That was a very interesting account of Landmark. I’ve known a couple of people who did the course, but this is more detailed than I had heard before.
I have not done Landmark, but I see a great many commonalities between it and a series of courses I have done, which were originally called “The Life Training”, and about 20 years ago renamed itself “More To Life”.
From the above account, I guess that a Landmark graduate encountering More To Life might dismiss it as “Landmark Lite”. That might even be accurate, but given the apparent excesses of Landmark in certain ways, Landmark does not necessarily have the better of that comparison.
When its founders, Brad Brown and Roy Whitten, were in the process of putting together what would become The Life Training, they were both practicing psychologists, and they had noticed that half their clients had done est (Landmark’s predecessor). So they went along to that course to see what it was all about, to be able to understand what their clients were talking about.. There were some things they agreed with and some they didn’t, but it was an influence on their thinking. There were many other influences, including their religious background (they were both also Anglican priests). Back in the early 70′s in Southern California you could hardly move for such things.
I did the Life Training in 1992, and some of their advanced courses in subsequent years, and it has been an enduring influence since. As much as, say, science fiction, mathematics, General Semantics, and the Sequences. It does not advertise and is reliant on word of mouth, although I have never myself tried to enrol anyone to take the course, or spoken in any depth about it. There is no-one I know well enough to recommend to them anything of this nature, and besides, I don’t want the responsibility of turning someone’s life upside down. In recent years I have also had doubts about how well the More To Life organisation is keeping alive the teaching that its founders developed since the death in 2007 of its senior founder, Brad Brown. I have not had much contact with it in that time beyond staying on their mailing list, but I have a sense of decline.
I don’t wish to either recommend or disrecommend More To Life, but anyone considering Landmark might also consider this.
More To Life does not make such a hard sell of recruitment as it seems Landmark does, and while it does ask for charitable donations, I recall that was not much of a hard sell either. I never had any pressure to take any of their advanced courses, although I have done several and found them valuable. That lack of pushiness may be a good thing from the point of view of the participants, but the inevitable result of not pursuing growth very hard is that it has not grown, and not pursuing donations very hard has not helped its finances. When I took their course back around 1992 there were 160 participants. These days, 40 is a lot, and of course covid has stopped all such things for more than a year, putting additional strain on the organisation.
I don’t want to speak beyond what I should, but if someone is interested in at least looking into More To Life, I would recommend not putting it off too long.
Its founders never wrote a book, but two of their senior trainers have in the last few years: “Lifeshocks: And how to love them”, by Sophie Sabbage and “Lifeshocks Out of the Blue: Learning from Your Life’s Experiences”, by Ann McMaster. (“Lifeshock” is a term coined by More To Life.) I have read the former, but having done the course, I know what I’m looking at when I read it. I don’t know how it comes across to people who haven’t.
That was a very interesting account of Landmark. I’ve known a couple of people who did the course, but this is more detailed than I had heard before.
I have not done Landmark, but I see a great many commonalities between it and a series of courses I have done, which were originally called “The Life Training”, and about 20 years ago renamed itself “More To Life”.
From the above account, I guess that a Landmark graduate encountering More To Life might dismiss it as “Landmark Lite”. That might even be accurate, but given the apparent excesses of Landmark in certain ways, Landmark does not necessarily have the better of that comparison.
When its founders, Brad Brown and Roy Whitten, were in the process of putting together what would become The Life Training, they were both practicing psychologists, and they had noticed that half their clients had done est (Landmark’s predecessor). So they went along to that course to see what it was all about, to be able to understand what their clients were talking about.. There were some things they agreed with and some they didn’t, but it was an influence on their thinking. There were many other influences, including their religious background (they were both also Anglican priests). Back in the early 70′s in Southern California you could hardly move for such things.
I did the Life Training in 1992, and some of their advanced courses in subsequent years, and it has been an enduring influence since. As much as, say, science fiction, mathematics, General Semantics, and the Sequences. It does not advertise and is reliant on word of mouth, although I have never myself tried to enrol anyone to take the course, or spoken in any depth about it. There is no-one I know well enough to recommend to them anything of this nature, and besides, I don’t want the responsibility of turning someone’s life upside down. In recent years I have also had doubts about how well the More To Life organisation is keeping alive the teaching that its founders developed since the death in 2007 of its senior founder, Brad Brown. I have not had much contact with it in that time beyond staying on their mailing list, but I have a sense of decline.
I don’t wish to either recommend or disrecommend More To Life, but anyone considering Landmark might also consider this.
More To Life does not make such a hard sell of recruitment as it seems Landmark does, and while it does ask for charitable donations, I recall that was not much of a hard sell either. I never had any pressure to take any of their advanced courses, although I have done several and found them valuable. That lack of pushiness may be a good thing from the point of view of the participants, but the inevitable result of not pursuing growth very hard is that it has not grown, and not pursuing donations very hard has not helped its finances. When I took their course back around 1992 there were 160 participants. These days, 40 is a lot, and of course covid has stopped all such things for more than a year, putting additional strain on the organisation.
I don’t want to speak beyond what I should, but if someone is interested in at least looking into More To Life, I would recommend not putting it off too long.
Its founders never wrote a book, but two of their senior trainers have in the last few years: “Lifeshocks: And how to love them”, by Sophie Sabbage and “Lifeshocks Out of the Blue: Learning from Your Life’s Experiences”, by Ann McMaster. (“Lifeshock” is a term coined by More To Life.) I have read the former, but having done the course, I know what I’m looking at when I read it. I don’t know how it comes across to people who haven’t.