Hi, I’m Michael Roach
I’m a pretty ordinary guy who’s had the good fortune to hang out with some really remarkable people and thanks to some of the things they’ve taught me I’ve gone from the shy boy with a stutter who didn’t want to talk at all at school to someone who is comfortable standing up and talking to rooms full of people which is now a regular occurrence.
This website is written on Squarespace.com which just allows me to type and I don’t need to be concerned with the underlying technology, it makes things easy for me which is what I like. The reason I write this website is I enjoy research, I’m happiest sitting on the beach in the shade with a good book or an iPhone loaded full of fascinating audio & video. But I can’t just buy one book on the subject that’s just not satisfying enough for me, what makes me salivate with pleasure is the idea of consuming the 32 dvd in depth training package… And friends keep asking me, what am I doing with all this knowledge stuff? They ask how come I hang out with these ‘famous’ people and experts? To me the answer is simple, if you want to learn about something you learn from the people who know the most about it, the people who don’t just talk about stuff but are living examples of what they teach. These people have shared their secrets with me that have allowed me to make truly transformational changes in my life.
I started out by reading and researching Buddhism, which I still think of as a ‘mind science’ rather than a religion, then started a psychology degree with the Open University, but after a couple of years it was becoming all theory and not useful practical stuff that I was finding useful, so I started training in NLP. I chose to train with Richard Bandler as he was one of the creators of NLP but only did one course as I wasn’t yet convinced of how valuable NLP is… What the initial NLP Practitioner training allowed me to do was start getting up in front of people and talking to them, I started doing some IT training for the organisation I worked for. I more than had the technical skills, before the NLP training I hadn’t had the confidence to get up in front of a group of people though. So while I perhaps wasn’t the most brilliant of trainers I already had a good relationship with the students as I was helping them individually with technical stuff and they made it easy for me… So thanks to the students and staff of the Royal College of Art I got my first taste of training people…
I wan’t slow to realise that the NLP had helped me enormously, so was back to Richard and his co-trainers Paul McKenna and Michael Breen for their Master Practitioner, and a host of other trainings, including: Design Human Engineering and Advanced Modelling, and the training where we modelled renowned medical intuitive Seka Nikolic and remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle. The NLP Trainers Training was a turning point for me partly because I got up on stage in front of the group and just ‘died’ so many, many times. Some of the friends I made there were getting up and doing fantastically, but I was stuttering and stammering away trying to tell the story I had prepared… Then towards the end of the training, and I actually don’t remember much actual training, in the midst of ‘dying’ yet again, I just spoke to the audience honestly as myself commenting that ‘this’ wasn’t going particularly well, and they laughed. But not laughing at me, they were laughing with me, and it was utterly wonderful… And I had a moment of enlightenment, satori, there probably was a lightbulb glowing above my head. For me at that moment everything changed. It was not that I had to try and pretend to be this person I wasn’t in front of other people. I just had to stop doing that and just be me.
I’d met Peta Heskell, the original Flirt Coach, on one of the NLP trainings and she ran regular monthly evenings where she invited well known international quality NLP trainers to come and speak. There I met NLP Trainers like Jonathan Altfeld who teaches NLP more applied to real life than the classroom setting. Jonathan really loves training and it shows, he’s as happy continuing the training after the intensive day long class with the group while we eat and drink into the night. I can absolutely credit Jonathan with a quantum leap in the development of my NLP skills, I’ve been to his really advanced trainings, some of which were even experimental for him at the time and also have had the privilege of assisting on others. Part of what gives Jonathan an edge is he has a background in Knowledge Engineering which is what he was professionally doing before he became interested in NLP. Knowledge Engineers capture the essential qualities of a person or group and encode that information in an expert system… Truly precision work.
I became a regular at Peta Heskell’s evenings, I had a slight talent for not being noticed, which was probably the combination of too much interest in Stephen Hayes Ninjustu, reading too much Chaos Magic and other odd esoteric stuff and the residual not wanting to be noticed I’d developed from having a profound stutter. This allowed me to hang with some interesting groups of well known people. And one evening Peta noticed me and said: “You’re a bit of a lurker aren’t you!!” in her naturally playfully provocative way… And we’re still friends to this day more than 10 years later…
Of all the NLP Trainers I met at Peta’s evenings the one who made the most impact isn’t actually a NLP Trainer, though many people think that is what he does and he does more than have the qualifications. Recently the ‘Modelling the Masters’ audio program started with Richard Bandler the co-creator of NLP and finishes with Joseph Riggio, who in my opinion is taking NLP into the 21st century…
Joseph is the creator, or Architect and Designer of as he prefers to call it, of the MythoSelf process. In 1997 when I first met Joseph at his presentation at Peta’s group I hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was talking about, it seemed to be something very shamanistic, I did know it was utterly fascinating, what I can describe the experience now as, is in Joseph Campbell’s phrase of: “the Call to Adventure’.
I did another NLP Trainers Training with Rex Stephen Sikes, then from coaching with Michael Breen decided to train as a hypnotherapist, as I’d developed a fascination with hypnosis… One of the best things about the hypnotherapy training was it taught me that there is more to hypnosis than Milton Erickson, who is generally regarded as the ‘father’ of modern hypnosis. While I was training, I contacted the authors of many of the books I was reading, people like Stephen Gilligan, Bill O’Hanlon, Ernest Rossi and found I could train with them as well, so of course couldn’t resist the opportunity… I particularly like Stephen Gilligan’s work.
When I had the opportunity to train with the other co-founder of NLP John Grinder, I took that opportunity, and liked John a lot. I should probably mention that I’ve also trained with John La Vale, Eric Robbie, Ross Jeffries, Tom Vizzini & Kim McFarland, Michael Hall, John La Tourette, David Grove, James Lawley and Penny Tompkins.
Charlie Badenhop, the creator of Seishindo I first met on a Stephen Gilligan 3 week long summer intensive. It didn’t take me long to become a fan of Charlie, I continue to train with Charlie when I can find the opportunity, he lives in Japan so it’s not easy and I also have a busy schedule… But it’s worth it.
The core of what I do though is based on Joseph Riggio’s work. I’m one of only a handful of people in the world licensed to use the proprietary psycho-spiritual technology of the MythoSelf® Process, EPC2™ - Exquisite Performance Coaching and Consulting™, and the Soma-Semantics™ model. Joseph was kind enough to say the following about me:
“Michael Roach is one of the few individuals who has studied the MythoSelf Process work with me who brings as much to the work as he takes from it. In the years that he’s studied with me I’ve seen Michael develop an extraordinary competence and mastery of applying this work with others, fully integrating the learning he brings to it elegantly. In your decision to work with someone to facilitate your own personal evolution I recommend personally and without hesitation that you attend one of Michael’s programs or work with him personally as your facilitator and advisor.”
- Joseph Riggio, Designer of the MythoSelf® Process, 24 Jan 2005
In writing this it’s beginning to feel like well maybe my friends are right and I’ve spent rather a lot of time learning stuff.. All I can say is to me it’s fun, I’m following my bliss to use another Joseph Campbell phrase. And I also have to confess I haven’t finished, I’ve saved the deliciously odd stuff till last…
Richard Bandler used to spend a long time talking about Shamanism, magick, energy healing and other weird and wonderful stuff, and because I believed him (in my naivete) I went out an found some real magic. I’d long been interested in Mantak Chia’s Healing Tao (from a martial arts perspective not sexual - honestly!!) but Donna Eden, Pranic Healing and more in depth training as a Polarity Therapist and in and through Huna, traditional Hawaiian bodywork and healing I became a Kahuna Lapa-au thanks to Phil Young and Morag Campbell. I’ve continued my shamanistic explorations and spiritual interest with Bradford Keeneys and David Spangler’s work.
And back to the mundane to finish off… I have developed extensive interest in business and marketing and follow the work of Rich Schefren, Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Yanik Silver, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy and in particular John Carlton.
To me all of this appears connected, it’s just putting the pieces together. And it adds up to this site, or rather it adds up to what this site will be. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.
