>Lee, I've been enjoying your web site. It is a tremendous service to
>the NLP community.

Gee, thanks! It's a lot less systematic and more personal than the other NLP sites, which is both its strength and its weakness, in my opinion.

>Lynn Conwell sounds like someone I may want to train with. Does she
>walk her talk? Do you recommend her? What can you tell me about her?
>Where can I find her?
>
>I'd also like to train w/ the folks at FuturePace; however, they seem
>to have skipped town.

Lynne Conwell also pretty much skipped town many, many years ago. She was Leslie's protege at the time I took my training from the NLP Institute for Advanced Studies in Marin Counter (California), but something didn't work out between the two of them.

Leslie then chose Metha Singleton as disciple (especially for Leslie's Mental Attitude Programming) and eventually sold Future Pace to her. But Metha apparently couldn't make Future Pace successful.

To the best of my knowledge, Leslie and her husband Michael Lebeau have not been involved in NLP for about ten years now.

> I really enjoyed David Gordon's tapes and books.
>I think he may have been the real discover/developer of submodalities.

No, although David was certainly one of the early people promoting them. But I think that Robert Dilts and Richard Bandler probably deserve the credit for inventing submodalities. Dilts first discovered them and then Bandler starting using them to develop techniques.

>For about four years, I've been trying to get a hold of Michael
>Lebeau's Negotiation tape series, or information on his model,
>strategies etc. I am in the process of publishing some articles/books
>on legal negotiation and this might be a tremendous help.

NLP Comprehensive was certainly still selling those tapes as recently as a few years ago. Did you check with them?

I found David Gordon an extremely disappointing and lackluster teacher during my Master Practitioner training. However his course on metaphor, available on tape, is certainly very good.

>I'd like to teach NLP w/ an emphasis on modelling, the
>attitude/presups, and accellerated learning, hypnosis, and negotiation
>skills as well as standup comedy. I plan on doing a tremendous amount
>of additional training to prepare myself. Who are your favorite
>trainers? Who do you recommend?

Different trainers are so different from each other. You can't just use words like ``good'' or ``bad'' to characterize them.

I took DHE from Rex Sikes last summer. Rex is an excellent teacher and a lot of fun. From what you say, he might be an excellent choice for you. Incidentally, Rex is a former Hollywood actor and screenwriter.

For someone who is a therapist or wants to be one, I strongly recommend Leslie's two videotape sets, sold by NLP Comprehensive. They're no longer as expensive as they used to be and definitely worth it. The trainings at NLP Comprehensive are probably a good choice for therapists or those who are interested in business applications of NLP. (Lara Ewing, who now owns NLP Comprehensive, is very involved with business applications.)

Probably Tim Hallbom & Suzi Smith (Anchor Point Associates) are also a good choice for students who are therapists. They are good teachers, but perhaps somewhat basic.

Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier (NLP University) are really good for someone with an interest in modelling, not so good if your orientation is towards therapy. (In my opinion.) Dilts and DeLozier have a somewhat intellectual approach to NLP, in that respect being at the opposite end of the spectrum from Rex Sikes. (Most of us never took any notes in the Rex Sikes DHE training. The emphasis was on doing things rather than theory.) The Robert Dilts books are quite interesting, but, in my opinion, hard to learn useful information from.

Unfortunately, Todd Epstein, who worked closely with Dilts and was also very oriented towards modelling, is now dead.

Charles Faulkner has a very intellectual approach. He, Robert Dilts, and Tim Hallbom would all fit right into a college classroom. Faulkner has some very interesting ideas. I've only experienced about four or five days from him. I'd definitely be interested in taking a more extended seminar from him.

All these opinions come from my own personal experiences. So there are lots and lots of trainers I just can't give an opinion on.

I'm getting very interested in Carmine Baffa, based on what I'm learning about him over the internet. He seems like he might be somewhat comparable to Rex Sikes.

John LaValle seems like he might be a good choice for learning hypnosis from. David Gordon's hypnosis course was supposed to also be very good, but I don't think he teaches it anymore. (I learned hypnosis from Michael Lebeau, who was excellent.)

Don't forget Richard Bandler, though. I've only experienced him via audiotape and videotape, but given what you say about yourself, I think you absolutely must take at least one seminar from Bandler.

--Lee