Ms Kumar, all of 26, has brought a change into the lives of people averaging thirteen to the proverbial sixty and above. The trick: Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP, says Ms Kumar, is the study of human excellence. It is the ability to be at your best more often through a powerful and pragmatic approach to personal change. It is a new technology of achievement, she emphasises.

Neuro refers to our nervous system, the mental pathways of our five senses by which we see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Linguistic refers to our ability to use language and how specific words and phrases mirror our mental world. It also refers to our `silent language' of posters, gestures and habits that reveal our thinking styles, beliefs and more. Programming is borrowed from computer science, suggesting that our thoughts, feelings and actions are simply habitual programmes that can be changed by upgrading our mental software.

NLP originated in the early 1970s in California, USA. Mr Richard Bandler and Mr John Grinder, at the University in Santacruz, began exploring how effective people achieved their results. They found that all of them exhibited specific personal patterns of behaviour and thinking and it is these patterns, with their component elements, which form much of the basis of NLP. Once one can observe and describe such patterns, they can be copied by others. This mean that other people could learn to follow the same pattern in order to achieve similar results. Take, for example, modelling.

What makes NLP particularly effective here is its ability to breakdown performances into very small elements and take account of internal processes, such as thoughts and feelings, as well as external behaviour, when helping others to learn and develop.

For Ms Kumar, a postgraduate in marketing and sales, who has done diplomas in French and German and also teaches the languages, the change appeared with ``dissatisfaction with herself.'' She recalls: "Though I was good at all that I was doing, I felt there was something that held me back from excelling." It was then that she heard of the visit of Dr Willian Hortan, founder, National Federation of Neurolinguistic Psychology-USA. "He was on a visit to India and I was curious about NLP when I heard of it. He had a programme where one is able to conquer one's lifetime fears within 15 minutes. I was always afraid of the sea. So I decided to go. When I went to meet Mr Hortan, he asked me to close my eyes and visualise the sea. I did it, but by the thirteenth minute I found it so disturbing that I couldn't go on. What I saw was that I was paddling and just behind me was the body of a man with his skull split into two. It was such a frightening experience."

Mr Hortan asked Ms Kumar several questions about her fear of the sea. And it was all logically concluded to this one incident she had visualised. In fact, Ms Kumar urges every one to question tirelessly what is it that they fear. "And let me tell you, it is that one fear which prevents us from performing excellently." To Ms Kumar's amazement when she rang up her father and asked him to explain this scene she had seen he told her that as a child she was warned not to paddle in the sea as a body was reported to be in it.

But she was adamant and came ashore alarmed when she saw the body. Regarding the lack of memory of the incident, Ms Kumar says when one reels from a shock, it is the brain's automatic response to blank out the incident and if that does not happen one suffers from a heart attack.

After the visit to Dr Hortan, she went on a ship with a few friends and found that she enjoyed the experience. It was then that she decided to do NLP and help others. "My strength lies in my ability to delve into problematic areas and help people to find solutions and motivate them to achieve success in life through NLP workshops." In fact Dr Hortan himself said the same to Ms Kumar. "You will be a great trainer if you let your light shine through. Stay true. You have it. Use it."

Ms Kumar says that NLP provides ways of helping anyone become more competent at what they do, more in control of their thoughts, feelings and actions, more positive in their approach to life and better able to achieve results.

If people do not have within themselves the knowledge or resources to achieve what they want, NLP makes it possible for them to adopt other people's skills and ways of thinking and incorporate them within their own lives in order to be more successful. NLP has its roots in real life behaviour rather than in theory and research.

NLP offers many things, but as Ms Kumar says this can happen only if "one is willing to be adventurous, open to change and fascinated by life and all that it brings."