NLP was initially created in the 1970’s by Richard Bandler, a student of mathematics and gestalt therapy, and John Grinder, a Professor of Linguistics at The University of California Santa Cruz. They began modeling and duplicating the “magical results” of a few top communicators and therapists. Some of the first people they studied included Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, and family therapist Virginia Satir. Since then, many others have contributed to the growth and development of the field.

NLP was initially developed in the 1970’s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who believed it was possible to identify the thought and behavioral patterns of successful individuals and to teach them to others. They studied the work of Virginia Satir (author, social worker, esteemed family therapist, and co-founder of the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA) and Fritz Perls (psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist that coined ‘Gestalt therapy’) and extracted the components that made these two therapists exceptional. After providing a variety of workshops that modeled the methods used by Satir and Perls with outstanding results, they began to study and model other great communicators. For example, the highly successful work of medical hypnotist Milton Erickson and several others. These “models of excellence” were codified into a series of techniques that methods were then codified into various principals and techniques that are now globally assessable.

Gestalt Therapy - Focuses on the individual’s relationship with the world and often uses role play to aid the resolution of past conflicts.