My journey of experiencing NLP began much before I had even heard of such a term.

It was Oct-2005 when we had brought our little daughter Mili home. Mili is our only child and being first time parents, with no experienced help around us, we had to figure out everything ourselves.

Some things were easy to know and find out. For example, it was easy to know when she was crying to get her diapers changed. You just have to check the diaper.

Other times - it was not clear whether she was crying due to hunger or thirst.

Sometimes not knowing anything can be such bliss. Because then you experiment with everything. So when she was crying and it was obviously NOT due to a wet/heavy diaper, we would give her food. And if she refused that, we would give her milk and if she refused even that, we would give her water.

Pretty soon we realized that Mili is a girl who knows exactly what she wants - whether it is milk, food or water and she would have only what she wants. And before I knew it, I could distinguish the sounds of her crying and know what she wants. This was the first time I demonstrated to myself my sensory acuity skills which I had so far believed as not having it at all.

This realization was not as amazing and surprising as another realization about Mili. Here is a infant baby who knew exactly what she wanted and she also knew she had to communicate it with subtle variations in her crying sound.

How did she know she had to do this?

I and my wife continued to learn and gain from such experiences. One incident stands out distinctly and worth mentioning here.

Mili must have been about 6 months and she had been crying profusely for several hours when I received an urgent distress call from my wife while I was at work. I rushed back home and noticed that this was not the usual crying sounds of Mili. She was crying as if she was in severe pain.

Not knowing any better as what to do - instinctively I set out to check if there was any object anywhere hurting her. In doing so, I noticed severe nappy rashes which had become wounds. My memory of that instant is imagining what it would be like to have a nappy rash and feel the urine passing over it as it would be for an infant.

It was painful even in imagination to switch to Mili's position and yet it gave us the crucial information of what to do next. We cleaned Mili and applied the doctors prescribed cream and our baby was her usual smiling self again.

And I remember thinking to myself - How easy it is for a child to instantly switch their emotional state from pain to pleasure?

I have learnt and continue to do so, many things from Mili.

It was Oct-2005 when we had brought our little daughter Mili home. And it was Oct-2007 when I first got introduced to Neuro Linguistic Programming when I attended my Practitioners training in India.

And suddenly Gravity was discovered!!