Back in the 1970s, Richard Bandler, one of the co-founders of NLP, and Frank Pucelik learned Gestalt therapy from modeling the founder himself, Fritz Perls.

They began teaching it other students at the University of California but lacked the knowledge of the specific patterns being used.

John Grinder, the other co-founder of NLP, helped dissect the specific patterns they were using by first modeling each of them, to get an unconscious representation of the patterns, and then codified it.

They continued their modeling work with Virginia Satir, a world-renowned Family therapist, and noted an overlap with Fritz Perl’s work.

In 1975, The Structure of Magic was published and the Meta Model was introduced for the first time. It was originally intended to be used by therapists, but it can be applied in a wide range of applications including business, personal development, and coaching/consulting.