Lifespring

Lifespring can refer to a series of New Age/human potential training LGATs or to the organisation offering such trainings.

Observers have made comparisons between Lifespring and the est seminars.

Overview

Lifespring training, once offered under a unified corporate umbrella (from 1974 onwards), now appears in several guises delivered by differently-named companies called "centers." Some of these companies offering the training programs once offered by Lifespring include Millennium 3 Education in Dallas, TX, The Legacy Center in North Carolina, Summit Education in Florida, MITT, Accelerate, and WorldWorks in California, Personal Dynamics and Momentum in New York, Impacto Vital in Central America and the Caribbean, and Choice Center in Las Vegas. Many of these "centers" use the same trainers that originally worked for Lifespring. There are as many as 50 different companies offering these trainings worldwide. It is also known as AsiaWorks in Asia.

Lifespring was founded by John Hanley Sr., after he had worked at an organization called Mind Dynamics, where he worked with Werner Erhard, the founder of est, which may explain some of the similarities in perceptions of the two programs. Lifespring trainings claim to be more based on experiential rather than didactic learning than the est trainings.

The former Director for Corporate Affairs of Lifespring, Charles "Raz" Ingrasci also worked with Werner Erhard, promoting an est mission to the USSR and the Hunger Project. Ingrasci is now President of the Hoffman Insitute Quadrinity Process, which offers exclusive and costly programs similar to Lifespring.

The Lifespring trainings generally involve a three-level program starting with a "Basic" discovery training, an "Advanced" breakthrough course, and a 3-month "Leadership Program" which allows the student to implement the value from the trainings in their lives.

Independent studies commissioned by Lifespring done in the 80's by researchers at Berkeley, Stanford, and UCSF (including Lee Ross, Morton Lieberman, and Irvin Yalom) found that an overwhelming majority of participants in these trainings found them to be either "extremely valuable" or "valuable" (around 90%). Less than 2% found them to be "of no value". Students are often eager to share their experiences in these trainings with family, friends, and co-workers, although they do not receive any compensation for "enrolling" others into the workshops. Since 1974, more than 500,000 people worldwide have participated in these workshops; almost all of them because they were referred by family or friends.

Many participants of these trainings have found them to be among the most profound experiences of their lives and claim they are able to produce substantial results in their lives as a result of their participation.

Some argue that these trainings might be a form of "mass brainwashing" but the foundations of the workshops are all based on personal choice and responsibility. Many find the workshops to be challenging and confrontive. There is much discussion of this among former participants of the workshops, some of whom feel that they can be too stressful and disruptive.

Lifespring had been sued numerous times for charges ranging from involuntary servitude to wrongful death. The suits often claimed that the trainings place participants under extreme psychological stress in order to elicit change. The group has had to pay out large amounts of money to participants who wound up in psychiatric hospitals and to family members of suicides[1].

The International Survivor's Action Committee [2] claims that "Lifespring has been classified as a cult" and refers to Rick Ross and FACTnet as references for this classification.

Cult awareness groups claim thatthere is high pressure placed on participants to "enroll" family, friends, etc., in the workshops and to spend large sums of money on additional training. It should be pointed out though that the cost of all of the trainings combined would be less than $2500. Regarding "enrollment", many participants of the workshops assert that they created significant value through their participation and want to share the program with people around them. Others do not feel comfortable sharing the program in a way that might pressure people, and so choose not to enroll others. Either way, enrollment is not a required part of the program.

References

Janice Haaken, Ph.D. and Richard Adams, Ph.D.: "Pathology as 'Personal Growth': A Participant-Observation Study of Lifespring Training" in Psychiatry, Vol 46, August 1983