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.