This 16 disk DVD set is a professionally produced video presentation of parts of Tad James seven day NLP practitioner certification program. Each DVD is about 90 minutes, so there is a huge amount of material presented, especially since it is very well edited to leave out unnecessary segments and to add in commentary by the trainers on the processes. It is available at the nlpcoaching.com site.
It covers all the basic NLP processes comprehensively and effectively including sensory acuity, rapport, submodalities, and anchoring. The demonstrations with participants for each process are very smoothly carried out, and Tad James shows his long experience in training by following the script closely and only demonstrating what he explicitly intends to demonstrate.
The series also includes several DVDs on Time Line Therapy, a powerful change technique for which Tad James is probably best known. In fast-paced and effective demonstrations, the trainers use Time Line Therapy to remove negative emotions and limiting beliefs from participants. Then they take the whole group on a fast floating journey to remove any anxiety in the future. They also show how to place a future goal in the Time Line in a way that is likely to maximize its possibility of success. These are all very useful processes.
Tad James is presenting the course with his wife, Adriana James, who is equally proficient in the practice of NLP, although she is less well known than Tad. The two of them work well together throughout although some of the jokes and little stories seem somewhat contrived – presumably after being regurgitated in too many seminars. On the other hand, this huge amount of practice is very useful in the superb double inductions which feature in the hypnosis training section of the course. They are a fine team and in general come across as very genuine in their desire to empower people and to spread the useful skills of NLP.
This video series is probably most useful for people who have studied NLP elsewhere and want to get a new perspective, or of course, for people who actually took the course and want to get a review. For people who have not studied NLP before, it will certainly be useful, but the necessary lack of interactivity in a video series could give the viewer the congnitive concepts of NLP without the experiential learning that is necessary to make sense of it and to realize its true value.
For me, Tad James sometimes comes across as a little arrogrant, for example when he talks about Time Line Therapy as the greatest invention in the history of mankind, and his self-positioning as ‘the expert’ for values and metaprograms. From the demonstrations, he is clearly on top of his material and an extremely skillful user of hypnosis and NLP, so this self-promotion and self-positioning probably wasn’t necessary and in my eyes at least, actually had a negative impact.
One of the last DVDs was pretty much a commercial for the Master Practitioner program. In fact, throughout the last few DVDs, there were various references and suggestions to sign up for the Master Practitioner course. Personally, I felt that it was a little too much upselling of other products, but I’m sure that some people will be happy to get the addiitional information about the higher level material that is available.
I didn’t enjoy the Huna section so much either. While the trainers emphasize that it isn’t NLP and are careful to differentiate it, I’m not sure that it sits well with the other videos and information and techniques presented in this series.
Overall, I highly recommend this video series to people who have studied NLP elsewhere. Tad James has a strong ability to condense a subject down to its essence and to present it easily in the form of small digestible chunks.