I laughed when I read your third comment. Shouldn’t you use the answer to my first question to decide if I’m a reliable source? I’ve gotten answers from people who have 8+ trainings under their belt who can’t make out a skin tone shift… But here we go!

First, you actually need to use eye accessing cues loosely, because they don’t work in an “equation-style” fashion (eyes move up = “Ah, it’s visual!”). You actually need to calibrate the person to understand what processes someone is going through as she moves their eyes in a certain direction.

For example, I was talking to a client last week who looked up before accessing her feelings. The link between visual lead –> kinesthetic state is way more important to know in that context than the actual eye accessing cue itself.

So once you know this, you know to REALLY focus on the overall structure of behavioral patterns the person is presenting and how eye cues fit into it.

From that point, you can intervene elegantly within that structure by:
1. Present information in the same structure you’re observing
2. Direct the person explicitly to look in a certain direction
3. Interrupt patterns
4. More…

Generally, eye accessing cues point you towards the triggers of a pattern. Pay attention to those.

About “formal” training: I won’t count Tony Robbins here. It’s way too broad and experiential. My only “formal” training was with Rex Sikes (outstanding trainer, visit with him if you can).

Going rogue means going out on your own. After realizing that Grinder and Bandler had never been trained in NLP (because they made it up), I decided to model them instead. Much better strategy to develop competence through trial and error and real-life practice.

It proved to be a great decision for me. Might not be for you. Some people prefer the safety of seminar rooms. I didn’t and don’t.

Check out some of my posts recounting verbal interventions with readers of this blog and the effect on the readers. This will give you a better clue as to whether you can learn anything worthwhile here.

Cheers!

Welcome to our community. Let me address your questions one by one.

To model jazz musicians, follow the six master steps of modeling that you’d use for any modeling project. You’ll find them here:
http://www.howtomasternlp.com/13/the-6-master-steps-of-nlp-modeling/

Yes, the name gives it all away. Neuro, because it involves the nervous system. Linguistic, because of how language impacts the nervous system. And Programming, because behavioral patterns are actually encoded in instruction sets.

Check out the following articles I’ve published on the blog about learning NLP.

http://www.howtomasternlp.com/45/how-you-should-always-start-learning-nlp/
http://www.howtomasternlp.com/243/how-to-learn-and-master-nlp-even-more-easily/

Yes, the core of NLP is modeling. In fact, that’s what NLP is. It’s a modeling technology, a code that enables you to acquire skills and then code them in a way that others may learn it more quickly.

You asked: “What are some ways for learning quickly?”

Wow, big questions! First of all, what do you want to accomplish and what field do you work in? Let’s start with that and I’ll point you in the right direction.