What's IASH?
IASH, The Institute for the Advanced Studies of Health, is a not-for-profit, international organization dedicated to the development of NLP tools for all aspects of life and society, including physical and emotional health for individuals, business and education. Since 1993, IASH has organized 8 NLP conferences in three countries which included workshops covering a wide range of health topics. Recordings of the 2006 and 2008 conference are available here on our website.

Why model Healthy Sleep?
Because sleep is essential to everyone's health, and it's a very rich subject which can be approached in many different ways. Different teams may model different aspects of sleep—some teams may even choose to model the patterns of people who don't sleep well. The modeling will take a lot of creativity because—unlike spelling or playing golf—asking someone to demonstrate the desired behavior won't be very practical. We'll have to be especially creative.

How much time will it take?
It's hard to say exactly. That's the nature of modeling. In general, a few hours a month is what to expect. Some people will do more; doing less is unlikely.

What's the best way to model?
That will be determined by what aspect of healthy sleep your team wants to model, which modeling protocols are most appropriate to that aspect and, of course, the preferences of the team. IASH will provide some tips to get you started and keep you informed of the other teams' work, but the actual modeling protocols will be up to you.

My modeling skills are a little rusty—any suggestions?
First, you'll be working in small groups so it's OK to be rusty. Second, there are a lot of great NLP modeling resources available. There's Expanding Your World, Modeling the Structure of Experience by David Gordon and Graham Dawes, which includes a DVD of the authors actually modeling. Or Robert Dilts' book, Modeling With NLP is great place to start. And you can search the web for articles, here's one by Steven Andreas, Modeling With NLP.

I've never designed a process before. How much work is it?
Again, you never know in advance exactly how much time a process takes to develop. In general, a few hours a month is what to expect. And it's important to remember that after you have found a great model, you'll still have to design a process so that people can learn the new skills as a part of their normalized behavior—understanding a model intellectually is not the same as getting it into your day-to-day behavior. You'll probably go through at least a couple of rounds of testing and refining to create a process that works consistently with a wide variety of people.

Do all teams have to work in English?
Please work in your own language—IASH is already looking for volunteers to translate key communications.

There isn't a team in my area. What can I do?
We can set up a message board on the IASH website to start a team for you. If you'd like to be a team leader, you can do that too, or you can recommend someone.

What does a team leader do?
A team leader is responsible for communication with IASH and team building and communication among team members. IASH will be providing each team leader with some tips on how to get his or her group working smoothly.