, language patterns for clarification and influence, reframing, healing past trauma, conflicts, limiting beliefs, confusions and phobias, setting and achieving future goals, and much more.
Although it does indeed cover all of these processes and ideas in detail, this audio program can probably best be thought of as a follow-up and refresher for NLP practitioners, rather than as a complete program in itself. Of course, if you get the opportunity to supplement your listening with live training by Richard Bolstad, that is a very fine combination, indeed.