As I understand it, the world is manifest from consciousness and consciousness is sustained by belief, because of this, I’ve discovered a new, profound respect for the power of belief.

So if I am exploring a practice which requires belief, the one sure way to not get results is to not believe…

I am very interested in exploring a variety of belief systems and their related practices. As I discover more things which “work” I am becoming less dogmatic and more open, and ending up with a better understanding of how it all fits together.
Coming from an engineering background, I wanted to share my process with you:

1. Find someone you respect and trust who holds an interesting set of beliefs. You can use referrals from friends you respect to help expand your circle of acquaintances. Be especially aware of people who have gained prominence recently, “When the student is ready, the teacher will come”.

2. Discover a practice that they recommend, perhaps a retreat or a training or a ritual you can do every day.

3. Do an ecology check: For instance, if you adopt this practice, will it take too much money? ruin my body? harm my loved ones? or hurt the environment? If so, abandon this practice and return to step #1

4. Decide how long you will do the practice. See how it works before you become too committed.

5. Use an internal ritual to take all your existing beliefs, doubts and criticisms, and put them into a mental “safe deposit box” for future reference. Put the box away in a safe place. Release the contents from your mind.

5. Model and adopt the beliefs of your friend as close as you can. Have faith in what you are doing.

6. Practice the new practice for the time you specified

7. Examine the new set of beliefs and pick the ones which seemed to be most useful.

8. restore your original beliefs from the “safe deposit box” then integrate the new useful beliefs into your system.

9. Observe how your perceptions have changed, then go back to step #1

Of interest to me, I found two Bay Area NLP practice groups; the East Bay NLP Meetup Group and the San Francisco Bay Area Hypnosis and NLP Practice Group. In addition I found a Universal Healing Tao group. Just last night I attended the taoist group and was very impressed.

We did Mantak Chia’s “inner smile” Qi Gong set, and it was very pleasant being in this room with about 12 other people while spending the time to resonate with each of my five elements and their associated organs. I’ve discovered that doing any type of Qi exercise in groups can be very beneficial, because in addition to getting your own mind and body to harmonize, you’ve also got the other participants resonating with your energy, thus amplifying your strength, and improving the overall power and serenity of the result.
Attending this meetup were several students and instructors of Chi Nei Tsang, an abdominal massage system based on Taoist principles and taught by Mantak Chia.

Check out these other Mantak Chia Resources.

Oakland has a couple of great Taoist attractions: The West coast Chi Nei Tsang institute is located here. In addition, Dr. Alex Feng runs the Zhi Dao Guan – The Taoist Center which hosts a free Taoist Meditation class on the last Friday of every month.

If you live in the bay area, I highly recommend expanding your social circle by getting involved in any of the organizations mentioned above.

One thing I like to do occasionally for inspiration is to review journal entries from the past, just to see what has evolved and what has stayed the same.

2 years ago I really wanted to become an NLP practitioner, so I followed a process where I created a “well formed outcome” and “set my intent” to do that. At the time I was just “playing” with an NLP process I was exploring, but something had “clicked” and here I am, having accomplished my desire.

Like any large goal, I broke this into steps.

Here’s what I did:
1. Learned Self Hypnosis, did many guided meditations on improving my self image and self confidence.
2. Since I’ve had a long commute (1 hr each way) I also immersed myself in NLP and hypnosis audio trainings from many different instructors.
3. I attended a Tad James 3 day Hypnosis Certification Course.
4. I graduated from the British Hypnosis Research online course in Ericksonian Hypnosis, this took over a year of participation in community forums, studying reference materials, and passing exams. I am indebted to Stephen Brooks for setting this course up, and for making it free!
5. After a year or more of concentrated study of NLP, I felt I needed a lot more practical experience, so I spent the money to attend an NLP Certification training where I could work on real people I was picky about where to take my training and finally settled on the NLP and Coaching Institute of California, the training was a total of 27 days spread over 9 months.

So the real question is; Where do I go from here? I’ll discuss that soon in a future blog entry

For almost 2 years I have wanted to take NLP practitioner training. I had studied many, many audio tapes and books, but I really wanted the experience of practicing with willing partners.

So last October I started an NLP Practitioner Training with nlpca.com, Tim Hallbom was my primary instructor. After 6 months of one 3 day weekend every month, I finally have my NLP practitioner certificate.

Some of the benefits I got from the program include:

1. I have an effective model of subjective experience. With a willing, open minded subject I can now catalyze major shifts in peoples perceptions, habits and illnesses. I didn’t really expect to be able to improve my powers of keen observation and subtle suggestion as effectively as I did.

2. I am much more aware of subtle modes of communication. This has changed my tai-chi, I now feel my Qi more strongly and directly. Best of all, my push hands is more sensitive, rooted, powerful and subtle.

3. I understand what motivates me in major areas of my life, and how to change them.

4. I now have a personal vision of building transformational communities online.

5. I have built really strong bonds with my class mates, I care about them in a ways which were totally unexpected for me.

5. I feel like my life has shifted in a fundamental way. My opportunities are limitless, my motivation is renewed, I feel centered and happy for most of every day.

Next Steps? I will be continuing with my Master Practitioner Training, 3 more months where we will focus on re-imprinting, language patterns and other advanced topics.

Check out Renee Stephens “Inside Out Weight Loss” for some tasty NLP morsels.

Or improve your coaching skill with “Coaching the Life Coach” by Robert Harrison.

Finally, i recommend the “Radical Change Group” a trio of enthusiastic seekers who seem to be well versed in using NLP in a variety of situations.

I’ve been enrolled for a couple of weeks now, and it is fascinating! I am building relationships with a cadre of like minded students from around the world. If you are seriously interested in learning about hypnosis you need to check this out!

To find out more, go to British Hypnosis Research

30 spokes share the wheel’s hub,

but it is the center hole that makes it useful

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful

Cut the doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Emptyness leads to an untroubled mind, and an untroubled mind leads to serenity.

A serene speaker is a good speaker.

In this speech I will discuss the basis of serenity, and give you a little guided meditation to help improve your serenity before your next speech.

Many people have the impression that being a toastmaster is all about talking, talking and more talking.  But without appropriate emptiness, focus, authenticity, and relaxation any speech will fall flat.

Keep your mind empty, and refuse to fill it with expectations or worries. If you are not in tune to your audience, you will be unable to gain the critical ‘rapport’ which attracts them to you. If you are empty of worry, you can remain focused, you can avoid distraction, you will be wholly present in the here and now.The pauses you use will be appropriate and dramatic.

You need to empty your mind of everything but your speech.  This is called focus.  

• Being prepared will improve your focus.  Nothing calms the mind like having practiced your presentation enough! 
• Being relaxed will also improve your focus.  If you are relaxed, you can be in the moment, observing your audience, and sensing your effect upon them. You will be able to go with the flow when an unexpected event happens. 

Some people believe that they can’t be themselves while speaking.  They think they need to hide behind a special ‘presentation’ personality, an “evil twin” where they grit their teeth and painfully force themselves speak. These speakers are not authentic. 

Don’t try to be anyone other than yourself.  When you speak as your true self, your feelings are automatically communicated in your vocal variety, word emphasis, and choice of phrases.

Speeches improve when they are about emotional topics, and show the speaker “opening up”.  Just before your presentation, you can mentally prepare yourself with a little relaxation exercise.

I have prepared a short guided meditation which can assist you in doing this before your next speech.

Please follow me in this exercise:

Take a deep breath… Now let it out nice and slow…

Take another breath, and as you breath out slowly, let go of all your concerns now.

Just empty your mind and relax…You may want to close your eyes, because you want to get truly relaxed…You have nothing to do now but to relax… 

Think of a time in your life when you were very calm and focused. Perhaps there was a time when everything went just right…
Re-live this calm and focused time now, in your imagination…

What do you see? …

What can you smell? …

How do you feel? …

Can you make what you see brighter and larger? Double the size, if it makes you feel better…Play some calming music in your mind, notice how much better you feel…You are becoming more and more… Calm and focused and happy…As you get comfortable with this feeling, say to yourself the word “Serenity“, now…Now clear your mind, think of the color white…The color white could be an interesting color.

Bring back the memory of when you were calm and focused…

What do you see? …

What can you smell? …

How do you feel? …

Can you make what you see brighter? Make your feelings stronger, make your memory brighter and larger…

Double the feelings you are having… Notice how much better you feel…Now say to yourself the word “Serenity“…

You may open your eyes, and return to the present…

So here is how you use this.  Just before you give your next speech, Close your eyes for a moment, take a couple of deep breaths…let your breath out slowly, then say to yourself, “Serenity“.  This will help you recall the Calm and focused state you just practiced.

Once you have found the emptiness within you, you will be ready to give the best speech of your life!

Christopher Howard gives free “Breakthrough to Success” Trainings, and I was fortunate to attend and see him work his magic.

Christopher Howard has learned the “true tradition” of NLP, and has kept it fresh with a lot of the recent innovations in the field. His reputation was why I chose to go, and as I expected, there was a bit of upselling going on. But it was well worth it, because the training I got was very powerful and Life changing!

I had some mental roadblocks removed, and I now feel like I am going full throttle down the highway of life, watching sparks fly off the guardrail as I adjust my course!

Highly recommended, sign up for your own “Breakthrough to Success” if you get a chance!

(Author Note: Chris Howard has quit giving the Breakthrough to Success weekends in the United States, and although I really found the session valuable, I later discovered that his affiliate support was disorganized and disappointing. )

An Excellent book. The basic principle is that a “Ubiquitous Language” should be a core design element which is shared between all participants and extended, or refactored as the understanding of the problem domain matures.

This has echos of NLP for me. Isn’t rapport learning to share the same language? It makes sense that the software built to satisfy a shared language will be much closer to what the customer needs than whatever an engineer can mind read. Evans wants us to spend time speaking the language, (multiple modes anyone?), because he believes that our mind will accept complicated models visually which we won’t stand verbally. By mulling over how a model sounds, we are using a different partion of our mind to validate, and to insure that the model we have is succinct, and well structured.

As an NLP fan I would also be interested in looking for meta language issues with the language. The same deletions and generalizations we might look for while in conversation with a patient would also reveal weaknesses in the ubiquitous language, and help us identify areas where it should be expanded or modified.

I’m still reading the book, but it has triggered a lot of great ideas in my mind! Thank you Mr Evans!

1. It would be easy to add Chinese to existing puzzle/parlor games.
2. There is a whole subculture of game developers specialized in “serious games”.
3. Several computerized language tutoring programs already exist which have game like elements.

This left me speechless, but I have been thinking about it for a while and I am working on expanding my vision to include the spirit of these responses.

What I am looking for is a way to get a return on my investment of the many hours I’ve spent playing addictive games like World of Warcraft. I didn’t want Chinese language instruction to be the primary purpose of the game, but one of several educational side effects of playing it.

What I envision is a game which educates in a variety of areas, letting the player follow their interest and naturally learn as they do what they find interesting.

For instance, being a student of things Taoist, my ideal game would be a title which focused on the 5 excellences: poetry, painting, calligraphy, tai chi and medicine.

In the ancient days, the path of wisdom was to become an ascetic and wander from village to village meeting new people, experiencing new things, learning skills, and perhaps to finding a guide for the next phase of the journey.

Why can’t our game give the same experience? Instead of a linear set of areas to traverse, there may be a range of different people / objects to interact with, each with their own entertaining challenge or training. As you learn new things, new possibilities open up, and perhaps after succeeding in a challenge, some key information will be passed on which opens up a new area of exploration. The design of Oblivion is very much like this.

The use of puzzles with educational content would be a core mechanic of the game. Puzzles allow the user to drill new concepts while still being entertained. For a game with a similar (less educational) integration of puzzles and RPG, take a look at puzzle quest

I also think that puzzle games make excellent candidates for download to a portable device. The material in your portable device puzzle collection would evolve and become more complex dependent on what you have achieved in the primary game. Given enough practice perhaps you can learn enough to pass a challenge which will let you enter a new path in the primary game. Keeping old material in occasional rotation will allow an occasional refresher, and help cement what you have learned in long term memory. I believe that a small set of puzzle games can be reused, but can be kept fresh by updating their content regularly.

We have a lot to learn from the serious games people too, to avoid repetition and linear game play we will need to greatly improve our character simulations, and provide a lot of alternative dialog and intelligent behavior in our NPCs. Advanced Natural Language Processing techniques would be absolutely necessary in a game this language centric. The serious games community has also researched the educational patterns which work in games.

I would like some attention paid to the basics of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and hypnosis as I mentioned in my previous post. I think leveraging some of their ideas could greatly enhance the quality and entertainment value of the game.

Many linguists tell us that immersion is the best way to learn a new language. The primary game should expose the user to the target language gradually, requiring the player to gain in their understanding of it to converse with new characters, and to advance their goals. Although current generation game will probably not have adequate voice recognition, users could still communicate with NPCs using dialog trees or icons and learn to understand both written and spoken forms of the language in response. The more we are required to use the language, the more painlessly we learn.

In any case, we must not forget the primary purpose of the game, to entertain. Getting buy-in from educators and parents would be a big bonus, but ultimately, what will make the game work is its inner addictiveness, high quality game play and variety.

I think all the technology, research and game design elements needed already exist. Isn’t it time we produced a blockbuster or two which actually had some redeeming value?

Lets build some AAA titles that educate. You know it is in our power…