Something extraordinary happened to me last weekend. Following three horrid nights of sleep, I spent 13 hours a day for the next three days in a room with 135 people – and emerged in much better condition than when I had started.
That I would not have predicted. In fact, I was so exhausted by my poor sleep that I would have bet that I would not last the first day.
I got introduced to a passion – the environment – and to ME/CFS – while at UCSC.
How to explain that? I can’t, fully, but any explanation for me has to go back about forty years ago to a similar to a similar room in Los Angeles, Ca.
First, some background: I came down with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) about 40 years ago while a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Like so many others, I was abundantly healthy. I’d never had a serious illness. I’d never even had a semi-serious illness. I was an avid exerciser, doing very well in school and studying amidst the redwoods of the UCSC campus. I had also discovered my passion – I was going to be an environmental scientist. I was on my way.
Then, with no warning at all – including any semblance of a triggering factor – it all fell apart. I came down with ME/CFS. Fast forward a year or so later, and I returned home to Southern California – exhausted, emaciated, and in pain. Extensive testing was totally unrevealing.
The term chronic fatigue syndrome had not been invented yet and none of my doctors, not surprisingly, knew anything about myalgic encephalomyelitis. I had enough energy to painfully walk up and down the block and that was it. A complete mystery to myself, my family and the medical profession – my future looked bleak.
I’d never tried to lose weight but was very, very thin and was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.
Lacking any other options, I agreed to enter a six-week program in a temporary mental facility to address the anorexia. The efforts to get me well including the talks with the therapist, the game-playing, and the attempt to integrate me into the community were declared successful after I had gained a couple of pounds, and so I was discharged.
That stay made no difference in my overall condition. I was still in pain, enormously fatigued and lacked any answers. The real difference was that I’d ticked off another possible treatment option. Now, I had no idea what to do.
January 1982 – The EST Training
“You’ve got to be with your self uninterruptedly for a long time. And that’s an experience which you and I don’t afford ourselves very often. You know, we stop for a cigarette, we stop to make conversation, we stop to divert our selves, to entertain ourselves. But, during this 60 hours [of the est Training], you really get to look deep down inside your self.”–Werner Erhard, 1976
Werner Erhard, the creator of the EST training and the Landmark Forum.
Then my mother took a course called the EST training and convinced the instructors to let me (and my twin) take it. While I’ve briefly reported the effects the EST training had on my health and well-being on the web, I’ve never really addressed what happened.
The EST training lasted two weekends and a weekday night. The weekends lasted from 9 am in the morning until the goals for that day were met, which meant that for more difficult groups – such as mine – sometimes lasted early into the morning. It was an occasionally shocking, often intense, often hilarious, sometimes boring ride. While most media accounts emphasize the course’s aggressive, in-your-face nature, I remember more the humor and joy the course evoked.
What exactly it was, though, was very difficult to explain. EST had its roots in philosophy, Zen, poetry and a menagerie of self-help courses. Most importantly, the course came out of an experience in which Werner Erhard, its creator, experienced the emptiness and meaningless of life. He asserted that right on the other side of that seemingly dismal experience lay enormous freedom.
One goal was to uncover the interpretations that Erhard asserted we had all made – many of which occurred in childhood – which limited our experience of ourselves and others. Jonathan Moreno, philosopher, called the course “a form of ‘Socratic interrogation’ … relying on the power of the shared cathartic experience”.
Here’s one of the things that helps me lot – it’s all made up anyhow. It’s interpretation all the way down. So, I’ve got to own what’s there, as belonging to me, and then I don’t have to be at the effect of it, because it belongs to me, I’m the guy that made it up. I created that conversation for me to live, if I own it, make it my own, I can let it be. Now here’s the big secret; anything you can let be, lets you be. So if I can let my own stupidity, and ignorance and smallness – if I can let it be, it lets be me, and leaves me free to be and free to act. Werner Erhard – Creator of EST
Author Eliezer Sobel wrote:
I considered the training to be a brilliantly conceived Zen koan, effectively tricking the mind into seeing itself, and in thus seeing, to be simultaneously aware of who was doing the seeing, a transcendent level of consciousness, a place spacious and undefined, distinct from the tired old story that our minds continuously tell us about who we are, and with which we ordinarily identify.
Last year a philosophical examination called “Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a New Possibility of Being Human” provides a transcript of Erhard leading the second iteration of the EST training – a kinder, gentler version of it called The Landmark Forum in 1989.
Back into Life
Whatever it was (and still is), I, like many others, came out of the second weekend like a rocket blasting off.
Somehow, I was like a rocket launched out of a cannon. It wasn’t always pretty but it worked! (Image by David Mark from Pixabay )
I quickly emerged back into life. Over the next ten years, I assisted with the group frequently, held down several jobs and got my college degree. I experienced some great things during those years.
Was all well? Not at all. I was like this supercharged version of about 40% of myself. In some ways, I was just roaring away, experiencing things and states of freedom I’d never experienced before. In other ways, things sucked. I was unable to exercise without experiencing payback. I still experienced a great deal of pain and fatigue. In many ways, I felt like I was a fraction of what I had been. One place this showed up was in the less demanding food service and cashier jobs I took on for years – jobs that were far, far below my expectations when I’d been healthy.
EST, though, had given me a tremendous boost back into life. Somehow, after all the doctors, supplements and diets, it’s still easily the most effective thing I’ve ever done for ME/CFS. Nothing comes close to having the effect it had. Actually, it’s worse than that. Forty years later, nothing has really moved the needle on my health at all.
Looking back, I shudder to think what would have happened had I not taken that course. Although I didn’t know it at the time, as skinny as I was, the path I was on was probably going to end very poorly.
Five rules for a You and Me World (Werner Erhard)
Respect the other person’s point of view, whether or not you agree with it. Recognize that if you had their history, their circumstances, and the forces that play on them, you would likely have their point of view.
Consider life a privilege – all of it, even the parts that are difficult or seem a waste of time.
Give up the islands that reinforce mediocrity, the safe places where we gossip and complain to one another, where we are petty.
Take a chance. Be willing to put your reputation on the line; have something at stake.
Work for satisfaction rather than for credit.
Keep your word. There will be times when the circumstances of life will make you forget who you are and what you’re about. That is when you need to be committed to keeping your word, making what you say count.
Remarkably, that mysterious boost from EST training stuck. I never returned to that debilitated state and my health (until last year) has been largely stable since then.
My experience during EST also deeply informed my approach to ME/CFS and how I communicate and interact on this website. For one, my unlooked for response to the Training made it critical that I create Health Rising (and Phoenix Rising before that) as places where anyone who improves has a safe place to tell how.
February 2020: Landmark Education
“You and I possess within ourselves, at every moment of our lives and under all circumstances, the power to transform the quality of our lives.” — Werner Erhard
About ten years after taking “the training” as it was called, I moved from Southern California to the Bay area, got my Master’s Degree in Environmental Sciences and stopped participating in the program. I didn’t participate in EST, or Landmark as it became known, for the next twenty-five years and until last year, my health remained largely stable.
Landmark is the next iteration of the EST training.
Landmark seems to have thrived. Over 3 million people have taken its courses over the past 50 years and it’s now given across the world. It has a corporate consulting division called Vanto, and Forum participants have created over 100,000 community projects.
About seven years ago, I started participating in 3-hour evening seminars that take place a couple of times a month. Off I would troop to a seminar – usually quite reluctantly, feeling fatigued and in pain – only to get out of them at 10 PM energized again.
It wasn’t until last month, though, that I attended a long weekend course. A couple of days before the course, my cold symptoms worsened considerably. The night before the course, the deep muscle aches and the swollen glands were back in full force. I woke up at 4 AM resigned to the fact that I was not going to make it through the course.
Off I went and – to my utter astonishment – emerged, after two 13-hour course days, with no cold symptoms and stronger than before I’d entered.
Next came the Forum – Landmark’s flagship program – a three-day course of 13-hour days. The Forum leader engages a group of 100 or so people in a series of discussions on things like:
- Our already/always listening – the filters that limit our interactions
- The context of our lives – the long forgotten decisions we’ve made which determine where and how we interact with others
- The distinction between what happened and the interpretations we made of what happened
- Rackets – unproductive ways of being that keep us stuck
- How our relationship to the fear and anxiety we experience keeps those emotions around
- Freeing ourselves from our past.
Three days before the course, my sleep collapsed and became so fragmented that my Fitbit couldn’t even score it. By the morning of the course, I was so exhausted my muscles were trembling. There was no way, I thought, I was going to make it through the course this time.
The Gist
- While a student at the University of Santa Cruz in California around 1980, I came down with ME/CFS.
- Emaciated, I returned home and was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Extensive testing failed to find anything wrong.
- Lacking any medical answers for my illness, I agreed to spend six weeks in a temporary mental health facility to address the anorexia. I gained a few pounds, was deemed successfully released, and returned in essentially the same condition, to a bleak future at home.
- After my mother did a program called the EST training, I and my twin brother enrolled in it and completed it.
- The EST training was a two weekend, approximately 60-hour course, created by Werner Erhard after an experience he had driving across the Golden Gate bridge in which he directly experienced “the emptiness and meaningless” of it all – and was immediately freed up.
- The course was an inquiry into what Erhard called the “being for human beings”. For me it was alternately intense, exasperating, joyous, illuminating, etc. experience.
- I emerged from the course like a rocket blasting off. Over the next ten years, I assisted regularly at EST, worked at various jobs and got my degree.
- I was also unable to vigorously exercise, experienced a great deal of pain and fatigue, and didn’t feel like I was half the person I was before. I was, however, back in life.
- I stopped doing EST for the next twenty-five years and my health remained stable.
- About 7 years ago, I started participating in Landmark’s (the next iteration of EST) evening seminars. Invariably I would reluctantly trudge off to the 7pm seminars in some pain and come out of them energized.
- This month, for the first time in almost 40 years, I participated in two of Landmark’s weekend long 13-hour courses.
- Prior to participating in them, my symptoms swelled to such an extent I was sure that I wouldn’t make it through them.
- Instead, despite the long hours, I made it through both of them handily, and felt substantially better after completing them than I did upon starting them.
- My guess is that the unique approach Landmark takes which, among other things, includes identifying and removing buried interpretations which limit us – reduces pressure on the two major stress response systems.
- None of the many medical treatments I’ve done since I became ill has had the slightest of effects. While it only went part of the way, EST remains the singular experience which made a difference for me. Given my emaciated state, I can only guess what would have happened if I wasn’t lucky enough to do it.
- These two programs have greatly informed the way I communicate and participate on Health Rising. They are also why I am determined to have Health Rising be an open place for people to communicate how they have improved.
The night after I finished the weekend course, my heart rate was below my normal resting heart rate during sleep an astounding 90% of the time. I had never approached that figure before. (It’s typically below my normal resting heart rate only 15-50% of the time.)
I didn’t experience the remarkable boost in vitality I did in the EST training some forty years ago (darn!), and time will tell how this all plays out for me. My ME/CFS is lessened a bit but is still abundantly here.
I can say, though, that I’m calmer, more vital, more focused, bolder, more settled in my skin, and less reactive than before. I have begun – and this time fully expect for the first time – to resolve the feelings of anxiousness that have plagued me.
- Check out a review of the course from Psychology Today.
I think the idea is that we recognize that we apply meaning to things. And if you happen to like a certain meaning, then keep it. It’s yours. Who cares if it doesn’t have meaning? If it makes you happier and gives you a reason to live, then by all means, hold onto it!
Rather, the message is that we don’t ever have to be hindered or trapped in our lives. We don’t have to beat ourselves up every time we make a mistake. And most importantly, we don’t have to stay down. Jen Kim – Valley Girl with a Brain
That suggests if we could think of ME/CFS/FM as something which “simply just happened”, that might be a good thing. (I’m working on it.) If we dissolve whatever interpretations we gave to coming down with a chronic illness about ourselves (failure, not good enough, damaged, etc.) that would probably be a good thing as well. (Working on that, too.)
I also recognize that I’ve been holding myself back in some ways, which has resulted in more pain and fatigue – not less. I’m not talking about running marathons or even going on hikes. (Overdoing it physically is something I have no trouble doing!) I mean moving forward on things that don’t require much energy but do sometimes require some real courage. I was reminded, again, that along with the energetic cost of doing too much, there is also energetic cost to not moving forward sometimes. That’s where much of the juice in life lies.
The Stress Response, Landmark and ME/CFS
My experiences with EST forty years ago and Landmark recently are a reminder for me how significant a role the stress response plays in my ME/CFS/FM. Both stress response axes – the HPA axis and the autonomic nervous system, are, after all, affected in these diseases. Anything that can calm them down can conceivably help.
While there’s clearly much more to ME/CFS than resolving stressors from the past that keep us from being fully alive, there’s no reason to think that doing so wouldn’t be helpful if you were entirely healthy, had diabetes, ME/CFS/FM or whatever. Being more fully alive is a bonus no matter what condition you are in.
Removing hidden interpretations that keep us anxious, driven, hyped-up and stressed can, as Donna Jackson Nakazawa showed with her mindfulness work and her autoimmune disease, have considerable payoffs for our biology.
While I’m sure that therapy can help reduce stress, note how little impact traditional therapy had for me. Landmark is not therapy, and it is certainly not psychology: it comes from a different context entirely. My experience is that it is far more powerful.
My experience also reminds me that the most effective approach to ME/CFS/FM for me probably lies in trying many different approaches in the hopes that they all synergize together. As I continue to explore different treatment regimens, I’m going to keep things like Landmark, the Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS) and body scans (relaxing meditations) around as well.
Should someone with ME/CFS/FM do Landmark? That’s a decision everyone has to make for themselves. I can only say that I’m profoundly grateful that I did.
Neither I nor Health Rising are affiliated in any way with Landmark Education.
Love this Cort. It really resonated with me. Definitely something to think about. Thank you for writing.
I think those who have difficulty with avenues that are perceived as psychological, should instead view them as remapping the brain. And you can get fast results in a short time with the right teacher/leader/group.
Like Cort , I did something similar and had results in one week, not nearly as good as Cort’s but enough to make a big difference to me. And it has lasted, so far four years. It would be great if this type of brain training was widely assessable.
Thank you, Cort for this information.
Congratulations. Rewiring the brain, while not an emphasis, was brought up a couple of times in the course.
Glad you did it again Cort and with positive results. I’ve not done it thinking I couldn’t get through it physically but given your condition…… and your mom must be pretty cool that she did it. 🙂
I know! I signed up for it when I was feeling better. Then both times my symptoms flared up dramatically right before the weekend – definitely a pattern there! That second time I had lousy sleep for 3 days heading into the 3-day weekend. I was sure I was toast….but not at all. Color me shocked.
I tend to get anxious before any social commitments and have trouble sleeping beforehand. But forcing myself to socialize almost always has a positive impact on how I feel afterwards. My biggest regret with this condition was having to give up my nursing career which I loved.
Thanks for your courage in sharing this. I did the Training and the first Forum with Erhard. You come up against yourself and that takes courage. The rewards are great though. If you can sit upright in a chair, you can absolutely do this workshop.
Only took me 40 years! (lol)
I was sooo surprised at how well I did. I fully expected to be home by the evening. Once I got in there, though, things started kicking in. Landmark and EST before it, always said, you have to get past the things that stop you in life to do these programs, and for me it was my symptoms. Lo and behold I definitely got by them.
So you got to do it with Werner himself. How did it go for you? Did you have ME/CFS/FM then?
I did the first Forum with Werner, but not with him for the first Training. That was in the early eighties. I didn’t know what I had, but I had a moderate form of ME/CFS that allowed me to be active and work, as long as I didn’t mind being in pain all the time and exhausted all the time. LOL! A few years after that, I was attacked and had a toxic overload and it threw me into undeniable ME. Ten years after, as I started to recover a little, a major car accident with head injury sent me backwards again. Fifteen years later and I’m still kicking, still as stubborn as ever, still fully disabled and trying to balance quality of life and activity with my condition. Anyway, the good thing about the Forum was that you could do it seated. I got through both just fine, being used to being achey, exhausted and migrainey.
Fair warning: before signing up I’d recommend doing a bit of background research before committing to anything: for instance, the energy commitment required to attend a weekend session, the cost, the history of EST and Landmark, the many stories from people whose experience has *not* been positive in both EST and Landmark, the checkered history of Mr. Erhard, etc… Even the history of cults and how they work, and how to recognize them. I’m not saying that Landmark is a cult, but EST was certainly reputed to be one, and my understanding is that some of those holdover members still have influence.
It might be worthwhile to see if you can find out who will be running the program in your local area, if that’s possible. I imagine the experience may be different depending on who is providing the sessions.
I’ve known people who rave about Landmark, and I’ve also known people whose experience has been very much the opposite.
My biggest concern for those with ME/CFS is the sheer energy demands required to attend one of their weekends. The positive high one gets at the end may be somewhat protective against crashes, but I can’t see how that amount of energy output for days on end wouldn’t put most MECFS patients into a severe crash – eventually. I had someone pound on me for months on end to sign up (she was one of the facilitators in my local area); the only thing that finally dissuaded her was my ME/CFS diagnosis. She said that the energy demands (both psychological and emotional – as well as physical) would be too much. That was, in truth, the only thing that finally got her to stop.
My second biggest concern is that this (Landmark) is a psychological approach, and if that truly works for MECFS patients, then all the pushback against the PACE trial, Wellesley et. al. was for naught, and could potentially call into question this whole patient advocacy movement.
Until recently I have never seen the course I took represented in any kind of accurate way in the media. In the 80’s it was ten times worse. I didn’t even recognize what they were printing. That’s because, I believe, that as we all know – that the media needs a hook – and that hook was that EST was a “cult”. Of course it was and still is difficult to explain all these people getting breakthroughs after spending two weekends in a hotel conference room.
But here we are 50 years later, with Landmark thriving, with a corporate division that works with major corporations, with Erhard creating leadership courses being given at Harvard, UCLA and other Universities and the military, with scholars writing about the course, and numerous independent surveys giving it the thumbs up – this “cult ” stuff is still out there.
The cult thing is just too enticing an interpretation! These courses are actually pretty mainstream now!
In my experience Landmark has nothing at all to do with Wessely, CBT or any other kind psychological therapy. I, after all, spent 6 weeks in a pretty intense effort to alter my psychology and it did nothing at all for me.
If you’ll look at the inquiries listed in the blog or go and check out the syllabus for the course I think you’ll be hard pressed to identify it as “psychological”. Its unique unto itself and plugging it into a kind of familiar box (it’s psychological, it’s CBT-like, etc. ) just doesn’t work. It doesn’t fit.
Look at what you’re saying, though – if something truly works for ME/CFS – if it doesn’t fit your belief system about what should work for ME/CFS – we should discard it.
I understand where you’re coming from, I think, and I don’t think we have to worry about something like that. Landmark, meditation, DNRS, whatever – they are all helps – they probably help many conditions – but are not themselves the answer for the vast majority of people. I, after, all fully immersed myself in EST for about a decade and I was still sick. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t a heck of a lot better than before but I still had a long way to go. I was still not able to exercise, for instance. I would be shocked if this program produced many recoveries. It’s in that spirit that this blog was produced.
Anne,
In reply to your last paragraph (your second biggest concern)…
In “The Gist”, Cort wrote:
“My guess is that the unique approach Landmark takes which, among other things, includes identifying and removing buried interpretations which limit us – reduces pressure on the two major stress response systems.“
Cort says he was clearly not *cured* by participating in EST or the Landmark Forum. However, it did help significantly alleviate his symptoms – and, in the case of EST 40 years ago, the alleviation persisted for decades.
We don’t have answers for ME yet, but the stress systems pop up repeatedly as being somehow involved. It seems there is a general consensus that reducing stress can be a helpful coping mechanism & may even reduce symptoms a bit — again, *not* a cure.
My understanding of PACE & the BPS crowd over in the UK is that they had very different goals from symptom alleviation.
They believed (I don’t know if they persist in this belief) patients can be *cured* by their methods. Their own manuals for physicians had the full exercise guidelines for healthy people as the end goal of GET (their version of graduated exercise therapy) for ME patients. And their manuals for CBT (their version of cognitive behavioural therapy) instructed carers (including physicians) to intentionally mislead ME patients.
Given this, PACE was clearly harmful to ME patients and predicated on a very strange presumption of what ME is. So, I think it’s not the case that benefits Cort experienced from EST and Landmark could be equated to what PACE was up to.
What’s helpful for one person may not be helpful or possible for another — but it’s very good to share what works — you never know what might help someone with ME — and we need all the help we can get. (And look at Jen Brea & her CCI — who could have guessed that was her answer?!)
Thank you for saying all this, Anne! I appreciate your perspective and agree 100%.
I can’t begin to understand how anyone with ME/CFS could participate in something that lasts 13 hours, even for one day. This sounds completely bogus to me. You would already have to be fully recovered, before the start of the program, to participate.
I’m vastly recovered from the long years when I was bed-bound with this terrible disease, and I can live a somewhat-normal-looking life, though there are still pretty strict limitations (I can’t work a normal job, can’t travel almost at all, can’t exercise in the usual meaning of that word). I consider myself to be “one of the lucky ones,” though, because so many of us are housebound or bed-bound, and, due to pacing and luck, I no longer am. But sitting upright in a chair in a stimulating environment for more than about 3 hours would put me into setback, much less 13 hours, much less 3 straight days. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I’m actually with you on this Agatha and it was one of the reasons I did this blog. I mean, who would have expected that I would have been able to tolerate something like that? I certainly didn’t. It was such a startling thing that I felt compelled to communicate it. My conclusion is that something was going on in that room that was very helpful.
A few things, though. Being able to sit up in a chair for 13 hours a day – actually its 11 as there are 2 hours of breaks) is simply that – sitting up in a chair. It’s not working at a job, exercising, etc. and while I get that it seems impossible for you, being able to do that does not in any way constitute recovery. Short of lying down it’s probably one of the least energetic thing you could do.
Of course, if you have POTS or another form of orthostatic intolerance sitting up for that long is another issue entirely.
You might want to consider how I was 40 years ago in the more intense EST training. I was still as skinny as could be, in horrific pain, not working, a medical mystery, completely stopped in life, etc. yet I made it through those probably 15-17 hour days. I know that seems incredible and it is and it was.
My experience is that there’s stimulation that’s helpful and stimulation that’s unhelpful. I noticed that during the periods the leader would be explaining something that my symptoms would start to build. As soon as we began sharing with each other they would diminish. There’s something about communicating in the way that we were communicating that was actually quite relieving.
I’m from Belgium and never heard of Landmark Education. But the Eduducation
has been forbidden in France in 1995 and in and Austria in 2006. Werner has indeed
a troubled past; this is all linked with Scientology?! It is more a matter of
brainwashing. Stay away from this. For ver few people woh take advantage of this
very large numbers complain of negatife effects. Landmark (according to European
sources) is a secte.
I was unable to find any evidence that Landmark has been outlawed from France or Austria. It is, however, given in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Kenya, New Zealand, Panama, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and others.
EST and Landmark was not associated with Scientology. Instead seeing him as a competitor Scientology set out to get him – https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-29-mn-2102-story.html
Numerous independent surveys attest to Landmark’s effectiveness – https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/why-landmark/independent-research
Court, I’m delighted for you! While reading your write up I kept thinking of the similar experiences and outcomes of 12step recovery groups and centering prayer/other forms of meditation. Opening to healing energy and honest, thorough self reflection, owning the aspects of our’selves’ that we have learned to try to repress, deny, hide etc., staying stuck in whatever the story we’ve been living by, all take an enormous amount of energy.
Looking at and letting go of all of that requires courage, but hey, if we have been dealing with this we can surely take on that! I’m just beginning Qigong and that, in combination with centering prayer, has already renewed hope. Here’s to all of us doing what ere able to to heal, in all ways.
Also a UCSC banana slug alum from 40 years ago! Cowell college, ‘81. Go slugs!
OMG – we were probably there at the same time. I was a proud College Fiver..
Just think how much energy the story “this sucks” must take up – particularly when engaged in year after year after year. I’ve done it! I still do it. It’s tough not to say “this sucks” to pain and fatigue. One intriguing aspect of Landmark – and disciplines like Buddhism – is to separate “what happened” from our interpretation of which happened (the story).
It’s in the interpretation that all the misery occurs – not what happened. That seems really strange. You mean the misery from a chronic disease largely comes from the meaning we attach to it? That’s the idea. I’m working on that one too. 🙂
Thank you for your words here Cort. I hope you don’t mind if I print them out and make myself a poster to stick on the wall – I want to be able to re-frame my attitude on those days when self-pity and whining about my lot in life seems like a good idea!
Oh, you all had a great cafe, right? Beautiful setting too.
Yes! A new perspective for sure, but seems to be a main messaging of Wisdom teaching, that it’s our attachment, to our story, of the ego/self separate from the whole that causes (?) pain. Of course there is real actual, physical pain and real psychological pain, and yes, they are awful. I’d be livid if anyone tried to tell me to ‘let go of the attachment to the story “ while giving birth or that childhood abuse wasn’t really painful or damaging. Part of my story.
If there is a drug or treatment or therapy discovered that would take this disease away I’d be thrilled. And- this part too:
Maybe healing and relief need to be asked and invited and allowed in. Maybe healing involves releasing whatever is blocking the painful energy and keeping it stuck and keeps us suffering. We learn early on who/how to be whoever it is we’ve somehow determined we need to be to be loved, accepted, cared for or sometimes just to survive, and then try to be that even when it’s not really who we truly in our hearts and souls are. We practice that until we believe it’s essential and that what’s true of us can be too risky to reveal to anyone, including ourselves. Or I guess I should be using “I” in those sentences, it’s been my experience. Healing from all those wounds is hard! It does seem to be why we’re here though.
Wow, if it didn’t make sense that I went to UCSC before I bet it does now! ?
Katie,
You got the gist. And I would say it’s only something to do if you want to go for it and you’re not afraid of someone saying you engaged in cult activity. So much of it is east/west synthesis and since the 70’s, has become integrated into our society anyway. It’s not outside of the consciousness of the progressive branches and really most of our society.
I remember Erhard interacting with someone in the Forum that was a staff member. She had a horrible past, having been abandoned by her parents and I don’t remember what all. Erhard pressed her to break through her STORY of who she was — a poor victimized abandoned girl — and get that that was not who she WAS. So people think of that as psychology, but that’s not psychology in the way people think an illness as psychosomatic.
If I may use Cort as an example: is he a victim of ME or is he a really big person who is at the crux of an epidemic, making a huge difference for his community and pushing the action forward? When the book is written, Cort’s work will be included.
If you’re not afraid of what people think of you, one could think of it as another tool in the toolbox. It won’t necessarily cure you, but you will get that cause and effect isn’t quite what our preconceived notions would have us believe. There is actually more philosophy than psychology in the workshop.
That said, they have always had the notion that if the workshop had been useful to you, you would tell people and it would grow organically, so no advertising would be done. They called it the Guest Game, and people felt pressured to invite their friends and associates to participate in the training. I have always thought that that idea is what made it seem like a cult, that and the fact that Erhard dripped charisma, so some people worshipped him. But he’s not involved any more, hasn’t been for decades.
In my opinion, people walk around like they’re in a cult anyway, believing and following their Tribe, Military or football team, to the death if it gets that far. The workshop is about transcending your mind and the cultural brainwashing society engages in with us since we’re born.
Hope that’s helpful to anyone who’s curious.
Thanks for sharing this Cort. I had been teaching yoga and doing meditation for years before I came down with ME/CFS. While trying to maintain a physical yoga practice after I became ill caused me many severe crashes, I do feel the meditation and the insight it provided was helpful in keeping my mind and spirit from utterly dropping into despair. While not a Landmark program, it probably has some of the same benefits.
I will definitely spend some time checking this program out. While antivirals, Ig and Rituxan have all improved my situation significantly, there is still room for improvement. And if anything else can improve things even 5-10% that is still progress out of the hole I have been in for the past 10 years.
Thanks Ruthie. You captured my intent in producing this blog exactly.
Hi! Just had to chime in because in the 1970s when I was a teenager I took EST. This was 20 years before I had CFS/FMS but have to say it’s definitely not a cult. Or at least it’s not a cult in the way we typically think of cults.
Due to having learned about Qanon after the recent insurrection of the US Capitol I read an article about cults by a woman who had at one time been a member of the Moonie cult. She has studied cults ever since and she said that there are positive and negative cults. Scientology is a negative cult while people being a sports fan or a fan of a celebrity or a musician is a positive cult.
So perhaps in that sense EST is a positive cult but I took the training and that was it. I never felt pressured or the need to continue with EST. In fact I never did anything further with EST after that weekend but I am happy to learn through this site that EST is still around and I would consider doing EST again (or whatever programs they have for EST grads).
I was reading about EST on Wikipedia and I think this sums up EST perfectly:
“Eliezer Sobel said in his article “This is It: est, 20 Years Later”:[23]”
“I considered the training to be a brilliantly conceived Zen koan, effectively tricking the mind into seeing itself, and in thus seeing, to be simultaneously aware of who was doing the seeing, a transcendent level of consciousness, a place spacious and undefined, distinct from the tired old story that our minds continuously tell us about who we are, and with which we ordinarily identify.”
That was the experience I think EST talks about and that I had.
On another note, as I said I didn’t get sick until a couple decades later. I had no real support during that time from friends or family so I needed something else to help me cope and Buddhism became my saving grace.
I couldn’t meditate because of the medications I was taking at the time but I still learned some amazing tools such as self compassion, and kindness and acceptance. Acceptance of my illness and myself and how illness had changed my life.
Granted it sure as hell didn’t cure me but it helped me (a lot) cope during a very difficult time.
So for me, EST and Buddhism are very similar. They just go about “it” in different ways.
I want to mention that after I took the EST training two of my closest friends liked the improvement they saw in me so much so that they both decided to take the training, too. (No, I promise I didn’t pressure them to take it. 😉 The person I was dating, however said they didn’t like the change they saw in me. They said I became more self centered. (I felt like I was taking better care of my needs).
After the training both my my friends said that they were glad they took the training, and that that they felt like they got a lot out of it But they never did anything further with EST either. So if it is a cult it’s a not a very good one. ha ha.
Hi Cort- I am one of the people who had chronic lyme disease for 13 years and had a MAJOR breakthrough using the Pridgen protocol. I took the est training in 1974 and have continued the road to self-realization ever since. I write to thank you for your article, and to tell you that I have no idea how my life story might have turned out without Werner, est, and Landmark. Let others have their opinion of you, werner, est and life, as we have what matters: a deepened relationship with ourselves that transcends the dreadful circumstances of illness, decay and death. AND don’t ever let anyone tell you “All you have is your health” because we know better! Onward!
Thanks Robert and congratulations and thanks, in particular, for pointing out the idiocy of that terrible phase “All you have is your health”! That’s one of those crazy things we say without really examining them. People can and do have fruitful, difference making, even happy lives without being in great health. 🙂
Fascinating story – thanks for sharing.
I’d be interested in heading your thoughts on this :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/trauma-research-survivors-of-sexual-assault-metoo/11970868?utm_source=abc_news&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_content=mail&utm_campaign=abc_news
These 4 paragraphs got my attention:
“ It would be almost a decade before I’d encounter Levine’s research and realise what a grave, life-altering opportunity I had missed. What Levine’s research shows, and what I now know to be true, is that by locking this trauma away inside me, I calcified it.
When we are confronted with acute danger or violence, the body gives us three options: fight, flight or freeze. If we are overpowered and cannot escape — if fight and flight do not work — we enter a state that trauma specialists call “collapse”.
This state of collapse — when the brain dissociates and the body cuts off signals from major nerve endings — is activated at the point of total helplessness. It is usually accompanied by a thought, or a sense, that the fight is over.
Entering the state of collapse is useful in moments of real danger, but after we’ve lived through it once, the brain can rewire itself to be on high-alert in subsequent moments of helplessness, no matter how benign or life-threatening they are.”
If anyone relates to this, please comment. Thanks.
Lee
I certainly think this is very relevant, about being triggered into the collapse state by PTSD and that this could be, in many cases (like mine), related to the development of CFS/ME. My CFS/ME originated in a severe shock of fright (caused by what I thought was a real threat). That triggered a reliving of previous trauma which I had hoped was in the past. I had thought I was safe, and I remember that instant when suddenly I felt completely helpless again. (I thought No, I cannot go through this again.)
I’ll never forget the electric shock of fear and pain passing through my body in that re-traumatizing moment. As it turned out, the threat was not carried out. But in the weeks that followed, what happened without my knowing it, was my immune system going into overdrive and causing severe inflammation around my heart which gradually built up into acute pericarditis (with water on heart and lungs) and I almost died.
A pericardial window operation saved my life, and they found out that my pericardium had been inflamed many times previously — just not as badly as this time. But I never recovered from that operation, the frequent story of CFS/ME often begins . . . (It was like being an ICU patient but at home, for the first few years.)
So now I think the fact that I never recovered and could not exercise and was bedridden for months at a time, thereafter, was because I had CFS/ME. Yes, I had recurrent bouts of pericarditis. too, so that was the diagnosis. It was very confusing because chronic pericarditis also requires a person not to exercise. I could not exercise.
I have had severe post-exertional malaise (PEM) ever since the operation, throughout the past 14 years. It took most of those years to get the CFS?ME diagnosis, because pericarditis is the only other disease (that I know of) that causes PEM, too. (On a side note, I am in the 15-20% sub-group of chronic pericarditis patients who do not have raised SED rates or other inflammatory markers, and so are viewed with some suspicion. But I think this subgroup, like me, probably are person who have CFS/ME along with pericarditis.
And in my own case, it seems to me as though both conditions were likely triggered by that same extreme PTSD response I experienced. and the vulnerability of persons with repressed trauma to the extreme brain re-wiring that goes along with that. So I think you are right in thinking this is relevant to the complex problem of what is going on with CFS/ME.
Hi Lee – Just wanted to respond to say that I do indeed relate to this, actually trained in Peter Levine’s work and use that as a way of working with my ME/CFS that has been hugely helpful. I wrote a more detailed comment below
Yes Lee, I think after a traumatic event we can become hypervigilant. Which makes sense – we don’t want to experience whatever it was again, so we become a bit more watchful.
However this has consequences as we’re no longer as present in the moment and it can take more energy maintaining this constant look out for our safety.
When I worked with people who had experienced trauma, one of their greatest needs was to feel safe.
I read Lucia’s article from your link. What some people don’t comprehend is that when someone has experienced a trauma, such as Lucia’s, they can feel totally overwhelmed and the event can have lifelong consequences.
We have mechanisms in which traumatic thoughts, feelings, emotions may be put away out of our everyday consciousness, so at least we can function.
However energy is needed to maintain these stored memories and all sorts of strategies may be developed to avoid triggering them. This can continue indefinitely unless someone finds a way to safely express and work through these memories.
Also, as with Lucia, people’s health may be badly affected, as the unresolved trauma negatively influences the workings of the organs and can create chronic stress.
I think this is an area of life that sadly can be largely misunderstood. I agree with Lucia, if someone can get the help they so desperately need asap, then the long term effects may be lessened…
Tracey
Peter Levine’s work and his creation of Somatic Experiencing is a real breakthrough m modality and is especially useful for trauma. I have also been a lifelong seeker and going to an ashram in India changed my life. CFS forces us to turn inward in the most obvious ways. If you were not interested in your own evolution, physically and spiritually, you’d be wise once you have this disease to begin the journey.
.
If I understand correctly, this is a tool to deal with the emotional aspect of this disease? I find it difficult while in pain to try meditation and focus. Two things one does at ashram. I do not know about the LANDMARK training. I just know our population of ME/CFS are vulnerable. Looking for a miracle answer. I have personally have paid a big some of my retirement pension on lots of promising natural healing methods and herbal medicine. Hopefully one day I’ll have something to report back.
Great article, thanks Cort and hello from Santa Cruz. I worked in the arts at the U for 10 years before I got sick with ME. During that time I took the Landmark course and got a lot out of it. In 2018 I took the DNRS with Annie Hopper nearby in Woodside. It was 5 very intensive days and I managed to push through but paid the price. I continued to practice for 6 months and it did help my perspective but not my health. Still I think it’s important for so many of us with ME who spend so much time alone in the house or in bed to have some tools to help us cope. Calming music, mediation etc help my nervous system which in turn helps with fatigue and pain. I admire all the ways you reach out to engage and participate in life no matter what. Thanks for all you do for our community.
I really acknowledge you Leslie for giving 100% to the DNRS program. You didn’t do it for a couple of weeks and then put it aside. You really did it. Now you know!
Your path to wellness lies elsewhere. Hopefully we will find it. In between finding it or not finding is simply what is present. This after all is it! One part of the Forum was devoted to demolishing the myth of “someday” – that “someday” it will all turn out – that someday is the right time to do whatever….that someday we’ll devote ourselves fully to life.
Nope – the Forum basically ends with “choosing what’s before us” and “This is it” – This is always it.
Thanks for your lovely reply Cort. So true! Funny how in some ways I have never been more content in my life. As hard as the day to day can be living with ME, it keeps me in the present and grateful for small things. Before I was sick I was always pushing, striving, working and now I’ve put that aside and it’s just about living the life I have right here and now. Having those expectations lifted is actually very liberating!
Leslie, I think it was that very striving, always pushing myself to do more (and physically acting like I was superwomen while building a home) is what largely what caused me to become ill. That and a very traumatic experience dealing with the event of 9/11.
EST 1974, single most significant thing I’ve ever done. Even though I got sick 10 years later the Training has served me well. I also did the Forum in the 2000’s. Good too. I did The Guest Seminar program and volunteered as well for years.
Gave me the confidence to finish college and get a Masters degree
Wow. Rose. All these people who did this. I’m shocked actually although I guess I shouldn’t be. Three million people, after all, have done it. For those who don’t know the Guest Seminar Leader Program was like doing marine boot camp for transformation – a very intense and difficult course. It was one of the things I never felt I was ready for. Congrats on getting through that Rose! That’s really something.
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Cort….
Congrats on coming out and sharing with us a method that you found helpful in dealing with our thing.
To question, as some have, the usefulness of sharing a “psychological approach” that helped you and may help others deal with this disease shows a tremendous ignorance on their part and over the years I am certain has been very harmful to many.
We all know that that this is a severe and debilitating disease of unknown etiology that waxes and wanes in its severity. Anyone who says they found a cure is either a quack or isn’t dealing with our disease.
But anyone who wants to share what they have found to be useful in coping with this process should not be afraid of harping ideologues.
Thanks for your courage.
Dean
Bravo.
Thanks Dean!
Cort,
I hugely appreciated your story and I so agree that what you learned 40 years ago is how you run your blog ie “it made it critical that I create Health Rising (and Phoenix Rising before that) as places where anyone who improves has a safe place to tell how.” This is how I have experienced you – such an openness to different points of view. Thank you for that.
Your symptoms also make complete sense to me, such as re interpretation and courage. I gave a talk at a conference last fall – my first one in over 15 years. Like you, my body symptoms all started to spike. It actually started the month before as I prepared my slides for my talk, and worsened the week before as the date approached. I was so exhausted when I drove down to the conference that I didn’t’ know if I’d be able to actually attend much of it. My gut and other symptoms also spiked more severely than they have in years.
And so I worked it from an ANS point of view. I observed, worked on not reacting to my symptoms, was compassionate with myself, continued my yoga even late at night…and was able to attend everything, all day long, for 3 full days. AND give my talk, which was energizing. My symptoms decreased the day after my talk was done.
I see this as ANS patterns being triggered – at least for me – by mobilizing. Whether is mobilizing into my life or into an activity or whatever. Looking at my state as being caught in freeze (responding here to Lee’s comment about Peter Levine’s work) is how I’ve approached my healing of ME/CFS. Not because it’s psychological, but because my system is caught in a freeze / hibernation / threat response at a physiological and cellular level.
I would completely agree with your reference to how EST / Landmark and other experiences you reference may support the ANS. It’s not just a shift in the stress response from relaxing or psychology, it’s a physiological effect from changing interpretations in a deep way. For me, I work it from Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, which finds that the social nervous system branch of the ANS is what responds to coming into ourselves…to being fully who we are… to connecting to others… to moving forward even when it takes courage … to interpreting with joy … And this branch is actually able to inhibit fight/flight and freeze.
Thoroughly appreciated your post – thanks for having the courage to share so much of your journey!!
Isn’t that something. We went through the same process. It’s really hard to know how to respond to these symptoms. The reason I persisted and went to the courses was that I gave my word to do them. (Giving your word is a big deal in Landmark). I expected, though, that I would have bow out – a very embarrassing situation! Thankfully it turned out not to be.
It’s just so hard to know when to pull back and when to move forward. In my case, even though this was not a 3 hour course I’d had plenty of experiences in the 3 hour courses of coming in exhausted and in pain and then leaving 3 hours later in good shape. Still these were 13 hour days.
The morning before each course I woke up early and did a body scan for hours. It certainly did help.
Hi Veronique — you said something here that is very very helpful to me.
“. . . it’s a physiological effect (a change in the stress response) from changing interpretations in a deep way. For me, I work it from Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, which finds that the social nervous system branch of the ANS is what responds to coming into ourselves…to being fully who we are… to connecting to others… to moving forward even when it takes courage … to interpreting with joy … And this branch is actually able to inhibit fight/flight and freeze.”
I’ve experienced this, profoundly, and you have zeroed right in on it and clarified it here for me so helpfully. Thanks.
Really good article, Cort. I had attended PSI seminars, which initially seemed inspiring. However, I constantly felt like an ‘outsider’ because I thought the activities of lining each other up in order of success (whose definition) and disagreeing with ‘group think’ left me feeling quite ill. Those individuals valued money and were talented in promotion. Individuals who did not ‘feel well’ were looked down upon. Though some points of self-reliance were valuable. it lacked the care that right-brained, creatives, and empathetic individuals such as yourself have. You are a treasure, Cort, and your company is a gift to all.
Hi Bonnie! Thanks for relating about PSI. Clearly a very different context there – a very different context. I think Landmark would assert that most of us are driven to be successful – which is not a happy or fulfilled state at all.
I did the Landmark Forum about 8 or 9 years before getting sick, as well as several of their other courses and the Assisting Program. Maybe that’s why my symptoms, though still debilitating, aren’t as bad as some of the other people I’ve read about here and elsewhere. I think the stress response has a big part in that. I do find now that, when stressors occur, my energy drops tremendously, and it can takes days to recover. But there are things that I don’t get stressed about, that lots of other people might, because I don’t get tripped up on the interpretation of the situation.
I find the same thing is true of depression. If I find myself thinking, “Huh, I’m depressed today,” and just let it be that way, thinking “okay, maybe it’ll get better soon, maybe it won’t,” then I don’t spiral down into being depressed about being depressed. It doesn’t feed back on itself and reinforce itself. It’s easier said than done, but it’s also a mental muscle that you develop and a reflex that you hone over time. This is not at all to invalidate antidepressants, which I do take, and definitely help, but there’s still a kind of mental jujitsu you have to learn to keep the mood wolves at bay.
Thanks for reminding me that I have this toolkit available, and maybe the next time a stressor comes along, I’ll be able to tease apart my interpretation from the situation before the biochemical cascade gets out of control.
Very brave of you to write this article Cort. Love all of your work – I hope you don’t get too much backlash with this one. A friend and I have been embarking on this sort of work without any formal framework, looking at the works of Irene Lyon, Peter Levine, Wim Hoff, Annie Hopper et al. Since we embarked on this path in late 2019 we have both experienced several minor breakthroughs and are getting deeper and deeper into it.
Viewing ME through a polyvagal lense of severe autonomic dysregulation and leveraging neuroplasticity to reregulate is a very powerful perspective IMHO. Becoming ‘‘trauma aware’ makes so much sense of human behaviour in general, not to mention the dynamics of ME/CFS. I’m working on trying to make better distinctions between this type of work and the bullshit PACE style psychobabble.
I think the best way I can put it is we are looking at maladapted stress responses at a physiological level. Trauma blocks are real physical entities in a way, not some mental constructs. I hope this makes sense. e.g I have a fairly stable, well functioning personality but I think I may never have learnt to have a properly regulated nervous system since my childhood trauma. I’m also seeing this work as part of a holistic treatment plan that includes body work such as Perrin Technique. qi gong, sacro cranial, certain medications/supplements and a stack load of self care – so I have to double down on the statement that ME Is not all in the mind. A quote I found recently goes like this “what the mind won’t remember eber, the body will”
Polyvagal theory is so interesting -as my experience is of that I regularly experience small freeze-like states particularly when I’m exerting myself. It’s like my body just gets stuck. I would note that Landmark would probably suggest that I “choose” the stuck state I’m in, accept it completely and see if it dissipates.
This really struck home with me as well – “we are looking at maladapted stress responses at a physiological level.”
Thanks for this discussion, Cort. I took (or whatever the appropriate word is!) “The Forum”, as a two or three day weekend, back in the mid-1980s. I was not having any health problems at that point, but several of us at work were recommending it to each other. I found it was the people I most respected and liked at work who had taken the course. It transformed some of the ways I thought about people. We had a very funny leader. I remember his asking for a 23-year old woman to come up to the stage, and up came a young woman, chomping away on gum, looking very bored with the world. The leader said, kindly, see what a 23-year old looks like? My mother was 23 when I was born – how could she be to blame for everything?! Everyone laughed, including the “model”, and the point stuck.
When I first got really sick with CFS, 10 years after that, a very good doctor told me NOT to lie in bed too much. Ten minute walk every day was the order. Use it or lose it. The other thing that helped a lot to shape my attitude toward dealing with CFS was a physical therapist referring me to the tape “Why me, why this, why now?” (maybe the words are in different order, but that’s the gist). The answer is very congruent with The Forum. Basically, why not me? Why should it be someone else instead?
It’s really difficult in this world to keep a “we” philosophy strong, though you are doing it beautifully with this blog. A friend whose child has CF haranged (sp?) about all the money going to breast cancer, instead of CF. My answer to him was: let’s not pit disease against disease; ALL medical research needs more support. What is learned in one field ends up helping another. We have to think in terms of We not me.
Thanks again for this blog, and the discussion this particular entry is fostering.
Thanks Cameron. Again I’m surprised at how many people did this. I thought I was probably the only one :).
Werner Erhard was very much about a “world that works for everyone” and an us AND them world instead of an us VS them world.
The Forum leader suggested that with regard to our parents that we acknowledge them for everything good about us – and then take responsibility for the rest!
Then he had all the 18-26 year olds stand up – and all these baby-faced youngsters stood up – and he said “Most of you were born to a parent this age”
That gave me a new slant on my parents….
This sounds interesting, I’m definitely going to look into it. Have you ever heard of holotropic breathwork? I started doing it a couple of weeks ago and I was skeptical going into it but I’ve been having more energy than I’ve had in a very long time, along with much improved mood. And my sleep is better.
Sounds really interesting. You’re probably relaxing all the muscles around your ribcage and allowing your lungs to expand and breathe more easily, which can only help.
Thanks for mentioning it! I’m going to look into it.
Cort, ever since I have gotten sick, I have read your post and just could not wait to see what you may have come across that I had not read abt yet. Besides Dr. Lapp, who finally diagnosed me, your blog and information on ProHealth has been my guiding light for hope . Sometimes when something is very different, 1st instinct (for me) is to run. But life has shown me to try to embrace what was said and look at it objectively, depending on the source of information. Since it is you, I have to revisit this article and try to grasp what you have shared. I am not an emotional person , my faith is very strong, and because of my faith and learning acceptance of the illness (for clarity, big difference in acceptance and giving up, I.e have implemented pacing, supplements, epsom salt bath,etc.,etc.,) but this blog for some reason has really instilled the “run” response, emotional response. Made me think of “Amway” days where I stayed up all night, attended weekend seasons with little sleep, but would always leave energized. Because it is from you, I have to revisit what you’ve shared. Try to get an open mind as I read more abt this as getting better is my goal. Now, it is just exhausting because my mind says, that is exactly what I said to the close friend who got me into Amway. I am so happy for you. Thank you for sharing this with us because if it can help one person get a better quality of life , that is what you have always been abt. Helping others.
Thanks Hollie for your generosity. I’ve kept this bottled up for a long time and I realized that I was being really inauthentic. This thing REALLY worked for me – made a profound difference in my life – actually, made THE profound difference in my life.
I’ve said that one thing I do not want to end all this with is the knowledge, after all is said and done, that HR could have reported on something that helped end or reduce someone’s suffering because of fear or looking good or whatever.
I don’t know much about Amway – and this is nothing to take away from it – but Landmark is not a multi-level marketing company. If someone enrolls in Landmark I don’t get anything – not even a toaster 🙁 – but the satisfaction of potentially making a difference in someone’s life and the knowledge that I have a new kind of shared foundation with them.
As long as we are having EST roll call, yup, I took the training in San Francisco decades ago and Werner’s daughter was in my ‘class.’ It WAS very impactful and some of lessons are still with me today. Goes to show how closely linked the mind/health/body are linked.
Living in the Bay Area I got exposed to many of the ‘New Age’ experiences and know they profoundly shaped who I became and how I now ‘hold’ my various maladies. Sometimes people need that psychological jolt to reset old patterns. Case in point is the ‘recent’ discovery that giving cancer patients psilocybin mushrooms can completely reorient their attitudes to a dire prognosis. (There is only one point we live in and that is the NOW).
Well Cort, I’m happy for you too–that you have found value in this experience. Hope it fuels positive changes, and if not, the acceptance of ‘what is’ will comfort you (and likely will, in turn, will bring about positive changes!)
Thanks Nancy. Lots of people with a lot of history with this. From what I can tell all or most of Werner’s two families from his two wives took the course and a couple became central figures in the organization. His brother, Harry Rosenberg, now leads it.
The psychedilic science that is emerging is simply fascinating and unlooked for as well. I have Pollan’s book on my bookshelf to read. Thanks for mentioning that.
Hi Cort! Is it possible to incorporate my faith in God with Landmark philosophy?
Hi Frances, there is no conflict at all. Landmark is designed to remove the filters and interpretations that impede our aliveness and self-expression so I think it would actually help empower you in that area. 🙂
I’d like to comment that I think Werner Erhart’s approach and The Forum are more about philosophy than psychology. He’s really taught a philosophical system which a whole lot of people find resonates with them. It’s not really psychological, except to the extent that philosophy is psychological.
It is understandable that many patients with ME/CFS would be leery of anything that might have the “scent” of psychology. But philosophy is something humans have been exploring and finding to open up new avenues for centuries — at least centuries, probably longer.
Yes, it is an inquiry into the being of beings and “being” – what that is – is the central preoccupation of metaphysics in philosophy. I doubt many psychologists quote Heidegger. ?
Well, I have a degree in counselling and psychotherapy and history/philosophy and am a bit of a fan of Hegel… ?
All sorts of things are possible!
I forgot to mention that I have had Fibromyalgia for 9+ years.
Cort, I want to join the chorus witnessing to how thoughtful and indispensable your work on this website is. Like others, I have a huge amount of trust in your research, and wisdom, and honesty. And that this is a safe place for dialogue. So I would like to hazard a question — but please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not trying to be critical or argumentative at all, and I certainly don’t know anything about EST or Landmark except for what you’ve said. But if you could, here is what I’d like to understand a little bit more. How does this emphasis on “accepting what is” avoid becoming a kind of repression of the reality and pain of deep trauma? Doesn’t a person have to work through the pain when it’s been buried? And isn’t a part of doing that (a stage of it at least) the process of coming out of denial and facing the fact that one really wasn’t loved as a child, or was actually abused, and so forth. As you know, just to stay in denial and “wish it all away” is often easier . . . Surely THAT isn’t what this program is about, is it? I wonder because trauma survivors, of course, are often viewed as “blaming” parents, when in fact they are just trying to get their heads above water and get a grip on what happened. Sometimes the really hard thing to do is to stop protecting and excusing our parents; to stop taking the blame and guilt for everything onto ourselves. I mean, doesn’t a certain sense of reality come into it at all? I doubt that you would think so highly of Landmark if there wasn’t a good answer to this. So could you maybe address this, because I’d love to understand the “philosophy,” as Cameron calls it, a bit better, and hear any thoughts you (and maybe others who’ve taken these workshops) might have on this? (Btw, this is a retired professor, here, who’s been working for years on the being of beings in the Greek texts that Heidegger pored over all his life . . . But THAT is neither here nor there!) And just now it occurs to me — I really hope what I’ve asked about isn’t precisely the reason that you haven’t felt you could talk about this program here in the first place!
Hi Janet,
Thanks for the question.
Absolutely and I saw this again and again in the course – people who were abused, men and women (@ I in 5 people have been abused) going digging back to the original situation and resolving it. It often got very emotional. Other people simply resolved problems with their marriage or past marriages or issues with their parents.
The way Landmark resolves these things is to identify what happened and then identify the meaning or interpretation we gave to what happened. They assert that it’s in the interpretation or meanings that we give to events that causes the suffering. If you can erase that meaning – that I was complicit in my abuse or whatever the incident was, that I was bad, that it meant something was wrong with me – then you’re freed up. I saw this happen again and again.
The Forum leader had been repeatedly sexually abused as a child. He said gave those experiences all sorts of interpretation including that he was “defiled” and that he was the lowest kind of being possible. After his Forum he said that interpretation disappeared entirely and it never disturbed him again. In Forum parlance he was able to put the past back into the past and doing so left a clearing for his future. Now he could create how he wanted to be.
So what you say here – to stop taking the blame and guilt for everything onto ourselves – is exactly how Landmark works.
With regard to our parents – forgiveness is actually critical. We kind of live in this land where we think that if we resent someone or are angry with someone that that somehow impacts them – but it has no impact on them at all – who it really impacts is us.
Another more to the point example is something I experienced today. I woke up and the pain from my long “cold” was back. That’s what was happening – then I looked at the meanings I or rather my mind gave to it: they included this is never going to be over, it’s going to get worse, everything I did I did for naught. I shouldn’t have done the Forum – it was too much for me; it just went on and on. ! Then I switched back to what was actually happening – I was having some pain – got out of the interpretations and my mood, not surprisingly shifted considerably.
I can tell you that about ten years into this disease I began telling myself “I’m never going to get well”. I don’t think that helped things!
Thank you so much! Very very helpful!
It’s amazing that the shift could happen so suddenly, isn’t it? And that it could be so lasting, with the guilt being expunged so radically. I suppose the people there who had deep trauma to deal with had already been working through it for some time and so were “ready,” in a way, to let go? In years of therapy I would achieve these realizations and then have to wallow in the old emotions again. It was such a long seesaw to finally get out of it at the other end. I wonder if that “social network” aspect of the ANS is involved here in the workshops you describe. I know I used to experience a similar lifting and renewal of energy when I went to annual women’s retreats (Episcopal) and sat with other women in focused conversation and in silent prayer. I had to be driven there, exhausted. But during and afterwards, the effects lasted weeks. All of a sudden I could get up early like we had done at the retreat — instead of dragging myself out of bed at noon as had been the norm beforehand . . . We are social animals and modern societies are so isolating of individuals — and then CFS/ME intensifies that, with the added loneliness of all one’s well-intentioned friends and family being unable to understand it at all — and saying you need to exercise more! (This condition is so counter-intuitive and its PEM so striking and unusual that it ought to be about the easiest diagnosis out there!) Actually, it occurs to me that this website is also a “social” experience that is energizing and mobilizing in itself.
Actually I don’t know if this is true. I suspect it is not in some cases.
I suppose the people there who had deep trauma to deal with had already been working through it for some time and so were “ready,” in a way, to let go?
When people let go in this process it can occur in an instant. It’s as if a new view of what happened has inserted itself and removed the old view.
That said as you note, I imagine the some people, perhaps many people, need to get it again and again. I guess it depends on how deeply it is gotten.
I agree on the social isolation – it’s inherently unhealthful and we lose something when we cannot or are not participating in a social milieu. We are social beings to our very core and are most alive when we are participating that way.
Cort — Makes sense. Love your honesty. Thanks!
Cort, there’s an interesting journal article just out from the Japanese researchers:
‘Identification of actin network proteins, talin-1 and filamin-A, in circulating extracellular vesicles as blood biomarkers for human myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome’
They found Extracellular vesicles (EVs) to be increased, confirming the findings of Castro-Marrero.
They conclude:
In conclusion, we revealed that circulating EV levels are significantly increased in ME/CFS patients. These EVs contain a specific protein cargo, particularly actin network proteins and 14-3-3 family proteins, which represent novel-specific ME/CFS biomarkers and can distinguish this condition from ICF and clinical depression, which are two highly challenging differential diagnoses in the clinical arena. Future studies including larger cohorts that would allow for matching the various conditions by key variables such as age and gender as well as external validation studies are warranted.
The novel findings of this study may open new windows to reveal ME/CFS pathogenic mechanisms and may aid in the development of better ME/CFS biomarkers and effective therapies.
That looks like a great study and I look forward to blogging on it. Thanks Matthias
And a big question is: how expensive is it to test for these markers!
If we could have just one affordable quantitative test available to medical professionals it would make all the difference for us, in the soul-destroying battle to get diagnosed and taken seriously and believed. (imho)
Janet,
We at least do have one excellent objective test — the 2-day CPET. It’s not easy, but I believe it is covered by insurance…?
Thanks Cort
I’ve always been impressed with your ability to take negative, or even aggressive, comments on this site without rising up defence, or even aggression. That may be your natural personality but I reckon having done the EST/Landmark courses probably helped.
I’ve found help as I face the truth and let it be, or let it go. It seems there’s a fine line between giving up and acceptance. When I can stay at acceptance without either judgement or despair I am better able to cope. Anything that can help damp down the excessive adrenalin is helpful.
“I’ve always been impressed with your ability to take negative, or even aggressive, comments on this site without rising up defence, or even aggression. That may be your natural personality but I reckon having done the EST/Landmark courses probably helped.”
Thanks Rose – Landmark has helped enormously with this. They completely discard the dichotomy of “right/wrong” as unhelpful and as a paradigm that leads to us getting stuck and not taking responsibility – as being cause – of anything. The goal is to get past a right/wrong world to a world that basically works and fosters aliveness and self-expression.
One thing that I just noticed is that the way to get past resignation is – get this to distinguish it first when it’s happening. It’s not to battle it, to rise above it or give into but distinguish it when it’s happening, give it the space to be and as it dissipates create a possibility of something else.
Ultimately, that is, as you say – acceptance. Werner was fond of saying “What you can let be – will let you be”. That’s very similar to the Buddhist tenet that “desire” which is really desire from something different is the root of all suffering.
Hi Cort,
I appreciated the article and comments and tired to read them with an open mind. In the end, I’m still left with some concerns about this type of approach.
1) There seems to be tension between pacing, the preeminently recommended self-management tool for ME, and practices that emphasize negative interpretive responses to our symptoms.
On the one hand, we’re supposed to become experts in the limitations of our sick bodies so that we can work within them and anticipate crashing. This entails lowering expectations, preemptively resting and an openness to cancel commitments last minute. For former perfectionist, workaholics like myself, this has been a hard-earned lesson. While pacing hasn’t gotten me out of the 3-year relapse I’m in, it has certainly reduced the number of intense crashes, which are far more difficult for me to deal with than issues like moderate social isolation. Pacing may also have prevented my relapse in the first place had I been guided on how to do it well much earlier.
On the other, we’re supposed to get better by not immediately reacting to/interpreting our symptoms (would this include predicting crashes?) and always keeping our word (in spite of warning signs?)? I take your point about EST being difficult to categorize, and maybe I’m putting undue emphasis on subordinate features. But for me the apparent tension lingers. And it’s a big reason I’ve held off on certain “rewiring” and self-help programs (e.g. ANS advocates have gone so far as to describe pacing as a hindrance, DNRS coaches have reportedly told people to cut fellowship with other sick people, and just the other day a self-help style practitioner who initially seemed empathetic told me that I remain sick because I identify as such…which is nonsense to me.)
2) I accept your point about Landmark being more philosophical than psychological. For me, though, that’s not necessarily a good thing. I’ve tried to get into a number of things that are influenced by Eastern spirituality and/or philosophy and I often can’t get past the ideological clash with my Christian theological and spiritual outlook re: what it means to be human. I mean, Jesus was described by a prophet and depicted in the Gospels as a “man of sorrows,” not as someone who altered his consciousness to detach from their apparent source.
There are some practices, like mindfulness, which are easy to strip of eastern ideological baggage. Maybe Landmark ‘s Forum falls more into this latter category. That’s not the impression I got after reading though. I acknowledge, however, that this problem may be unique to me. I’m a graduate student in theology, i.e. weirdly reflective about the ideological implications of spiritual/wellness practices. (Btw, I realize that Heidegger is a western continental philosopher, but I’m not keen on him either.)
I want to say in conclusion that I still appreciate you putting this out there and I think your prioritization of things-that-work over things-that-fit-my-preconception-about-what-should-work is on point. I also want to concede that if EST helped you you, and then you’re work helped me, then I guess it has helped me too!
Hi David,
Thank you very much for bringing this up. I have had exactly the same problem that you mention with Eastern religions and the Buddhist practice of “detachment” — as, for example, this is so vividly portrayed In the great poet Basho’s Narrow Journey to the Deep North, when the sage sees the dying child abandoned by the side of the road and passes onward unmoved . . . Philosophically and personally, I just don’t “get” that at all. And while I don’t want to hi-jack Cort’s discussion space into non-medical topics (i.e. into philosophical topics?), I really agree with Tracey Anne that this has been an especially thoughtful exchange of emails, no doubt triggered by Cort’s own honesty and full disclosure, and like Tracey Anne, I find myself thinking a lot about everything being brought up here.
Possibly David’s question is fundamentally a philosophical question, and only peripherally a “dealing with CFS/ME” question, but I’m so happy to find someone bringing up the very topic. I’ve pondered it for years and never could find someone to really talk to about this, among my many beloved Buddhist and learned-yoga-practicing friends. I too feel that same dissonance David brings up with my Christian theological and spiritual outlook, in relation to what it means to be human. (Itself the focus of the Heideggerian conversation around the being of beings . . .)
However, Cort has explained really well how ESL and Landmark do not involve a denial of personal suffering, our own or that of others. He says it involves a deep change in how we interpret those realities with which we are struggling. And I was struck by the fact that actually, I was taught exactly this in relation to the power of the eucharist to transform the MEANING of our struggles and sufferings. So that’s not where the dissonance lies for me. I guess what I still wonder about and resist is when not Cort, but those philosophers Cort quoted in his original post, seem to say that “it’s nothing but interpretations all the way down, anyway, so why not choose a meaning that gives you the best results.” Yet the very reason HR is so helpful and inspiring is that Cort plunges so intensively into the facts, doing all of this intensive research on our behalf and trying to integrate all of it as clearly and wisely as he can. And helping us to engage in doing this too — since often we’re the (only) ones motivated to do it, regardless of what the larger health profession and the government agencies may do — or perhaps more often, not do.
So this is where I still feel a little uneasy, if I’m 100% honest. There ARE genuine realities underlying these illnesses of ours and we are trying to get to it. That’s a major way that we cope with our condition, and it’s not “acceptance.” Yet, at the same time, I don’t really “hear” those in the “let it be” camp (in the comments above) advocating for the kind of detachment or passionless acceptance that Basho seems to think is required for making the human pilgrimage . . .
Hi Janet (and David),
I share your questions and concerns about mindfulness and eastern religious practices as practiced in the west (i.e. stripped of their spiritual roots).
You both might appreciate Lorin Roche’s articles; he is a meditation instructor, formerly a professor at a California university (I don’t remember which one offhand). He’s a brilliant, unorthodox thinker, and I always find his articles illuminating and perspective-shifting. Unfortunately, he seems to have deleted his old website and his *substantial* body of work with it. Luckily, I’ve saved a few links, which are accessible in the wayback machine. Here is one I found particularly helpful which I think you both might appreciate (fair warning – it’s very long): http://web.archive.org/web/20171128014953/https://lorinroche.com/dangers/dangers/2paths.html
My father-in-law is a retired scholar and researcher whose main focus was Oriental antiquities, specializing in Chinese bronzes. He charts the progression of Buddhist thinking by the changes in the representation of Buddha throughout various times and regions. Even knowing that, I was caught off guard by his response to my signing up for a meditation course. He was both alarmed and a bit perturbed: I got a fairly long lesson on the differences between how Buddhist practices are viewed in the west (as fairly benign), and how they are in fact viewed in the east (as something entirely different, and certainly not benign or to be treated casually).
BTW, James Coyne (the researcher who almost single-handedly took on the PACE trail and its authors and helped save MECFS patients from being fated to CBT and graded exercise) has a particular bugbear about the bad science around mindfulness. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea (he’s a cantankerous old fart but I appreciate his perspective even when I don’t always agree), but he also is an unorthodox thinker who raises some very interesting and important points. You might want to look up his posts as well.
This is true! A rather shocking statement but this at least somewhat accurate describes Erhard’s experience which lead him to create the EST training.
“it’s nothing but interpretations all the way down, anyway, so why not choose a meaning that gives you the best results.”
We are the ones that add meaning to life! On the flip side of that is that Erhard asserts that when you really get that – a human being’s natural response is to contribute to life.
He asserts that we are all yearning to make a difference, that at the bottom of all of it is a real love for one another but that has largely gotten hijacked by our need to survive, to look good, etc. – none of which is bad by the way – it’s just the human condition we were borne into.
The idea that we are meant to contribute, to engage with each other, to get out on the skinny branches and risk and make a difference is, so far as I can tell, a major difference between Buddhism and Landmark.
Landmark asserts that if you have a vision and you don’t act on it – you will suffer (or go numb to it – which is another way of suffering).
If there’s something we’re committed to do and we don’t do it – we will eventually convince ourselves that we never wanted it in the first place.
Hi Janet and Anne,
Thank you for such meaty, thought-provoking responses. It’s so nice to meet ME sufferers who share other orientations and interests (e.g. intellectual curiosity, philosophy, spirituality, etc.).
I think you’re probably right, Janet, that my point about Eastern stuff is only peripherally related to ME/CFS. The connection for me was that some of my doctors who “treat” my ME have suggested meditative, therapeutic or self-help strategies that I just can’t take seriously (google Alan Watts’ meditative theory or Steve Noble’s Soul Matrix, for example), and I suspect that’s true for many who have western metaphysical and moral convictions, whether religious or not. But I think it’s important to evaluate each practice on a case-by-case basis. Some have dual roots: both eastern and western. Other have already been westernized to such an extent that they’re ideological innocuous or purely technical. This is how I feel about basic mindfulness breathing exercises, meditative body scanning, yoga, and perhaps Landmark’s Forum after further research. But again, it depends on the particular case: who’s guiding it, what form of it is being taught, and how tethered is it to alien ideological-spiritual content?
As a side note, for some time now I’ve been wanting to start a chronic illness/pain small group at my church and maybe even develop and include my own version of Christian mindfulness. I think the idea of taking time to be fully present could jive well with the experience of Christ’s presence, or being filled with the Spirit, or more generally with disciplined awareness of the luxurious gift of God’s presence. On the latter, see Brother Lawrence’s renowned 17th century devotional teachings (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_the_Presence_of_God).
Wish I could say more but too cognitively fatigued.
Peace
Hi Cort —
And this comment of yours is right on target, too, for me:
“The idea that we are meant to contribute, to engage with each other, to get out on the skinny branches and risk and make a difference is, so far as I can tell, a major difference between Buddhism and Landmark.”
This is my impression, too (but I’m just pondering this question, because it fascinates me). I would add that this seems also to be a difference between Buddhism and Christianity.
Btw, somewhere Cort wondered about an “avowed Christian” who is heading up that impervious bureaucracy at the NIH. Boy oh boy, do I ever hear you and agree with you on that!! Without commenting specifically on this person (about whom I know nothing), it’s so damned disheartening when an avowed Christian cannot hear the voices of suffering. But the same is true of those who take the Hippocratic Oath and call themselves physicians — and cannot hear the voices of those they do not want to hear, b/c it might upset their apple-cart. Seems to me that all of these destructive forces of greed and a self-serving kind of petty self-aograndizement — all those mechanisms and defenses and dodges and defensive strategies of prestige-seeking that disguise the truth and “protect” us against it — are always operating in every human organization and in each of the callings that humans profess. But of course that doesn’t mean they are all bad, even though we find ourselves tempted to generalize harshly when we are particularly frustrated and disappointed. Discern and judge by the fruit, in each case, and not by the label? But surely that’s the difficult kind of respect and openness that makes this website continue to be a safe place for everyone and produces conversations healthy and fruitful like this one here. I’m really grateful for it.
HI David
I think Landmark would say that you can’t help reacting and/or interpreting our symptoms or anything else for that matter. We are reaction machines – and we always will be – whether its in regard to our symptoms or the news we read in the morning or the thoughts we have getting out of bed. There’s no getting out of that!
The goal is more simply noticing the reactions! It’s not to change them, oddly enough which Erhard and Landmark assert causes them to persist; or to put it another way “what you resist persists”.
The goal is more to notice and actually give room to your reactions with the idea that once you can give them the room to be they will let you be; in other words instead of being caught up in them, trying to surpass them, trying to push the upset or fear or anger away, etc. – the goal is simply to take notice of them – a crucial factor – and let them be – and hopefully watch them dissipate. Landmark is very similar to Buddhism in that regard.
Not to worry regarding religion – Landmark is completely detached on that subject. Their practices designed to deepen ones experience of life, their self-expression and the difference they make and that includes religion. I’ve them say several times that their goal with regards to religion is to empower people in their religions or their spirituality for that matter.
One of my course leaders used to be a chaplain, another seminar leader profoundly identifies with her Christian faith, others have been Buddhists, etc. and others don’t identify with any religion.
Thank you so much for your replies. Both are super helpful and my mind is still open.
Honestly, when I look back at six years of battling ME and consider what has best helped me manage, it’s a tie for first place: trazodone and the work of Cort Johnson.
Ha! Thanks!
Hey have you tried LDN with Trazodone? A repurposing drug company did an analysis and concluded that LDN with Trazodone might just work.
This is so good, Cort. This really resonates.
“Landmark asserts that if you have a vision and you don’t act on it – you will suffer (or go numb to it – which is another way of suffering).
If there’s something we’re committed to do and we don’t do it – we will eventually convince ourselves that we never wanted it in the first place.”
This blog and everyone’s comments have really sparked something in me and I’ve been mulling over so many thoughts and feelings over the last few days.
Firstly, I would agree that HR is a safe place in which to join in discussions and that’s so important. For me that’s invaluable.
I haven’t participated in any Landmark or EST groups but I did take part in weekly 3 hour groups and weekends, as part of my training as a counsellor/psychotherapist.
I relished the personal challenge involved and got more out of the group experience than I did from individual therapy.
However I ran into difficulty within one of the groups as it became judgemental, divisive and demeaning. Not what I needed.
However, I believe if groups are truly compassionate as well as being challenging, they can be extraordinary places. Like being a part of a really cohesive and mutually supportive team.
Thanks Cort, for reminding me of the better experiences I have had ?
Also I would recognise many of the concepts used by Landmark such as Rackets, being authentic, sifting through our interpretations of our earlier experiences and examining them and so on as coming from the therapy arena, like for example Transactional Analysis initially developed by Eric Berne.
What you’re describing Cort is very similar to what I studied for my degree. Person Centred, Humanistic therapy. Trauma therapy is incorporating the work of people like Peter Levine and Stephen Porges. This is the way therapy is going. Richard Schwartz and his work with the different parts people have within them – Internal Family Systems is also very interesting.
There are a lot of very creative people out there, working in many different ways, to enable individuals to unlock their potential.
Hi Cort, I took the training in 78 and it was amazing. However I got the CFS/ME in 94 on a trip to Africa via London. I haven’t been right since. I run at 40% slow days to 80% on a good day.
The first time someone take the Forum as it is now called, has for most people the greatest impact. I experienced it like you did and followed thru with the now extinct 6 Day course and many others seminars.
I reviewed it around ’96 and tried to participate in some of their more demanding programs but as a traveling musician I had to back off those courses. I got clear that music is what I do and that work is secondary.
“You are not your circumstances,” my favorite quote from the Forum. When you wake up and you can’t get out of bed, you keep your commitments or you don’t. No right, no wrong in that. No shame. It’s just what’s so.
I have not participated in the Forum since around the time Erhard left in the 80’s. I wrote more about some of my thoughts in a previous response above, but would like to say to some of you who struggle with the question of philosophy, eastern concepts and such, the Forum isn’t an answer. It isn’t meant to be. It’s more of a vehicle for teaching ways to inquire and live in the questions.
Here comes the stream of consciousness part because I don’t have the energy to edit: I sometimes wish I had all the answers. I wish I were healthy. I’m a driven person and I have ME! So I guess I’m in it for the long haul, until something changes. It could be tomorrow, five years, never, and then I die.
We will never know everything. Is there a god, an afterlife? Am I on the right path? Am I doing everything I can for myself? Should I this, should I that? No one can fix that for us. We all live our lives without knowing the laws of the universe. At times, Mother Teresa doubted the existence of God, so belief will get you nowhere; you will never really believe anything consistently throughout your life.
You live nevertheless. Embrace the mystery. No one is ever always enlightened. We’re all little sometimes. We’re all big sometimes. Sometimes you can be big like Cort. Sometimes Cort is little. You can own it or blame people and circumstances outside yourself. We wake up tomorrow and do it again. Night y’all.
You are not your circumstances! What a mind-blowing and confronting statement that is – but yes that sums it up very well.
You mean I am not my pain? Sometimes it sure seems I am. I’m not my worries and anxieties? Sometimes they absolutely have a grip on me. Finding a way to achieving some sort of freedom from our fears, from our body sensations, our current situations, whatever it is, is a big part of Landmark.
I must say I am a slow learner!
Yes and strangely, we are not our physical limitations.
And you will never always be free from your fears, your pain or thinking you are a victim of circumstance, but sometimes you are free and you can tap into that power again and again.
Thank you, Cort! Excellent Article! ?We are all a work in progress in all areas of our life as well as me …???