Finally, we arrived in Honolulu, checked in, and caught a quick night's sleep. The next morning, class would begin.

Inside the training
There's no way I'm going to be able to go over all that was taught during the training week. Given that Saturday and Sunday, we went from morning to late evening, and the rest of the week, we filled 8-hour days in class, there was a lot of material to be covered.

The class was helmed by Dr. Matthew James, a relatively young guy who's the son of the company's founder, a very well-respected NLP expert by the name of Dr. Tad James. Even though the younger Dr. James made a number of "Son of" jokes, it was clear he knew his stuff and was quite able to lead the class through its lesson plan.

The class was nicely structured. There were a few hours of lecture, punctuated by group exercises. It was the constant use of group exercises, I think, that made the learning so powerful. We had the chance to try out and test literally every technique we were taught.

The program covered three broad categories of material: NLP, something called Time Line Therapy, and hypnosis. I found this interesting, because I expected the entire course to be NLP. The other topics were useful, and definitely gave a broader understanding of the material, but I was disappointed that some of the more advanced NLP techniques I wanted to learn would be held back for another class, called "Master Practitioner," affectionately known as "Master Prac."

In fact, by the end of the week, I'd heard the term "Master Prac" so often, that it almost felt like we were living in a week long commercial for that course. To be fair, seminar businesses are always in a quest for the sale for the next course, and we did learn a great deal in the course we were in. It just seemed a shame that they seemed the slice through the three disciplines, giving us a piece of each, rather than a full intensive training solely on NLP, which is what I had thought we'd signed up for. Once again, to be fair, we had the chance to learn about two other topics we might not otherwise have been interested in, and they have proven to be quite valuable.

In any case, the first third of the program was dedicated to traditional NLP concepts. These included a series of techniques for establishing strong rapport (a very valuable tool if you're selling), techniques for determining someone's strategy for something (a technique that helps you understand what a person needs to see or hear to be sold to, for instance), techniques for helping someone replace likes with dislikes and the reverse (more therapeutic than useful in business, but a great thing to know), and techniques for being able to visually read someone quite effectively (another powerful tool for business people). All in all, I found the traditional NLP portion of the course all I could ask for, and more.

Then we went on to a topic called Time Line Therapy. The idea behind Time Line Therapy is that much of what you process in your mind has a time component. For example, if you hold anger in your mind or body, it's probably due to a series of events that occurred over time. With Time Line Therapy, you're able to look at those events, and, in theory, release the anger, thereby making yourself a healthier person. You can, theoretically, use Time Line Therapy to help get over trauma and even to strongly install goals for the future.