Jon Nicoll and Sam Riordan
The Mythogenic Self Process

Jon began with a story. A story about making a telescope and the grinding of the lens. (He forgot to ask if we were sitting comfortably and didn’t start ‘once upon a time’, but we can spot a story a mile off so were already settled in and waiting!) The story moved from the seemingly tedious process of grinding glass, for hours at a time with grit and rouge, and measuring in between to get just the right convex shape to the use of the telescope and the enormity of the galaxy which unfolds through the lens, once it’s just right. The process became fabulous in itself and led him onto a greater interest in how things work.  All this was for what? To give us the link to making hidden things visible. To see the stars more clearly. Through this understanding of his need to explore how things work, Jon began to get a clearer idea about himself and was attracted to NLP. However he became uncomfortable with NLP being ‘sold’ as a set of tools for fixing others. Until he came across Joseph Riggio who taught him to pay attention to both the content and the process in the context of the organisation or system within which they operate. Everybody knows one and one make two but ignores the ‘and’ which is the organisation of the whole.

John then asked us to tell him “ what people wanted” ... what are the sort of things people say they want (or, more truthfully, act as if they want). He  arranged them into a hierarchy on a flip chart. This goes something like:

Transpersonal: Beyond words, as are all examples within the categories really, but something like 'being connected with the universe'

Ontological ('Being'): Very individual responses, (as seen in the exercise, which followed).

Epistomological ('Knowing'): "Happiness", "Joy", and other wheelbarrow terms

Pragmatic ('Behavioral'): "watching football", "swimming", "playing with my son" etc. For our purposes we include speech acts and thinking in this category

Material ('Stuff'): What most 'untrained' people would come up with; nice car, lots of money, house, bling, etc;.

--This became a 'hierarchy of experience' chart
Time for us to do a bit more, apart from sitting and interacting to get our words on the flip chart.
But before we got the chance to play Jon did a demonstration, and Eric was the guinea pig. This was brave of Eric as he is a non-NLPer just along to support his wife! He made an excellent subject and we all learned lots from watching the demo. So thanks Eric. (He must have enjoyed it too ‘cos he’s been back again!) I think we took the break here and came back to do the exercise in pairs.

The exercise was to elicit (or at least to begin to...) the singular state of BEING, without need or desire, when everything is possible, the basic steps are):

- establish rapport - find out when a person would say they were 'at their best'. This can have been a moment in time, or when they are doing something they really enjoy, are really good at, etc.
- deepen this experience using the *somatic* information presented. What's
going on in their body? play it back to them, including using rhythm, tone, muscle patterns, posture, as well as any words.
- when this has been established as a singular point (the test question is "like this, what's possible for you?"), elicit a *semantic* marker: "What's a word of phrase you'd call yourself like this?"

When we came back together many of us had learned new ways to be our best and found ‘anchors’ for that ‘state’.

Once again two hours proved to be too short a time for as full an experience as we might have liked. So for more of this visit Jon’s website and maybe join him and Sam on one of their courses. www.alembis.co.uk

Thank you Jon & Sam for bringing us this insight into the Mythogenic self.