Introducing

NLP

www.lauraszmuch.com.ar
NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic
Programming.

This acronym reminds us of the fact that our

mind and body are interconnected and that
we are responsible for the models of the
world we create.
NLP training has two areas of application:

1. How we communicate with ourselves

2. How we communicate with others
It also aims at revealing the underlying
structure of excellence. It answers the
question of "how" to do things effectively,
or rather, how successful people in
different fields do what they do
wonderfully. It analyses subjective
experience, taking into account patterns of
behaviour, capability, values, beliefs,
mission in life, and internal representations
of reality.

It offers a learnable technology that can

help us improve performance and
communication, overcome limitations, and
achieve goals and confidence in different
areas of our lives.
 With training in NLP we learn how to get
rapport with most people, how to become
flexible in our communication, and how to use
language effectively.

We learn how to deal with conflict on a win-win

basis, how to tap our resources (such as
confidence, competence, inner peace,
motivation, health, abundance, etc.), how to
discover our strategies (of excellence, creativity,
good memory, etc.), how to work with our
beliefs and other levels of growth
and learning and how our brains code our
subjective experience.
NLP is an eclectic body of thought branch of
the Cognitive Sciences and Cognitive
Behavioural Psychology.

It grew out of General Semantics (Korzybski),

Transformational Grammar (Chomsky),
Anthropology and Cybernetics (Bateson),
Reframing (Watzlawick et al), Family Systems
(Virginia Satir), GestaltTherapy(Perls),
Medical Hypnosis (Erickson) and several
related studies.

Its founders were Richard Bandler (a

mathematician), John Grinder (a linguist),
and Frank Pucelik (a psychologist) who, in
the early 70s, set out to discover the
"structure of excellence".
 Who benefits from
the practice of NLP?

Any person who wants to improve the

way they live their lives and develop an
understanding of how to maximize their
potential.

Any person who wants to explore new

tools and models for communication
and learning through high-quality
training and assessment.
 Why is NLP training important
for educators?

NLP has been successfully applied in different

fields such as sales, business, medicine, mental
health, law, sports, etc. We believe good
teachers and good learning are the answer to
many issues in the world we want to live in.
Highly prepared teachers, skillful in
communication techniques, with very clear
beliefs and values, and who have concrete
goals to make this world a better place to live
in are at the most important leverage point in
the quest for positive change.

Our dream is to see professional teachers who

know that their role in our society is even
more important than what we have been led
to believe.
Laura Szmuch for
© Resourceful Teaching 2000
 Much more than a Good Teacher
November 12, 2021
Guest post by Laura Szmuch

Learning a new language is not only a

cognitive activity but a multilevel process.
It involves adjustments in the learners’
behavior and the way they interact with
their environments. It brings about changes
in the capabilities and strategies which
guide their new behaviors, and of course, it
can also generate a transformation of their
beliefs or belief systems, and cause an
expansion of their matrix of identity. It can
even modify their relationship with
something bigger than the learners
themselves: their sense of purpose.
Some teachers are prepared to
accompany their students effectively
throughout this experience.

However, a language coach, who has

training both in the field of language
teaching and a coaching model, is a
more promising option. One of the
important aspects of language
coaching is the focus on what the
learner wants and how to achieve it. A
language coach knows how to deal
with the interferences that make
language acquisition challenging and
also generate resourceful states in the
students.
 NLP Coaching

NLP is the study of how people do things well.

It is based on a generative methodology called
modeling, which is the process of studying the
subjective experience of people who do
something very well. One of the most important
things the original developers of this discipline
discovered is that highly effective
communicators, therapists, educators,
salespeople, etc. had something in common.
They never started a session, class, or
conversation without establishing rapport with
their clients, students, or customers. Rapport is
connection on different levels and can be
achieved both cognitively and somatically
through the use of verbal and non-verbal
communication.
When the teacher has the ability to do that,
there is a feeling of shared common ground
with the students. When they connect
cognitively, emotionally, and physically, they
are tuned to the same wavelength. This is
often also called empathy. Dr Milton
Erickson, the famous hypnotherapist was one
of the experts modeled by the first
developers of NLP. He had the superb skill of
noticing the person in front of him: gestures,
breathing, skin changes, eye movement, and
voice variations. He adapted his interventions
to suit the person in front of him. He
considered that if two people went to see him
with the same problem and he suggested the
same course of action, he was making a
mistake with at least one of them.
Another important contribution of NLP is the
technology to manage internal states.

Language coaches have the ability to notice,

with their developed skills of sensory acuity,
when their students are in a state which limits
their possibilities.

They can be contracted, reactive, or stuck.

They can bring with them their troubles, fears,
and frustrations. We all know that learning is
only possible when the person is open, present,
and willing to learn.
That’s why it is essential for language
coaches to know how to tap into the
learners’ resourceful states and invite them
to a generative and receptive mood. There is
a systematic emphasis on always starting with
the students in a state which gives them
access to their possibilities. The language
coach invites the learners to be centered,
open, attentive, and connected to
themselves, the coach, and the activity
they are doing.
Everyone has the resources they need or
can acquire them.

The main objective of NLP language coaching is to

invite the learner to be self-generative to move
forward in the process shown below:

Present state + Resources = Desired state

However, the process can be as follows:

Present state + interferences ≠ Desired state

The most typical interference is the one that is
inside the learners.

In that case, the coach can focus her

interventions on challenging their limiting
beliefs. Among many others, it could be that
the student doesn't believe in the possibility of
learning, or how he would behave if he spoke
the new language.

When there is no outcome expectancy, there is

hopelessness. And when there is no self-
efficacy expectancy, there is helplessness. The
role of the language coach in these cases is to
help the learners have access to more
empowering beliefs.
Another kind of interference is when the
person doesn’t know how to create a
representation of what they are learning. A
coach could focus on how that student
sequences his internal and external pictures,
sounds, feelings, smell, and taste to produce a
belief or a thought pattern. For example, if the
objective is to spell a word correctly, they
could share with them that good spellers have
the internal visual representation of the word,
and then check their sensation to make sure the
spelling is correct. Spellers with ineffective
strategies try to sound the word phonetically.
 In summary, a language coach does
not only teach the language but also
supports the learners by helping
them identify:

• Present state
• Desired state
• Appropriate resources (internal
states, physiology, information,
and skills).
• Dealing with interferences such as
limiting beliefs or stuck
internal states.
Case study:

Marta had been trying to learn English for

a long time. However, her communication
skills were very basic. After so many
frustration-filled years of taking courses
without seeing any results, she decided to
give a language coach a try. When I met
her, she had great listening
comprehension difficulties and resorted to
her mother tongue most of the time.

In the first session, she was tense, almost

paralyzed. Even though she had been told
she had reached an upper-intermediate
level of English, the truth was that she
could hardly utter a word.
I invited her to breathe.
The warm-up of our meetings was not only a
revision of what we had seen in the previous
class. We always started nurturing our
connection and her resourceful state. Every
class I shared with her different ways to manage
her inner states. And every time her negative
anchors of not being able to learn appeared,
we stopped what we were doing, breathed
together, and created a space of possibility.
Eventually, she discovered she was afraid of
flowing, of expressing herself. And she
understood this had nothing to do with the
foreign language. Her failure with foreign
language acquisition was only a symptom of
other unresolved issues. With my deep
coaching tools, I was able to guide her to
consider goals, not obstacles. Today she is
fluent, and still learning and improving.
 References

Beaver, D. (1998). NLP for Lazy Learning. Element.

Bolstad, R. & Hamblett, M. (1992). Transforming
Communication: Leading-edge professional and
personal skills. Longman.
Dilts, R., Hallbom, T. & Smith, S. (1990). Beliefs:
Pathways to Health and Wellbeing. Metamorphous
Press.
Dilts, R., Epstein, T. (1995). Dynamic Learning. Meta
Publications.
Dilts, R. (2003). From Coach to Awakener. Meta
Publications.
Dilts, R., Gilligan, S. (2021) Generative Coaching,
International Association for Generative Change
O’Connor, J., Lages, A. (2004). Coaching with NLP.
Element.
Szmuch, L. (2003). Aprendiendo inglés y disfrutando el
proceso. Dunken.
Van Nagel, C., Reese, M., Reese, E., Siudzinski, R.
(1993). Mega Teaching and Learning. Metamorphous
Press.
 Biodata
Laura Szmuch is an Argentinian teacher of English as
a foreign language who graduated from INSP “Dr.
Joaquín V. González”, coach and NLP Trainer.
Author of Aprendiendo inglés y disfrutando el
proceso (Dunken, 2003), Las seis inspiraciones
(GAE, 2013), Gramática motivacional docente: las
razones para enseñar (2012), for her Master’s Degree
in Cognitive Psychology and Learning in FLACSO,
and Proyecto Gratitud (Vergara,
Penguin Random House, 2018).

She runs leadership, NLP, and coaching training for

teachers and other professionals both in English and
Spanish and leads self-development workshops,
courses, and retreats.
 Videos to explore:
Her talk on ILCA Experts 2021 can be viewed
here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=lHcepbGqfqQ&t=309s

Carlos Oviedo interviewing Laura Szmuch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=zBAYOwDWjVk&t=854s

La PNL y la educación
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=BpzRYw5LgyY&t=40s
 A bit of history
At one point in my career (1994), I felt the need
to go further in understanding the learning
process.
In particular, I paid attention to some
important aspects of teaching which were not
generally covered in our teacher training
courses, like the delicate chemistry produced
by the communication between teacher and
student.

My friend and colleague Jamie Duncan and I

began to play with this intuitively.
 As we were both very enthusiastic about
applying what we had been learning to our
classes, we began to try things out, take
notes, read, and get books from the US, the
UK, and New Zealand that were not
available here. Above all, we shared
everything we were discovering.
Individually, we started giving some
workshops to friends and colleagues, until
the day, we organised a study group
together.

From this group, there were requests or

almost 'demands' from our colleagues who
wanted something deeper and more
structured than just a workshop, to be given
in English and dedicated to education and
language teaching.
 At this point, we were completing the
NLP Trainer training and we realised
that we had all the material and ideas in
our heads. What was needed was to put
it in order and form a course. And our
first Practitioner Certificate course in
Education started. Our name was
Resourceful Teaching.

It was the first NLP Training for

Educators in the world, we were told by
Marianne and Ed Reese, who certified
this training internationally.
The wonderful thing about working
with teachers is that we saw almost
instant results.

Teachers tend to have a phenomenal

drive and came to us interested in
acquiring techniques to help their
students learn more easily.

Little by little, however, they

realised that they are also helping
themselves immensely.
 They become more open and more
complete as people and discover that
they have resources available to
resolve conflicts and communicate
more effectively.

They see that they possess an

enormous treasure in the form of
their academic knowledge and
training but that however rich this
intellectual knowledge may be, it is
still not quite enough.
 Therefore, they acquire tools to
transmit learning, not just from a
mental perspective. It is incredible to
see the difference in their classes when
they learn to use their bodies, their
voices, aspects of non-verbal and
unconscious communication and to
value their intuition. They improve
their communication with their
students, parents of students,
colleagues, heads, and other staff in a
remarkable fashion. And this is because
their communication reveals a different
point of view, one which has been
nourished by NLP.
What most excited us is that they approached
us as 'professionals', committed to their work
and then they discovered themselves
as 'people'.
They realised that they need to devote time
and space to themselves and to the
organisation and planning of their lives and
careers from a wider perspective.

Teachers normally live in a whirlwind of

classes, preparation, marking, exams, and
different groups and undoubtedly this is a
situation in which it is easy to lose oneself.
 The changes that we have witnessed in
teachers have to do with finding themselves
again and reacquainting
themselves with their subject, their students,
and their lives.

Apart from dramatic improvements in their

classrooms, they told us of important changes
in their families and with their partners, of
new jobs or growth in their institutes, of more
useful free time which emerged from better
organisation and clear objectives.
 They also told us of better physical
health and we insist a lot on this point as
teachers need strong and flexible bodies, loads
of energy and to eat well. Teachers need to
set an example for students.
When people were complaining about the crisis
in education, we considered that it was a good
idea to teach those who teach.

When those who are part of the teaching-

learning process know where they are going,
what their beliefs and values are, and how to
find their mission, the crisis becomes a path of
opportunities.

The huge changes that we are experiencing in

the world are an excellent challenge and the
better prepared we are and the greater our self-
knowledge and our personal and spiritual
development, the more chances we have for
continued learning and growth in all aspects of
our life.
 NLP offers both information and deep
learning, learning in the muscle, and we do
that by working not only with recipes for
success but also with the inner landscape of
our minds.

What do we do in our minds to be able to

take action in this way or in another?

The most important technique and objective

in NLP is that of Modelling (1), which is
learning from those who do things well, with
a high level of excellence.
In many cases, our students have directly
modelled the skills of another person so as to
be able to achieve their dreams and get what
had previously seemed unobtainable.

(1) This is why my courses are called

"Modelados Neurolingüísticos" these days.
We were always delighted to get our students'
feedback as regards HOW they put these ideas
into practice. It was very rewarding and
motivating for us to hear that such and such tip
or topic we dealt with, we didn't know how
many years before, had triggered a very positive
change in their careers and life.
When someone told us, "Oh, after that session I
decided to open my own institute", "I decided
to go back to University", or, "I noticed what I
had to do to make my institute grow" we felt
we had done a good job.
We were not interested in telling people
WHAT to do, but in showing a different
perspective, another way to see a situation, and
in this way helping them find how to do
something differently and get the results
they wanted.
NLP works with the deep structure and the
surface structure at the same time.
 What do I mean by this?
The N of Neuro makes sure the information
gets both to the right and to the left
hemisphere of your brain, and that it is
processed multisensorily, therefore we pay a lot
of attention to how we use our senses.

The L of Linguistic is connected with both

verbal and non-verbal language, with conscious
and non-conscious messages that we might be
sending without realizing.

And the P of Programming refers to the habits,

routines, assumptions, and beliefs that
drive our behaviour:
Metaphorically, the software of our minds.
If we know ourselves better we have more
chances to communicate with others more
efficiently, achieve our goals, and make a
contribution to the world.
If you have started learning NLP already, you
know what I am talking about. And I say
"started", because the wonderful thing about
it is that we never stop learning.

If this is your first approach, or one of your

first encounters with NLP, one of the things
you are going to love about it is that things
become easier and clearer, and we get
wonderful results pretty fast.
And, as I have said before, it is not a question
of just reading or listening to us. It is a
question of putting things into practice,
"living" the knowledge.
 The sooner you start, the easier it becomes.
The sooner you see results.
People who have already decided to take the
reins of their own growth, both in their
personal and their professional lives, are a
fantastic example that shows us that everything
is possible if we take the appropriate steps to
achieve it.

Laura Szmuch for

© Resourceful Teaching 2008
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