NLP Course Review: Practitioner Training with McKenna Breen

Chris Harrison - August 2007
©2007 PlanetNLP Ltd

I am referring to McKenna Breen's Practitioner in London UK in March 1997.

Before booking this course I had read a couple of NLP books, my favorite being Using your Brain for a Change.

My original plan was to see Richard Bandler doing a joint evening in London with Robert Anton Wilson (also organized by McKenna Breen) and then decide whether I would take the NLP training.

This evening was released on video as "An Evening with Richard Bandler".

Of course I couldn't wait until after the evening event to book the practitioner training course, but afterwards I knew I would have booked up straight away, and I wasn't disappointed.

McKenna Breen's practitioner trainings have a bit of a reputation.

Firstly, because they are huge!

Around 500 people crammed into one room, all trancing and tripping; and secondly because many experienced NLP trainers feel they do not provide enough cerebral training.

So, taking on those two issues.

Firstly the size of the group isn't really a problem.

There were plenty of assistants and with such a large group it is possible to never work with the same people twice - this is a definite advantage.

Secondly, the course provides the elements of NLP that cannot be learnt from books.

Anyone can sit down and go through the meta-model on their own at home to their hearts content.

Developing your rapport and hypnotic skills from a book is much harder.

As you probably realize by now - I am a fan of this course.

Run over seven days, the course sessions were split between Richard Bandler, Paul McKenna, and Michael Breen.

Each of them providing different elements.

Richard's training consists of irrelevant stories (unconscious installation) mixed in with exercises and demonstations and covered areas such as trance states, submodalities, state changes etc.

Michael picked up most of the language pattern and meta-model work (the more conscious elements), and Paul spent most of the week trancing us all out so that we could absorb as much of the information and experience as possible.

But I do have one concern, that I also mention in my Master Practitioner Review.

I'll add the details here too.

This was one of the first times McKenna Breen ran the Practitioner course and NLP was not very well known.

Everyone I met on this course was mad about NLP.

They were there of their own accord, and paid for themselves.

This meant that they had personally invested their time and money.

Today more people are getting sent on courses by their companies and are not as motivated or interested in becoming a licenced NLP practitioner.

The idea of returning late from lunch when Richard is due on at 2.00pm is something I would never contemplate, but on my second master practitioner more and more sessions were delayed due to late shows.

When I have paid for a course, and want to squeeze every last drop of experience and knowledge from it as possible, this is somewhat annoying.

Also working on an exercise with someone who is thinking about getting to the pub as soon as possible is not the best way to get the most out of the course.

So if you do book on this course, chose your exercise partners with care, but please do not let this put you off.

Of all the courses I have been on, this is the course to go on if you want to learn about NLP but feel you have a lot of work to do on yourself (see Should I take a training).

This course was not at all what I expected (in a good way).

I expected to be learning about submodalities and language patterns in a rather dry and academic way, but on day one I was hypnotizing people and making them feel so wonderful they were falling out of their chairs!

Awesome.