I recently went to Aletheia, a workshop that helps people experience the creation of good interpersonal connections.
An important technique is to get people to focus on what is going on in their minds (especially emotions), and devote less attention to external objects/events. Beyond that they provided little explanation of how it works. But I see enough similarities to the advice on Charismatips.com that at an intellectual level the ideas behind it don’t seem very new.
My initial reaction was that the workshop had few ideas that seemed new to me, and wasn’t likely to influence me much. But by the middle of the workshop I felt myself being somewhat drawn toward the others in the group. I got the impression that many participants experienced more change than I did. I suspect the leaders were exercising more skill than I was able to observe directly.
I think I’ve noticed some subtle changes in how I interact with people that might be due to Aletheia, but whatever benefits I got are hard to evaluate.