Darrell, You are most welcome. “9. Roger Tabb of Portland, Oregon (RTabb464@aol.com) is an optometrist with whom I had the pleasure of working.  Roger introduced me to a series of exercises that greatly influenced the development of the form of the new code.” (WITW p.263) “The alphabet game is a contribution of a collaborative effect between myself and Roger Tabb.” Topic: Re:Re:Re:Re:Modeling and NLP Posted by: John Grinder Date/Time: 08/11/2003 22:53:26 The ‘series of exercises’ to which JG refers might be what RT now refers to as PST processes.  By ‘form of the new code’, I infer John to be referring to (minimally) the form of some of (perhaps all of) the New Code games. In August of 2000 I experienced 20 hours of PST (perceptual sensory training).  I had two hours of direct experience with Roger, the remainder of the training was done privately with Sandra Tabb (Roger’s wife).  My initial reaction to JG’s partial description of the NASA game (which I included in my previous post to you) triggered many associations to a process which Sandra led me through.  Sandra did not provide a name for the process and I did not ask her if the process was named.  What follows is a reproduction (directly from my journal for the most part) of my best efforts at the time to describe this process in sensory-based language.    Following my presentation JG may or may not offer his comments regarding the extent to which my description of Roger’s process correlates to the process named, ‘the NASA game’. Between the hours of 1430 and 1630, I was led through numerous exercises by Sandra and Roger Tabb.  During the first half of this session, Sandra introduced me to a split-awareness exercise.  Affixed to a wheel, positioned slightly above my eye level (while I was sitting) were icons of four mammals: a horse positioned at twelve o’clock, a dog positioned at three o’clock, a sheep positioned at six o’clock, and a cow positioned at nine o’clock.  Sandra was standing to my right at approximately two feet away.  She was leaning toward me, with her eye level slightly above mine, as she informed me that she was going to be randomly calling out the names of each of the four mammals.  After Sandra uttered the name of one of the animals (into my right ear…although she would at times intentionally(?) change her spatial orientation and volume of utterance), I was to focus my visual attention upon the corresponding mammal icon affixed to the wheel.  While the exercise continued in this fashion, I would be asked arithmetic questions at irregular intervals (such as, “two + twelve?”…the questions grew more difficult with time).  Perhaps a second (clock-time) would elapse before Sandra continued in the previous manner.  That is, before she continued calling out names of the mammals positioned upon the wheel.  I was instructed to not give her the answer to her arithmetic question until such time that she asked for it.  She typically (to be honest, I did not detect the pattern, so my usage of the term ‘typically’ is flawed) asked for the answer perhaps three minutes after she initially asked the question.  During these ‘three minutes’, I continued visually focusing upon the appropriate icon of the mammal corresponding to the name that Sandra called out.  I was ‘coached’ (for lack of a less athletic metaphor) to direct my conscious awareness upon the wheel of mammals while simultaneous remaining passively receptive to the information peripherally entering my auditory channel (the arithmetic question).  I was instructed to merely notice the incoming auditory stimuli and to NOT search for a solution to the question (her use of the negative element here might account for my conscious search for a solution to the question each time I was asked it).  Each time that Sandra calibrated my conscious involvement with the conscious answer search, my attention was gently re-directed to the mammal wheel in the aforementioned manner.  Interestingly, following many of the instances that I became distracted by Sandra’s questions and consciously involved myself in a search for their solutions, I became quite confused and experienced difficulty re-orienting myself to the task of quickly locating the appropriate mammal icon following an utterance by Sandra of the name of one of those mammals.  It seemed as if I was relearning where upon the wheel they were located.  Each time that I was asked for the answer to the arithmetic question, I was able to quickly give her the appropriate solution.  However, I did have difficulty stabilizing the appropriate split-attention state.  Noticing that I was becoming unresourceful, she asked me to take off my shoes and to get on the trampoline….Unfortunately, this was my one and only experience with this fascinating process.   I have yet to participate in a New Code training, so I do not yet have any experiential knowledge of JG’s New Code games.  For this reason I really have no clue what the ‘NASA game’ is.  I hope that my description of the PST process that I was led through was at least useful and/or piqued your continuing interest in these matters. There we have it…and I won’t even charge you $100.00 (US)/ hour for this privileged information (;-}) BTW, that is one BIG issue that I have with NLP training/PST/HANDLE certification (I am looking into this Ryan with intentions of applying these processes to neuro-traumatized patients…thanks for the lead), etc.  In order to secure ‘quality’ (and I use that term loosely relative to the ‘quality’ of NLP training I received from NLP Comprehensive and NLP Anchor Point at times) training, an individual has to spend lots of moolah.  Unfortunately, most of us are not in privileged financial situations and simply can not afford NLP training, etc. without great sacrifice.  These types of trainings should be part of the core curriculum of academic involvement and implicitly weaved into ‘storytime’ during preschool sessions, not marketed to the new age community as a panacea or to already financially successful business people endeavoring to stay on the cutting edge (and, more importantly, to get even RICHER $$$).  It is really no surprise to me why these trainings are so financially costly.  The price is simply adjusted to the price that people are willing to pay.  Unfortunately, by doing so, NLP as a field shoots itself in the foot by closing the doors to Jerome, who lives in a Baltimore ghetto.  In addition to: a re-orientation of focus upon NLP modeling,  NLP practitioners making the distinction between process and content, NLP practitioners and trainers acting with maximal congruence and to continually refining their calibration skills etc., for NLP to survive as a methodology (rather than to continue to be subsumed and incorporated into other fields, while being watered down in the process), I think we should drop the self-aggrandizing, get rich quick, New-Agey bullshit (I refer here to the new age imagery/language usage found in many NLP brochures and on many NLP web-sites and also to advertisements for NLP training found in New Age circulars) and open the door to the ghettos, the relatively under privileged (financially) and to academia. -Pete