Large-group Awareness Training - LGAT Techniques

LGAT Techniques

Finkelstein's 1982 article provides a detailed description of the structure and techniques of an Erhard Seminars Training event, noting an authoritarian demeanor of the trainer, physical strains on the participants from a long schedule, and the similarity of many techniques to those used in some group therapy and encounter groups. The academic textbook, Handbook of Group Psychotherapy regards Large Group Awareness Training organisations as "less open to leader differences", because they follow a "detailed written plan" that does not vary from one training to the next.

Specific techniques used in Large Group Awareness Trainings may include:

• meditation
• biofeedback
• self-hypnosis
• relaxation techniques
• visualization
• neuro-linguistic programming
• mind-control
• yoga

LGATs utilize such techniques during long sessions, sometimes called a "marathon" session. Paglia describes "EST's Large Group Awareness Training": "Marathon, eight-hour sessions, in which were confined and harassed, supposedly led to the breakdown of conventional ego, after which they were in effect born again."

In his book Life 102, LGAT participant and former trainer Peter McWilliams describes the basic technique of marathon trainings as pressure/release and asserts that advertising uses pressure/release "all the time", as do "good cop/bad cop" police-interrogations and revival meetings. By spending approximately half the time making a person feel bad and then suddenly reversing the feeling through effusive praise, the programs cause participants to experience a stress-reaction and an "endorphin high". McWilliams gives examples of various LGAT activities called processes with names such as "love bomb," "lifeboat", "cocktail party" and "cradling" which take place over many hours and days, physically exhausting the participants to make them more susceptible to the trainer's message, whether in the participants' best interests or not.

Although extremely critical of some LGATs, McWilliams found positive value in others, asserting that they varied not in technique but in the application of technique.