Erhard Seminars Training

Then I did my first transformational work for myself.

I did a program called the Est Training way back in 1983.

It's now offered in a different form called the Landmark Forum.

But I did that program as a participant myself, and on the last day of the program, I was in a room, in a ballroom in New York City in a hotel, 300 people, and I saw it again.

Five kids, dysfunctional, fighting all the time.

I went to this thing called Est when I was really young.

Oh, yeah.

You know, I don't know if you remember Werner Erhard training.

When I was 16.

So you know, new age.

Can I quickly ask what you thought of that Est experience, right? 'Cause their proprietary approach was, like, confrontation therapy, right?

It's a self-help organization.

So I'm kinda g- I always wanna ask our former staffers, 'cause people always say this, "Why would people work there? Why would you work there?" And it, it often starts with, "I did the program." So can you give us the short version of why you were honored to be offered a position with this company?

Well, first of all, I did, I did the EST training when I was in college, when I was going to Berklee.

I did the EST training, and yeah, I wanted to meet girls, okay, you know.

I wanted to expand my horizons.

No, that plays for it.

I, I didn't ha- know anybody, didn't have friends up there, and I'm going to school.

I wanted to, wanted to meet people.

And, and then I had an amazing experience in the EST training, quite frankly.

So I think that they found ways to generate stress without it.

So having said that, EST became Werner Air Arts and Associates in the 80s, and then it became Landmark Education in 1991, and then became Landmark Worldwide in 2013.

And so there's quite a clear lineage there.

And their seminars are, you know, they're relatively distinct.

Hanley, who founded Lifespring, said he took a lot of inspiration from EST.

There's definitely stuff that he took across, but because Lifespring hasn't existed for 20 years, a lot of organizations worldwide have literally just taken a copy and paste of Lifespring and are applying it elsewhere.

I helped a content creator in Taiwan who made a video on Elgats because there's a big problem with them there.