Satir and Perls: the Forgotten Grandparents of NLP

A weekend workshop with Richard Bolstad

Prerequisite: at least 2 days of NLP Training. This course is not currently scheduled.

Every NLP Practitioner has heard the story that NLP was first developed by modelling hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls and family therapist Virginia Satir. And of course, we learn Milton Erickson’s language patterns, we know his life story, and we have probably learned how to work like he did. But could you work like Fritz Perls, or like Virginia Satir? Do you know their life stories? Apart from the Metamodel, what do you really know of Virginia’s contribution to NLP, in the book “Changing with Families” which she wrote with Bandler and Grinder? Before Richard Bolstad was an NLP Practitioner, he was a Gestalt therapist, and he studied Gestalt using the book “Awareness” by John O. Stevens, later called Steve Andreas. Steve Andreas also modelled Virginia Satir’s work in his book “Virginia Satir: The Patterns of her Magic”. Richard studied Virginia’s work with one of her students, Steve Davis, an NLP Trainer from Canada. On a previous version of this training, one of the students gave the feedback that they had been using NLP for many years, and now finally they had watched “The Prequel”. On this two days you will learn about the life and contribution of Satir and Perls, and experience their work, including the following processes:

• Gestalt Dialogue with a Symptom
• Yes and No: A Gestalt exploration of a situation where you experience Ambivalence
• Gestalt languaging: Change “Have to” to “Choose to”, Afraid to” to “Would like to”
• Gestalt clarification of projections “It’s obvious to me … and I imagine …”
• Satir “Parts Party”
• Satir family roleplay with 5 Satir Stances
• Satir Family Reconstruction

Richard Bolstad is a member of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists and a certified NLP Trainer training with IANLP and IN.