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Joey brings the Hoffman Quadrinity Process to Hyde

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Ursus:
HYDE
SCHOOLS
January 20, 2009

Dear HAPA Parents,

The Hoffman Quadrinity Process comes to Hyde-Bath August 10-17, 2009!

Hyde joins the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) at Harvard as the only educational institutions to annually offer this world renowned program.

This initial program will be open to Hyde administrators and Hyde and HAPA parents. It provides participants with a powerful opportunity to address one's deepest self, spirit and capacity to love. And as KSG at Harvard has proven, personal growth and leadership training go hand in hand.

While participants in the first program will only include administrators of the five Hyde Schools together with Hyde and HAPA parents, future annual programs will be open to all members of the Hyde community. There is a very natural bond between the Hyde and Hoffman Processes.

Presently, 9 Hyde administrators (including me) and at least 20 Hyde or HAPA parents are graduates of this program and we all feel we experienced a personal transformation. The program was recently evaluated by professors at the University of California, and given measurements related to personal growth when compared to a control group a year after the experience, the personal progress of participants was uniformly outstanding.

The Hoffman Quadrinity Process was founded by Bob Hoffman in 1967. Today the Hoffman Institute has organizations in 14 countries, with over 80,000 graduates. The Kennedy School of Government (KSG) at Harvard offers the Hoffman process to its graduate students, which include diplomats, politicians, UN peacekeepers, bank directors, etc. around the world. Their evaluations indicate their 8 day Hoffman experience was the highlight of their year at Harvard.

How is it possible that Hyde parents and teachers will be able to share the identical peak Harvard experience of these world leaders???

It is best explained by Leadership Guru Warren Bennis, chairman of the KSG advisory board (also a HAPA parent): "Here is the deal: learning to be a leader is virtually the same process as becoming an integrated and healthy person…What that means is that when we talk about 'growing leaders' we're inevitably involved in personal stuff, personal transformation."

The Hyde-Hoffman project will more deeply address our "emotional dispositions" in order to help us re-center our lives on our spirit and our deeper capacity to love. The personal growth we experience will ultimately strengthen Hyde's focus on unique potential, character and family.

I went to Hoffman as Joe, and returned as Joey, my true childhood spirit. I shed my family emotional dispositions like anger, frustration, "my way or the highway" and yet found an even deeper love and appreciation for my parents. As expressed by another Hyde administrator: "I feel very in touch with my authentic self; I'm aware of patterns that used to keep me paralyzed and no longer have that power."

We encourage you to visit the Hoffman Institute website (http://www.hoffmaninstitute.org) to learn more about the process.

If you are interested in participating in our first Hyde-Hoffman process, please contact me as soon as possible (jgauld@hyde.edu or 207-443-7114) as space will be limited. The critical qualities for success are the desire for personal growth and the willingness to look deeply into oneself. It is a very individualized program.


Warm Regards Joey,

[signature]

Joe Gauld The Hyde Foundation

Ursus:

--- Quote from: "Joey" ---While participants in the first program will only include administrators of the five Hyde Schools together with Hyde and HAPA parents, future annual programs will be open to all members of the Hyde community. There is a very natural bond between the Hyde and Hoffman Processes.
--- End quote ---

No kidding. It's called est. You can also throw more than a little Lifespring in there too, since current Hoffman USA branch president and international BOD member Charles 'Raz' Ingrasci used to be Director of Corporate Affairs for Lifespring, as well as working with est's Werner Erhard. As described elsewhere on this forum, HAPA currently also carries the imprint of the Mankind Project, at the very least, and that evolved out of Sterling Seminars, which, in turn, evolved out of est.

From Wikipedia's entry on Lifespring:

--- Quote ---Lifespring was founded in 1974 by John Hanley Sr., after working at an organization called Mind Dynamics with Werner Erhard, the founder of est. Lifespring concentrates on how people experience each other, whereas est concentrates on changing the way people experience themselves.[5] However, there are many similarities between the two, as well as with Scientology[1][6].

The former Director for Corporate Affairs of Lifespring, Charles "Raz" Ingrasci, [7] also worked with Werner Erhard, promoting an est mission to the USSR and the Hunger Project. Ingrasci is now President of the Hoffman Institute[8] which offers programs such as the Hoffman Quadrinity Process which some regard as similar to Lifespring[9].

Though John Hanley denied that Lifespring was a duplicate of Erhard Seminars Training, Melton and Lewis described the similarities between the two as "striking", in their 1992 work, Perspectives on the New Age[6]. Melton and Lewis point out that both Werner Erhard and John Hanley had previously worked at Mind Dynamics. They then went on to cite specific examples of techniques utilized by both Lifespring and EST, stating that both used "authoritarian trainers who enforce numerous rules", both groups require applause after a member's "share" in front of the group, both deemphasized ratiocination, in favor of "feeling and action"[6]. The authors also pointed out that graduates of both Lifespring and EST were "fiercely loyal", and recruited heavily for their respective groups, reducing marketing expenses to virtually zero[6].
--- End quote ---

Anonymous:
:rofl:  Hyde-Hoffman project?


--- Quote ---The Hyde-Hoffman project will more deeply address our "emotional dispositions" in order to help us re-center our lives on our spirit and our deeper capacity to love. The personal growth we experience will ultimately strengthen Hyde's focus on unique potential, character and family.
--- End quote ---

Ursus:
Here is an excerpt from Melbourne psychologist Louise Samways' book Dangerous Persuaders: An expose of personal development courses and cults, and how they operate (1994: Penguin Books Australia Ltd), color emphasis mine:

[Incidentally, this book can be downloaded in its entirety from THIS PAGE (PayPal donation appreciated, but not required).]

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Many people who attend a personal development group say it was a wonderful experience that changed their lives for the better; others say it had no real effect except to empty  their wallet. I fully accept that the psychological techniques they use are so powerful they can cause dramatic shifts in beliefs and attitudes within hours, and that sometimes this can be an improvement for the participants. My concerns are that people attending maverick courses are not adequately screened before attending, do not participate with informed consent about the possible dangers, the group or leader has no accountability for their actions and leaders are inappropriately or inadequately trained for what they are doing. This makes the outcome for the participants totally unpredictable, and puts them at great risk. It is not acceptable to say the risk of damage to some people is justified by the dubious possibility of benefits to others.

There are much safer, kinder and more respectful ways of helping people change and reassess their beliefs, values and priorities than implanting ideas from an external source while deliberately inhibiting their ability to think clearly and critically.

The personal development courses I consider dangerous are groups run by organisations or individuals who have either non-existent or inappropriate qualifications for what they are doing and effectively are accountable to no one. The courses I worry about particularly are those attempting dramatic changes in short periods of time, such as Landmark Education, EST, Forum, Money and You and Hoffman Process, for they are misusing the psychological techniques allied to hypnosis in order to make the behavioural changes.

At present in Australia there is an epidemic of personal development courses led by unqualified people. In every one I have observed or have been told about there has been consistent misuse of hypnosis -- sometimes by people who had no idea what they were doing was in fact hypnosis. More worrying still is the number of groups using regression hypnosis techniques, which even fully trained professionals are extremely cautious about employing. The misuse of regressional hypnosis is particularly apparent in 'rebirthing'.

Regressional hypnosis is a technique by which a person can be taken back in time to various ages, in order to recall events that consciously may have been either partially or fully repressed. These are generally extremely unhappy experiences, such as sexual abuse in childhood or veterans' war experiences.    

(Note: The whole issue of repressed memory is a mine field of misunderstanding of the nature of memory. Memory is NOT a video tape of what happened. Rather it is more like a self directed movie that can easily be changed, particularly by somebody perceived to have greater authority eg a "counsellor" or parent. Memories are especially vulnerable to  distortion, manipulation, or creating complete fabrications in psychological states of high or low arousal eg hypnosis. Manipulating memories about relationships is a common technique used in abusive organisations to alienate recruits from their families).

Regressional hypnosis is only used therapeutically by psychiatrists or psychologists under strict safeguards and with extreme caution. It is not necessarily beneficial for someone to remember very traumatic events consciously, and doing so in fact can cause them to become quite psychotic. During rebirthing (also known as 'breath of life'), people with no formal training in psychology act as 'rebirthers'; they use breathing techniques to induce trance-like states in their subjects and expose emotional  issues and memories they claim are blocking the subjects' full potential.

During rebirthing sessions there is often a great deal of anguished crying, screaming, pounding of pillows or self to 'release the blocks'. People with asthma can be at particular risk with rebirthing as they can develop powerful delusions that they do not need medication even as they turn blue from lack of oxygen!

Increasingly personal development courses are being subsidised indirectly by governments through allowing community houses and schools to be used as venues. The co-ordinators of these facilities are often not in a position to vet the people offering courses adequately, especially as many untrained course 'facilitators' are excellent con men and women. Teachers of such courses are often called  'leaders', 'trainers' or 'facilitators'.

A person with excellent training as a yoga teacher would be an ideal choice for leading a yoga course. However many people are now dabbling in areas they don't fully understand. They are running courses involving psychological techniques without any appropriate background or training. The first rule in running any personal development course should be for the leader to know their limitations and do no harm. Just because someone appears to be the kindest, most caring, loveliest person you -- the potential customer -- have ever met does not mean he or she can do no harm. Sadly, such people can and they do.

I am seeing more and more people who have attended personal development courses run by  naturopaths, yoga teachers, meditation teachers, GPs, dentists and physiotherapists, as well as people calling themselves masters or gurus. The attendees are in serious psychological crises directly due to the ignorant abuse of extremely powerful psychological techniques. Just as I am not appropriately qualified to run an aerobics class, an ex-PE teacher or a physiotherapist is not qualified to run a psychotherapy group.

Ursus:

--- Quote from: "Joey" ---Presently, 9 Hyde administrators (including me) and at least 20 Hyde or HAPA parents are graduates of this program and we all feel we experienced a personal transformation.
--- End quote ---

Does anyone have any idea when Joe underwent his Hoffman Process? Might it bear some relation, time-wise, to the evolution of the moniker "Joey?"

At any rate, here is something first posted by "Founding Father" two and a half months ago in another thread. At the time, I hadn't recognized the terminology yet. For starters, highlighted portion in red comes straight out of The Hoffman Process:

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Founder's Findings #18: U Po Roadblock No. 5
12/23/2008

5. You need to fully let go of your parents in order to run your own life.

I find very few parents today who have fully let go of their own parents; to the extent you haven't let go of your own parents, you are still a child, and a child cannot raise a child.

When you go to college, and particularly when you graduate, you have great opportunities to move beyond your parents and take the primary responsibility for your own life. The key is to find and accept challenges where success depends upon some unrealized potential within yourself. Regardless of the outcome, you will find that just your courage to bet upon your unknown self will give you the confidence to begin to move beyond your parents.

Don't let a misguided sense of loyalty to your parents deter you from fully letting go of them. Which will give your parents greater fulfillment, to have raised: 1. a loving child who remains dependent upon them in life, or, 2. an independent adult who becomes master of his/her own destiny? No matter what they may say, the former etches in their hearts their failure, and the latter, their success as parents.

As you experience life, you need to honestly express those thoughts and feelings to your parents that you felt unable to express as a child. But do so with no expectation of their responses. You were doing this to express and understand your deeper self, and to learn from their responses. You will then know how to improve on your own growing experience with your own children.

One of the most important and most difficult growth challenges is to identify the unproductive emotional dispositions (the negative love syndrome) that you developed in your childhood and then, share them with your parents in a letter, preferably that you would read to them. But again, expect nothing in their responses. You are doing this primarily for yourself and ultimately for your own children. But at the same time, you are at least giving your parents the opportunity to understand how deeply you and your life have been affected by these family dysfunctions. No matter how much it may hurt them, they love you, and you owe them the truth.

Our commitment to the truth measures the depth of our spirituality. If we can't be honest with our own parents, what does that say about the depth of love in our family of origin?  

- Joseph Gauld

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