Hello Lewis.  Thanks for your interesting reply. You wrote about the non-verbal aspects of meta-programs... 5 or 6 years ago I was very keen to identify non-verbal mechanisms for eliciting meta-programs.  The trouble I ran into is that once I actually started calibrating and paying attention to the person in front of me meta-programs became of very little value in eliciting the classes of responses I desired.  There may be value in meta-programs for generating general classes of responses from general groups of people.  Perhaps this is what Patrick is doing, however it's not what I understand NLP to be about, unless we are modelling someone good at influencing large groups of people - in which case meta-programs are definitely part of NLP_application. The intent of my comments in my original post were mainly in reference to pen-and-paper profiling such as iWAM ignoring non-verbal components of behavior. --- You wrote aboutAbout various forms of modelling and ask about whether they are "modelling" or not I have not read Steve Andreas' new work so I can't say.  From what you've said it's possible. As for Carmine Baffa and the description you offer... I see it as very compatible with that which is present in Whispering.  The process you describe is useful in the unconscious uptake phase.  I've found it helpful when I do not have access to the exemplar for extended periods of time.  It in itself is not "modelling" in the sense I understand "modelling" to be described in WITW because it does not include anything about creating a transferrable model, i.e. coding. What is not totally clear to me in Whispering is whether given a pattern presented in the form on page 53 whether you can state unequivocally that the method that produced the pattern was the "modeling" approach used in Whispering. Sure there are other ways to detect and identify patterns in the world.  To put it another way has NLP modelling itself been presented using that format?  Can you take the modelling process including unconscious uptake and the coding process and put a slash somewhere in between. In other words having a transferrable model imply that the "modeling" process was used?  What are the minimal set of steps that have to be there in order to produce a valid pattern? I think these are still open questions given that even John has not yet succeeded at creating a coding for his work modelling Finbar Nolan.  When is the reduction to a linguistic description of the patterning wholly inappropriate, e.g. Isadora Duncan's comments on "if I could say it I wouldn't have to dance it."  What other ways could we code patterns? I have reservations as I know many others do about when "modeling" is appropriate.  For example let's suppose I want to build a model that will teach someone how to be a poet.  Is this an appropriate use of modeling?  Is this an optimal way to go about learning to be a poet?  The presumption of the mimicry approach to modeling is that a great deal of information about the skill is communicated non-verbally.  Are there aspects of specific classes of skills that are not communicated well this way?  Does this work well for modeling a mathematician?  A physicist?  An accountant? I am not aware of anything that exists to date that provides guidance on whether the "modeling pattern" is applicable for which classes of learning objectives.  Perhaps the answer is that what is presented is not the end all be-all of for all learning/modeling.  It's my perception Carmen and John had the intention in writing Whispering to set the stage for the development of NLP as a serious field of study that would addresses these kinds of questions.  It's more of a first step than a last word. Loren