NLP is considered now a model in its own, consisting of the meta model, representational systems, anchoring, reframing and strategies.

After the meta model groups, John and Richard began to refine their teaching skills. After a few unsuccessful attempts at teaching the meta model they began to try out new techniques. I remember one time John taught his students at Kresge College the entire meta model in one three hour session. The students learned the meta model, however when they came back they described experiences of losing their friends. The one important component that the students did not consider was the concept of rapport when asking questions.

In one course Richard taught, he spent the entire day eliciting dissatisfaction in the course participants and then spent the entire evening in his hotel room with Robert Dilts designing a model to reframe and install satisfaction back to the group.

Chapter Twenty Nine. The Wedding

John, Richard, Leslie and Judith are booked out continually, either in Santa Cruz or on the road conducting hypnosis or NLP workshops. Another event that occurred in 1977 was that Richard Bandler married Leslie and Leslie Cameron became, Leslie Cameron Bandler. It was by far the gala occasion in Santa Cruz, California. The person who married these two was none other than John Grinder. John was a preacher from the Universal Light Church.

Richard by this time was becoming financially successful and purchased a renovated school house in Bonny Doon, California. Over a period of a year, he gradually converted the school house into a mansion complete with swimming pool, spa and tennis court. It was at this house that the wedding took place. Several of the people from the early groups attended as well as personal friends and family of Richard and Leslie.

The marriage took place in the main room of the mansion. John placed himself strategically behind a podium at one end of the main room and placed a large crystal ball in front of the couple. He instructed the couple one at a time to view the crystal ball and see what the future had in store.

If only Richard had known what the crystal ball held in store for him at that time, I'm sure he would have saved himself a lot of money and animosity.

The whole affair was catered by the La Chemire restaurant and copious quantities of champagne flowed all afternoon. Also in attendance were Richard's publisher Bob and Virginia Satir.

Chapter Thirty. DOTAR

Shortly after the wedding, whether on Richard's direction or not, Leslie decided to put together a cadre of NLP'ers. She formed an association with Maribeth Anderson, Robert Dilts, and David Gordon. Robert's farewell message to me as his business partner was, "Trust me".

Leslie facilitated the purchase of a large facility on Mission Street, Santa Cruz and "Not Limited Division Of Training And Research" of Santa Cruz, California was officially open for business. They presented ongoing workshops, training seminars and Ericksonian Hypnosis programs.

In 1978, Not Limited went into full operation, doing training development and research. The core group now took on assistant trainers who then began putting on workshops and seminars of their own. Frank Pucelik formed a partnership with Byron Lewis who I had taught some training programs with before getting together with Robert Dilts. Frank and Byron coauthored the book Magic Demystified, which a lot of people find to be a useful introductory NLP book.

Early in 1978, Steve Stevens became interested in NLP and decided to cease his work in Gestalt Therapy and put all his time and effort into learning the NLP model. I remember Steve when he was a teacher at Diablo Valley Junior College in Concord, California. Steve was a follower of Fritz Perls as was his mother Barry, who by the way wrote several books, one being a delightful journey called Don't Push The River. A wonderful person Barry.

Anyway, Steve's psychology classes were more like Gestalt Groups and I heard that if you cried a lot you got a good grade. So the rumour went anyway. Steve had been together a short time with Connirae when we met, she was finishing up her Ph.D. I believe and doing research regarding couple counseling and the use of predicates.

Steve hired the services of Robert and hence me because I worked with Robert. We had our first gig on the road in Boulder Colorado where Steve was introduced to some of the basic building blocks of NLP and from there, he began following Richard and John from workshop to workshop taping them and then later, editing the transcripts which became the book Frogs into Princes. The first NLP book for the layman who knows nothing about psychology or therapy. This was a time of innovation, excitement as well as some confusion and crises.

Chapter Thirty One. This Town Is Too Small

This time period marked another choice point in the development of NLP for Richard and John. In the year of 1978, more tension began to develop between Richard and John and they realized that the stage was not big enough for both of them. For a variety of different reasons, some personal, some business, they decided to go their separate ways. Leslie also at this time was going thru an evolution in her personal life. Personal and business stress affected her and she ended up in hospital for a period of time. Shortly after that she filed for a divorce.

After a few exciting court dealings, Leslie went of with Michael Lebeau, who was later to become her husband, and David Gordon. They set up an organization in Larkspur, California called "Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Advanced Studies". Here the trio continued to promote and develop Leslie's own model of NLP.

The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming formally a partnership between Richard Bandler's company Not Limited and John Grinder's company Limited Unlimited continued to prosper with Richard's guidance. He continued to use the trade mark of the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and eventually bought John out of the Society. They also made new arrangements regarding the publishing company Meta Publications. Richard continued to develop and teach NLP training programs and to be associated with the Society of which he later bought out John's share.

John formed Grinder DeLozier and Associates. With one of his associates Michael McMasters he coauthored a book titled Precision. John also formed a partnership with Genie Laborde and promoted several Precision workshops across the U.S. John concentrated on the business marketing side of NLP. He utilized his creativity in the refinement of the NLP model with an emphasis on Gregory Bateson's theories on evolutionary communication and Milton Erickson's hypnotic patterns of communication.

Richard on the other hand having the belief that people change thru confusion, continued his approach as teacher and developer of change patterns associated with belief models. This later developed in another evolution in NLP which was represented in two books, edited by Steve Andreas. One is called Using Your Brain For a Change and the second was from transcripts of therapy sessions into a book called Magic in Action.