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When Zoë Lescaze decided to become an expert sharpshooter, she’d never so much as picked up a handgun before.
Three days and a series of visualization exercises and mantras later, the New Yorker was ready for action.
But this was far from your typical woo-woo meditation session. Lescaze reached her goal using neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP — a radical form of hypnotherapy that claims to alter behavioral patterns and thought processes.
Her journey from mild-mannered science and culture writer to real-life Jason Bourne hunter was swift — all it took was a few hours each day on a Washington D.C. shooting range under the guidance of NLP expert Wyatt Woodsmall. In no time at all, Lescaze was hitting bullseyes at 75 feet — a difficult feat that some military recruits even struggle to accomplish.
The fast-track experience was all in a day’s work for the 36-year-old, who finds NLP and its legacy fascinating enough to co-host a podcast on the subject.
“A big part of NLP is closely observing other people and diagnosing how they think and view the world. Wyatt barely knew me, yet he was able to figure out what would motivate me throughout the shooting experiment,” Lescaze told The Post of the master trainer, who’s in his 80s and has been working in the field for over fifty years.
“He said he noticed I was what he called an achievement person, someone who likes to excel or tries to excel for the sake of excelling… so he chose very specific ways to encourage me throughout the shooting experience that match what he saw as my personality type,” she said.
While at the shooting range, with guns constantly going off around her, Lescaze admitted it was difficult to dial in to Woodsmall’s advice, which consisted of picturing herself taking a perfectly aimed shot while repeating the mantra: sight alignment, trigger, squeeze, bang, recover before actually shooting the handgun.
But on the third day, Lescaze was shooting like a pro. Still skeptical — maybe I’m just a quick learner, she thought, or maybe Woodsmall was just an exceptional teacher — she had to admit that watching the master in action helped sell her on the concept.
Developed in the 1970s by self-help guru Richard Bandler and linguist John Grinder, due to their mutual disdain for traditional talk therapy, NLP is a “mishmash of a bunch of different techniques,” as Lescaze puts it, with zero scientific backing, that borrows from other scientifically researched modalities like hypnosis.
There are a few different forms of this often criticized “life hack smoothie.” The reframing approach alters one’s perspective; anchoring links a trigger to a desired feeling or mood; and modeling is the replication of specific behaviors or thought patterns.
Eventually, the duo marketed NLP as a mind control technology — which has made it attractive to a wide range of organizations and people, from Fortune 500 companies to psychotherapists working to help patients with their anxiety.
“The Wolf of Wall Street,” the notorious Jordan Belfort, supposedly used NLP anchoring as a sales tactic — sniffing an essential oil every time he closed a sale to associate that scent with success.
Life coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins supposedly utilizes the technique to help people shift their mental and emotional states.
And cult leaders, like hypnotist and convicted felon Nancy L. Salzman, the co-founder of NXIVM, a multi-level marketing company and alleged sex cult, reportedly used NLP to manipulate members.
It’s a complex technique that many are unaware of, especially when it’s being used on them.
“I think there’s a really interesting paradox at the center of NLP, which is that this is a tool that has been sold for self-help and personal development and which has worked for those things for many, many people,” podcast co-host and investigative journalist Alice Hines explained to The Post. The 36-year-old first learned of NLP after writing a story and working on a docu-series about Twin Flames Universe — the alleged spiritual cult that supposedly used it as a way to reprogram trauma.
“And yet it can also be used to take advantage of people to manipulate and coerce. So the fact that it has these two sides and the same techniques can be used in these different ways really fascinates us [she and her co-host],” the Austin-native explained.
The two best friends conceptualized “Mind Games,” a new weekly podcast from Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts, to unpack how NLP became such an influential, quiet form of therapy used all over.
Lescaze and Hines bring listeners on a psychological journey in each of their Tuesday episodes, including how they found success using NLP on themselves.
The pseudoscience helped Hines overcome her anxiety about giving birth by regularly listening to a hypnobirthing tape, coincidentally created by Salzman, before her due date.
“…It’s not just Nancy’s words, but her tone and the way she’s pacing it. It gave me confidence as I listened to it…it totally took the edge off,” Hines explained about the tape on the podcast.
In addition to learning to become an expert shooter, Lescaze turned to NLP to see if she could hypnotically recover memories of her father, who passed away when she was 6-years-old.
After drifting in and out of a trance, her hypnotist, who had studied NLP, mentioned a character her father invented and used to tell her stories about.
“With every scene I described, Kaz [her hypnotist] would pluck out a certain sensation and weave it into her next hypnotic prompt, to see if it led somewhere new,” she explained. “I began to see things, like my dad’s head turning…” she explained in the episode.
They also interview NLP enthusiasts like Robbins and Salzman to learn their experience with it.
“Mind Games” was Salzman’s first interview since being released from prison in March 2024. “She’s a fascinating paradox to me, because she was this mastermind who brought NLP to NXIVM and helped the group expand,” Hines explained about Salzman. “And yet she also considers herself a victim of the group and regrets how her methods were ultimately used.”
NLP can sound too good to be true, which is part of what makes it so controversial, according to New York-licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder of My Best Practice, Dr. J. Ryan Fuller, Ph.D.
“I think the controversy comes from advocates who believe it is so powerful. Meanwhile, psychologists don’t see that the scientific evidence justifies its claims of how effective it is, what it can do, and how the parts that work are different from standard Cognitive Behavior Therapy, CBT, [a similar psychotherapy that treats mental health illnesses],” Fuller told The Post.
“If it helps people and is carried out by licensed professionals, that is great. We do want to make sure, though, [that] using something like that for trauma is being done by a licensed professional. Working with someone with PTSD is important work that, if not done properly, can do significant harm,” he added.
Part of the reason “Mind Games” was created is to help listeners learn about NLP and become aware of some of its techniques, like specific body language and vocal cues, so they can detect them and determine whether they’re being used on them.
“Politicians employ hypnotic language patterns all the time to persuade people to come around to their points of view. So it’s not like this only exists in some culty bubble. It’s everywhere,” Lescaze said.
For those interested in exploring NLP on their own, the podcast creators suggest that “people do their own research and read some of the books that are out there” on the topic.
It’s important to note that NLP trainers aren’t usually regulated in the way that “real therapists are,” so it’s advised to proceed with caution, as explained by the hosts.
“You do not have to pay someone a bunch of money and follow a guru to learn about NLP,” Hines added, specifying that she and Lescaze are not NLP insiders, nor are they trainers.
“We have no financial interest in this technology and these techniques… we think that there are benefits to NLP and we also think it can be dangerous. So we want to both help people use the parts that may help them, and warn people about the parts that actually could harm them,” she continued.
“Mind Games” can be listened to on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.
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