Welcome to the New Zealand section of the ANLP Community

NLP in New Zealand has a long history and continues to play an active role in coaching, therapy, consultancy and training here in Oceania.  We are fortunate to have some of the world leaders promoting NLP here and in 2022 Richard Bolstad and I were honoured to be nominated as finalists in the NLP Awards. Considering we are a small nation, just over 5 million (close to half of the population of London at nearly 9 million) you could say we are punching above our weight.

 The NZANLP (New Zealand Association for NLP) was set up by a group of NLP Practitioners in 1989, and for over 30 years maintained a professional support system for people using NLP professionally, running conferences and study days, approving training and trainers, coordinating peer supervision, and learning groups, and making public statements for NLP. In 2022 the NZANLP disbanded, and NLP Practitioners moved to a variety of different groups and associations linked to their training roots and practice disciplines. There is a keen desire to ensure standards and professionalism within the NLP Community and ANLP in New Zealand plays a role in that.

 NLP is listed as one of the modalities registered with the Natural Health Practitioners of New Zealand (NHPNZ), formerly known as The New Zealand Charter of Health Practitioners Incorporated, which was formed in 1993 as a non profit incorporated society with the New Zealand Incorporated Societies Act 1908. 

NHPNZ is a non profit organisation established to facilitate and defend the practitioners’ right to practice freely in their chosen health field and the consumers’ right to freely access healthcare of their own choice nhpnz.org. This demonstrates NLP has a place in NZ Society in the provision of health and wellbeing services. It is also a recognised modality in the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists, whose members have a Government register.

Some stand out examples of the role of the original NZANLP in practice include:

In 2009 a tsunami swept the nearby Island community of Samoa and members of NZANLP organised a Trauma recovery group, which arranged for training by Richard Bolstad and a team of practitioners worked with local people to assist recovery. The Prime Minister of Samoa attended this training in March 2010.

In 2011, after Christchurch city was shaken by severe earthquakes, NZANLP arranged with the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (Te Tari Taiwhenua) for NLP Practitioners to be funded to work under contract to Relationship Services, to provide counselling by NLP Master Practitioners for those who were affected. A 24 hour a day phone hotline was maintained for some months to enable people to get support at any time. 

NLP continues to play an active and important role in health and wellbeing, education, leadership and management and many more areas.  We have a great pool of trainer and practitioners to ensure NLP has a presence moving into the future.