PRACTITIONER TRAINING -PAUL MCKENNA

When I trained with Paul McKenna he was running courses with Michael Breen, and Richard Bandler came to the UK for the duration too. The course ran over a long week in London. It was advertised as "not for the faint hearted" and I would endorse that. I can say it was life changing. I had high expectation of this as I had been introduced to the course through reading a newsgroup item on the early www. My first impression was not so good, as I was over awed by the huge number of people, and I was not so sure how I could learn anything as part of such a big crowd. I got that badly wrong, and the advantage of a room full of people is there is always someone new to practice on! There were a few people there who were very negative. My suspicion is that during the training you find out a lot about yourself - and they didn't like what they were finding!

The training is entirely practical - Richard Bandler ran a considerable amount of it and discourages note taking! You listen to him for a bit and then break into groups to practise what you have just learnt. Once you get used to his presentation style - deliberately designed to shock - you spend a lot of time laughing. I went into most sessions saying "what have I just learnt?" but it was never a problem. You have to see his training style to believe it! Paul McKenna is well known from the television, and his style is not so shocking as Bandler's. It's still great though, with lots of learning at different levels.

There is plenty of hypnotic stuff, loads of knowledgeable people around to talk to, not enough time in the breaks to talk to everyone and practise everything and a lot of understanding yourself. If I could choose again I would stay in London, rather than travel home each day. Although only 90 minutes away I found it tiring, and would like to have spent more time in the evenings with other delegates.

If you want to learn NLP from books, notes, flip charts and quiet study, and spread it over a long period then this course is not for you. If you want to stretch your comfort zone, have fantastic fun and spend most of your long tiring week on a high and going "wow" then this is the course for you.

Colin Bowman