[Neurons] 2009 Meta Reflections #18

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2009 Meta Reflections #18

April 22, 2009

 

 

NEURO-SEMANTIC ADVENTURES

IN JAPAN

 

 

I have just completed my first Neuro-Semantic adventure in Japan.  Junichiro
Takano, the only certified Meta-Coach (ACMC) in Japan and NLP trainer
invited me to train the Self-Actualization Workshop in Tokyo this past
weekend.  I say that he is the only certified Meta-Coach because he has a
group of Meta-Coaches in training.  Jun has been running a Meta-Coach
Foundation Chapter as well as a Neuro-Semantic Practice group and has a crew
of other people who have studied numerous books on Neuro-Semantics and who
are well informed about Neuro-Semantics and Meta-Coaching.

 

My first presentation consisted of a Meta-Coaching Introduction-describing
what it is and then demonstrating it by doing two coaching sessions that
you'll eventually be able to watch (well, you'll understand my part; the
clients obviously spoke Japanese).  So in this country a single Meta-Coach,
Dr. Takano, has started a Meta-Coaching Chapter practice group.  And he has
been inspiring and awakening lots of people in Tokyo about Meta-Coaching-a
long time before I came and did a Meta-Coaching Introduction to a group of
Coaches, NLP Practitioners, and NLP Trainers.

 


>From my limited experience, NLP is seems well and alive here in Japan- I've

been told that there are a hundred trainers or more in Tokyo and that means
a lot of peoople training NLP here.  Of course, the usual divisions and
conflicts of NLP are here also.  That part is not so good.  And yet the
people drawn to Jun and to Neuro-Semantics here, as everywhere around the
world, are those who have a higher vision, who want to see NLP become more
professional and ethical, and who also recognize the value of the
Meta-States model as the model that can make that happen. 

 

So I was impressed with the quality of questions that people asked
questions, questions that presupposed that they knew Meta-States, that they
knew about meta-modalities (as the update on sub-modalities), and so on.
And of course, the Japanese idea of kaizen was so well integrated among the
participants, that "feedback" and continuous improvement was just considered
a given, and not something special.  I loved that.

 

As I travel around, I often find that "the pseudo-expert phenomenon" occurs.
This is the phenomenon that the further from home I go, the more of an
expert I become!  So while at home I get no respect, if I travel thousands
of miles and many time-zones away from home, then suddenly, I'm special.
I'm an expert!   It's amazing.   By a simple geographical shift of location
on the planet, and my identity changes from "one of the guys," to very
important person and so I'm treated(!).  And while it is a wonderful and
silly and fascinating and intoxicating and stupid psychological factor, it
is so regular and dependable, I suppose I need to have a good think about it
and write something about it-well, one of these days.

 

How I typically handle the VIP attitude is to tell stories of my own poor
humanity and joke about how impressed my ex-wife would be with their
adorations, and how they ought to have a talk with my daughter!  While it's
nice to get the VIP treatment, it does have to be left at that level, and
not interpreted as meaning anything more than an acknowledgment.

 

Anyway, by the second day things warmed up and people loosened up and
relaxed with me so that the typical kind of humor, laughter, and playfulness
that occurs in the trainings began to emerge.  What prevents the humor and
fun is the sense of respect, and the Japanese certainly have a highly
developed ability to put a high value when they so choose.  In terms of
self-actualizing, that can be useful.  After all, at the heart of
meaning-making is sacrilizing- giving rich and wonderful and special
meanings to anything and everything.

 

One thing that threw me for the first day or two was the reserved and
conservative and expressionlessness of many of the participants.  I
literally felt myself trying to activate my calibration skills as if trying
to turn up the calibration lever 5 times normal; 10 times normal.  At first
I couldn't tell.  Are they with me or not?  Are they enjoying this or not?
Are they getting it or not?  At that point, I relied on my typical way of
loosening up an audience, I pulled out my big guns.  I pulled out my Peanuts
Cartoons.  But that didn't work.  No laughs.  "What gives?"  I didn't know.

 

In the end I discovered in conversations with Jun and others that it was the
cultural frames and that it just takes some time for people to feel
comfortable with someone new-well at least with me.  And yet when that
happened, many of the people really opened up and even began to feel free to
challenge me.  It was great.

 

So the Neuro-Semantic adventure has been going on in Japan.   Since 2004,
Dr. Akihiko Uechi in Osaka has been the sole Neuro-Semantic trainer in
Japan-a linguistic professor at the University there.  Now 30 have been
introduced to Neuro-Semantic coaching (Meta-Coaching), and another 40 to the
Self-Actualization Quadrants and Model.  Yoko Yuile was there to translate
along with Tamara Miller.  And Yoko has just completed translating
Mind-Lines into Japanese (the third Neuro-Semantic book in Japanese).  It
will probably be retitled, Frame Change.  I have also been impressed by the
trouble Jun and Yoko took in creating the training manuals, which those of
you involved in translating will appreciate.  They created each Training
Manual so that the left side of each page was in English and the right side
in Japanese.  They did the entire Self-Actualization Workshop training
manual like that!

 

This year and next, Jun will be conducting some Neuro-Semantic trainings
that he will be calling, "Frame Change."  And then next year (May 2010) I
will return to present Meta-States (Accessing Personal Genius) and
Creativity and Innovation to further the Neuro-Semantic Adventure in Japan.

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

1 970-523-5790 fax

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

       <http://www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com/>
www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

       <http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

       <http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

       <http://www.ns-video.com/> www.ns-video.com 

 

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Hall are sent out every Monday and meta-Coach Reflections sent out every
Wednesdday to the Meta-Coaches egroup.

 

 

 

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