Dr. Grinder and fellow NLP explorers, In Whispering and several threads on this forum, we often return to the value of living and performing at FA versus the limitations of content models and other fruits of F2 distortions. I've recently developed an intervention model that I find tremendously useful. It's definitely a content, post-F2, non-sensory language model. In assisting people with changework, I realized that the model is only a general structure around which I unfold my intervention and observe the state changes in the person with whom I'm interacting. Could we say that those content models are maps, with all the limitations that maps have? When promoting to operate chiefly from the FA level, do you advocate as such based on the limited representations that maps offer of the territory? I find that I've achieved a level of comfort and flexibility in assisting people with changework that goes beyond my capacity to produce a simple explicit description and hallucinate that the same goes for yourself and anyone else on this forum who has achieved interesting and successful results with clients. The problem always comes down to describing how we're doing what we're doing... The map I've created has use for someone who knows nothing about helping oneself or others change. For experienced players, I'm sure it would be useless drivel. One way to look at it is that any content model is like training wheels on a bicycle: they allow the beginner to shape their thinking and coordinate their skills in a safe and stable manner. Whoever is teaching a child how to ride a bicycle ought, in my opinion, to be leading the child to get rid of those wheels as fast as possible to be able to be "in the moment" on the bicycle, aka FA experience. Do you see value in content models for that purpose or would you still sustain that FA from the get-go is the way to go? IOW, no training wheels. Right now, I'd say that the most effective map is the one that guides the layman the most rapidly, economically and efficiently to feel confident about his or her own ability to navigate the territory without the map. In other words, the map that leads the user to notice its uselessness and limits rather than reinforce itself. Maybe that's the task of the instructor... From what I understand, living at FA is extremely case-specific and allows the practitioner absolute flexibility of response in handling the given situation, as well as leveraging on the spot intuitions, which can only come from well-established conscious-unconscious rapport. Content models present many distortions and generalizations and tend to bind or condition the practitioner's response. Is this description congruent with yours? In the affirmative, would you say that it's more valuable to teach flexibility and calibration than teach content models? In other words, teach skill instead of map and then see what map the student comes up with? Any insights, folks? I hope that Dr. Grinder is annoying and provoking you as much as he's annoying and provoking me. If he isn't, then you get it and I must learn from you. If we're not intelligently (and hopefully viciously) disagreeing with him at least once a week, we're pussyfooting around the really interesting stuff. Rock on! Martin