Daydreamer-

I am sorry to hear about your loss and wish you many blessings in the next chapter of your life. Regardless of where you find it, I hope you find the community you are wanting.

Best wishes,
Siofra

Well, at this point I am intending to attend the HAI Formal in February. It sounds like a great time, and I want the opportunity to dress up like mad. Of course, there are some people still involved with the HAI community that I do enjoy, so hopefully I'll see them.

Quote
siofra
Daydreamer-

I am sorry to hear about your loss and wish you many blessings in the next chapter of your life. Regardless of where you find it, I hope you find the community you are wanting.

Best wishes,
Siofra

I'm not really here to criticize HAI overall or the people that go there as I have never been to a workshop or to Harbin although that would not be that difficult as I live fairly close in California. And the nudity wouldn't probably bother me that much really. The polyamory would bother me for mostly because of the potential for STDs. (Do people here know for instance, that you can get the HPV even if you wear a condom. A lot of people don't know this. They think they can go around having sex with a condom and they are just fine and this will protect them from everything. And it is known that HPVs are the precursors to cervical cancer. And you can have an HPV without even knowing it.)

But here is my major problem with HAI, based on my experience with a man I was dating until recently for about seven months (intimately involved for five). I met him outside of HAI and wasn't really aware of what HAI was about until him, so I went into this relationship without any preconceived notions about it. I was impressed with the real heartfulness of this man.

My issue is this. In the initial stages of dating he went to a HAI workshop that he had aparently paid for and prepared for in advance of meeting me. That didn't seem strange to me. I wanted to know more about what went on at the workshop after he came back from it.

When pressed he would not tell me any details about what goes on in the workshops. My inward response to this was "Well if they are teaching you intimacy, it sure isn't working very well." I tried to bring this up with him in a gentle way and he was still resistant saying that he had to sign a nondisclosure agreement and couldn't reveal anything.

Now if this stuff is supposed to help in people's relationships then shouldn't they be encouraging people to share these skills and experiences. I wasn't asking for names or personal identifiers (because I do understand the therapeutic process has to rely on confidentiality), just "Hey, what did you learn in school today sweetie?" kind of things. But I felt totally closed out of the experience. I probably should have had a red flag experience at this point, but because we were so new to one another and not yet sexually involved I figured he would be more forthcoming later.

Well then we got involved and I started asking him and only under that pressure he tells me only a very little of some lower level workshops. I kind of get the strange feeling that people might have sex in front of one another at the higher levels, although he is not explicit. He was quick to point out that he observed and never participated in whatever it was that happened. Given what I am reading here in this site it is a bit scary. He and I had battles over condoms. I insisted and he didn't want to. We got STD tested before sex, but gosh how many women have given in to this guy on this issue? As a friend paraphrased the Vegas saying, when I told this story to him, "What happens in HAI gets to come home with you."

Then at one point after I am involved he wants me to have a threesome with him and another woman. He even tried to pass it off as my idea initially.

He completely misconstrued something I had said when we were first dating. I had been really hurt by my ex's extramaritial affairs and what I said that was if we ever got into a long-term relationship and he ever felt tempted to stray that he come to me first and we would try to work it out.

(What I meant was couples counseling. I emphasized communication and intimacy and not lying to one another about our attractions to others. Not having terrible secrets that are plaguing us.) During this same discussion he asked me if I had ever been attracted to women and I said yes. I don't know he made the leap to I am attracted to women and thus want to bring one into my relationship. I have lots of fantasies I would never want to act on in real life.

I was stunned that he wanted to do this so early in the relationship. This is the sort of thing you might worry about later when things are not as hot and passionate as the beginning. That he was bringing it up so soon was a huge huge red flag for me.

I said no, and he told me that he thought it would deepen the intimacy. I don't know where he got this idea, but my gut was saying this would not work for me, especially at this point in the relationship.

Then I thought that I had better find out what he had in mind so I wanted to know more. Sure enough he was wanting to post something up at a HAI bulletin board to find a third party for a partner. I said no and left this man not long after.

I just went with my gut and left this guy because he didn't invite me into this part of his life and he didn't care to share with me what went on. And he wanted to bring a third party into our relationship so soon without having me go through the workshops. You may think this is strange for me to think the workshops would be so important, but if you are dealing with something that originates from a source you want to get a general idea of what you are dealing with. I did consider it briefly. I figured that possibly it would be better to have an open polyamorous relationship than to have a partner sneaking around and lying to me. But truthfully better to have neither of the above. (I know males are capable of fidelity. My brother and father are definitely faithful men.)

Believe me, unbeknownst to this man I was seeing, I did a lot of research on polyamorous relationships by visiting boards and seeing how people were handling these kinds of relationships and most were saying you had to have a pretty strong primary relationship to introduce a third party into it and I saw many many posts about how a polyamorous relationship was disturbed by bring a FOURTH party into it. Well hello! Duh! Who has time for that. I saw where this relationship was going and left. He had no idea what he was doing; he was living in some fantasy about what it would be like; clearly they weren't telling him the truth about polyamory, if they were really talking about it at all.

There just wasn't enough trust there yet and the fact that he wanted to rush me past these barriers so quickly raised another red flag. Where's the fire? Why the rush? Where are we going with this primary relationship first? I'm into stages. Build trust, build intimacy, build more trust, build more intimacy. Not Hey, everyone take their clothes off and touch one another and say wow this feels good and that's intimacy. Any good therapist would tell you that is taking your clothes off. Maybe it is visual intimacy. I saw your thing and you saw mine. We did that as children. Did it make us better communicators?

Well he came back to me and said that it really wasn't all that important to him. I believed him. And took him back. Well the coup de grace is that he decided to go to a workshop at Harbin that turned out to be a Tantric workshop (unbeknownst to him at the outset, which makes me really wonder) and he said that on the way back he wished I had been his partner instead of the person they paired him with. Only he and HAI know what he did with her. After all he is sworn to secrecy.

I said to him, "Did it never occur to you to invite me to this workshop? Your hindsight appears to be operating very well, but your intuition and understanding about relationships are not." I ended it then and there. Forever. There is no way on this earth this man will ever come back into my life.

All I can say is people beware.

One thing I know about my ex boyfriend's differences in our families. I grew up in a loving family where my parents had a deep intimate connection between one another that was first and foremost over their relationship with us. So I saw intimacy in action, both kissing and hugging and endearments. They worked out their disagreements outside of our hearing and so I wasn't subjected to my parents fighting. I did see anger and negotiation however. Overall I can say it was a positive experience and I am grateful. Not perfect, but 85% there.

I feel I have a pretty good radar for intimacy skills and I know I want this from a relationship. Well this guy clearly didn't ultimately have good intimacy skills because he didn't know how to trust and to engender trust. I think I was deceived initially because these kinds of workshops can teach people how to MIMIC the milieu of trust and intimacy without really creating the real support for that to grow. And to test it in a myriad of ways so that you really know that this is what you are learning.

The attendees learn some gestures, they learn some techniques, they practice listening and get warm and fuzzy and apparently naked. But do they really get down into deep work on buried pain?

So while I feel he may have learned some skills in terms of appearing to relate better to people (from a more heart-felt place) is it helping him to develop intimate relationships? No. I would say that HAI actually helped to sabotage our relationship if for no other reason that he was sworn to secrecy about a situation that was potentially highly sexually charged. Yeah, yeah there is all the spin about removing the sex from nudity, but if there was nothing to feel guilty about then why did he hide so much?

I would caution anyone who is dating someone in HAI not to get involved with that person until you really see how it is influencing their life and if it plays an ongoing role in their life and if they are overly dependent upon it for their friendships (my boyfriend found most of his friends there). And if they cannot break the contract to tell you what they do in these workshops run away.

I also want to add that my take on him is that he had been intensely theraputized, which is a state (as a friend--a psychologist--describes to me) where a person can be convinced that they have worked through all their pain and "baggage", without having done so. They'll learn the lingo and know everything about an area of psychology and can seem impressive at first in the "inner" work they have done. But they haven't done anything.

Sometimes these groups foster intense experiences and these can charge people so that they can feel like they have made real progress in their ways of relating to others. It may be a good starting point but you really have to get down and do the dirty work at some point, hopefully with a partner. I'm all for establishing heart connections with people, but do people have to have sex at the workshops and take off their clothes? Maybe it works because it shocks people out of habits, but do we really need that.

I have a meditation practice with other people and I feel the connection to these people and they don't dominate my life. I don't feel I have to be naked with them to be authentic.

My thinking is that if things don't work out between him and some woman he can go running back to HAI and have everyone pat him on the back and say what a wonderful guy you are and thus he avoids doing the real work that he has to do (perhaps in some kind of therapeutic process), but ideally with another person who he feels connected to.

I sense the workshops probably have the potential to help people who are intensely motivated to make a life change make that change if they are doing other things besides HAI. I also feel it could put some life back into a long-term relationship that has lost its fizzle where both partners want to regenerate that.

But would I solely rely on HAI as my method of building better communication and intimacy especially if I had deep-seated issues from childhood that were interfering? Absolutely not, because you aren't really going to be getting the one on one care from someone on an ongoing basis either with a partner or a therapist. I'd go for the one-on-one therapeutic relationship any day because I have seen it work. Having seen the happiness in my parents long-term (60+) year relationship I am going for that.

I want to give you an example of something I found online at HAI's web site. This written by Chip August, a facilitator at HAI. Stan Dale is the founder of HAI. Not sure that this was said in private or in public, but keep in mind this is the teacher speaking:

One day, when I was expressing my pain and upset about my Dad, for the umpteenth time, Stan Dale asked me “When are you going to let your Dad off the hook? You’re right, he was a lousy Dad and didn’t give you what you wanted and needed. So when are you going stop blaming him and get on with your life?” (You know, I have no idea what Stan actually asked me, but this is what I remember hearing.) I was furious. Didn’t he understand my pain and suffering? Was I supposed to condone my father’s brutality? Just write it off?

In Landmark (which I am not a member of they would call the guy's complaint about his dad a racket) or at least this is my understanding. I dated a Landmark fellow and heard more lingo than I care to ever hear again. Breakthrough, racket (nice how they make people into criminals for being human)....at one point I even started writing down these words from our telephone conversation and I played this game of trying to guess which ones were Landmarkian and which ones weren't. It was annoying because he had bought the whole package hook, line and sinker.

Anyway, I read what Chip said and recalled my years in junior high. I had a good supportive home life, but school was not so good. On a daily basis I was being hit by bullies with their band instruments. I was too proud to let them see me cry and I didn't know how to fight back (as a girl) so I would take their abuse and only cry when I got into my house where it was safe. My mother wanted to go to the principal of the school, but I wouldn't let her; I was very stubborn on this, otherwise I know she would have done it. She may have anyway. I knew nothing would really happen to these kids and the abuse would escalate. This went on for months and every day I cried and my mom would hold me in her arms and comfort me and I probably went on and on about how they were so mean to me and so forth.

They stopped hitting me eventually when they didn't get the reaction they wanted. What was great from this experience is that I developed a strong inner core, that is not affected by how popular I am with others. I am really grateful for that experience. I would be the last person to convert to a cult, because peer pressure just wouldn't work on me. They would throw me out of Landmark for getting up and going to the bathroom. And I would take notes. Did it not ever occur to them that this violates freedom of the press? So what if my press is my one page newsletter to myself.

I attribute that to this experience and to my parents teaching of critical thinking and my mom who was a real source of comfort and stability for me through that period. Now did my mom ever say to me:

"When are you going to let your these kids off the hook? You’re right, they are lousy kids and aren’t giving you what you want and need. So when are you going stop blaming them and get on with your life?"

Kind of strange thinking that Mr. Stan Dale, originator of these love and intimacy workshops couldn't have found a different way of talking to this man, something that engendered well love and intimacy.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes you have to speak a truth in a harder way because someone is just not getting it. Okay, now go to this web site and listen to this radio interview recording in which Chip (the same guy who wrote the above) interviews Stan Dale.

[odeo.com]

I don't know if anyone else hears it, but these folks sound fake to me. Fake to the tune of $385.00 or something like that to a workshop. At that kind of price you can learn to fake sincerity. Now that is truly a racket. Maybe Stan Dale needs to be Landmarkized.

I went through several years of couple's counseling and it was never part of my therapy to hear my therapist get after me about going on about someone who was hurting me. In fact, we consciously worked on talking about these things and trying to develop ways to express what I was feeling if not to the perpetuator than to myself in my journal. This prevents what is called "stuffing" feelings and helps people to create real intimacy in their lives. In all this I learned about MBTI and different ways of perceiving reality. It was very helpful. I have above all a very clear vision of what I want from a relationship and HAI could never teach me what I already know.

I really do believe that this man I was seeing was really quite capable of getting to a better place in his life. I'm just not trying to work with him while he was in HAI because it would be too easy for him to use it the way an alcoholic uses drink. I could see that all these HAI workshops (to which he had been going to for about six years) were actually interfering with him keeping him away from the work he had to do on his past. He had a lot of pain around his Dad, who had often beat him mercilessly, and I often felt that he had never undone all this pain and that HAI was just making him bury it even deeper because there was all this pressure on being loving. I would say "anger first, love second" as the order of business. Otherwise you are just stuffing.

Well somewhere in all this he began to focus all the attention on what was wrong with me and what I had to do to come up to his level of awareness and intimacy and he condemned my meditation practice as not really working. He even at one point claimed to be more advanced than most women in terms of relationship and intimacy skills. Well, I knew this not to be true.

Sad that he is paying so much money for his friendships. (Same with the Landmark guy. He had no friends outside Landmark.) I do have friends outside of meditation. And I don't need to take off my clothes to get real with people.

I'll stick with meditation and my group therapy where we really do work on better communication with regular people we see every week. And I will date someone new soon and be optimistic that the next guy won't be a HAI-BYE-GUY who has had Stan the Garbage man further compact his garbage so that he has no idea that it is there doing damage.

As I was leaving I tried to tell him all this about how I think his work is going to have to be done outside the HAI community. (Look, if he has been going 6 plus years and paying all this money and it still hasn't gotten rid of all his pain then it ain't working.)

His response was, "You make it seem as if I am not perfect."

To which I said. "No one is." But we learn to embrace one another's imperfections as if they are our own. Because they are.

I have taken some time to read through your posts and I really want to reply to some of them specifically as an outsider who dated someone in HAI, but more as someone who is responding to many of the issues I have seen discussed and how I relate to them after having experienced the things this HAI man I dated said and did.

I would in no way say that he represents the typical HAI workshop attendee and so I can only say that my experience may have been unique. But I'll say right up front that I tend to agree with the critics.

And again, reiterating my not very well written post of before (so much grammar to correct, so little time), my issue was primarily that the non-disclosure agreement inherently interferes with anyone within HAI beginning a new relationship with anyone outside HAI, because it forces the outsider to trust the HAI attendee without having that crucial piece of intimacy.

This is especially so at the higher level workshops that are even more shrouded in secrecy. And my reading of these posts makes me certain that yes, people do have sex with one another in the workshops at the higher levels. If it didn't happen the answer would have been an unequivocal "no, that doesn't happen here, if you want that, go elsewhere).

On the other hand, there could be the aspect of titillation to entice people into taking the workshops, while perhaps there isn't really all that much sex at all, perhaps a lot of people watching others have sex.

I suspect, and DayDreamer and others have confirmed this, that Love and Intimacy and even Sexuality (which embraces much more than sex) may be just footnotes to the motives of some, which is sex. So titillation could play a major role in getting men and women to sign up.

But back to secrecy and its various forms.

I think that this is hugely problematic for a new sexual relationship where one person has both their feet and their minds and hearts ensconced within HAI and the other person is outside and unable to see in. The outsider can only imagine what goes on. There then seems to be only a few choices from there, as the insider appears at first glance to be in the powerfully superior position (I have the secret that you want knowledge of). Esoteric religions use this approach. More secrecy, the more people want to join to see what is so juicy. It does have its appeal and I cannot help but feel enticed.

And yet, I'm not really. If I had never dated someone who has been at HAI for quite some time, I would do it, but I suspect that I would meet a lot of types that plague HAI, the prowlers on the hunt for sex and I don't like the fact that people can repeat workshops and thus know the script and thus "get it right" and trick you into something more compromising than what you would want. In the outside world this would be on the par with a man perhaps driving you to his apartment on your first date without you knowing that you are going there and then finding yourself in the uncomfortable position of having to say no.

But back to the insider and outsider's choices. The insider invites the outsider into his world. From reading these posts I see some obvious problems if the outsider gets something he or she didn't bargain for (e.g., his or her partner's desire to have a polyamorous relationship). This can have a lot of coercion built in, just because of the powers of numbers and the milieu this is taking place in. "Honey, if you don't do this with me, then I am going to go ahead and do it anyway." Without the support of family and outside friends around the outsider and only the support of other insiders, the partner is left with the following choices: abandon the relationship or try to stick it out and hope that the partner comes around or participate and hope it wasn't as bad as all that. It still seems like coercion to me.

Of course this is not always what happens. The insider continues to exclude the outsider from participation and knowledge of what happens, thus fostering an atmosphere of secrecy and suspicion that it is unlikely a new relationship would survive. One might say that perhaps I am insecure within myself for not engendering trust and seeing the heart of this other person, but really why would I want to bother with someone who is so secretive? Is there something shameful in this HAI work that my partner has to hide. If it is not shameful, why hide it.

And then there is that nagging question: If he (or she) is secretive in this area of his/her life might he/she not be secretive in other areas as well.

Of course, some outsiders get invited in and have no qualms with what goes on. But I would bet that in most cases, budding relationships with outsiders are wrecked repeatedly. Then the insider begins to feel that only relationships with insiders will work, thinking that the outsider is not mature enough or developed enough to handle the intimacy, love and sexuality that is on the inside. That was the diagnosis that was thrown my way. In fact I felt quite differently. But I am very much aware of my mental health state and that it is not unhealthy and I did notice in a couple of posts that these groups can and do attract mentally unhealthy people. It would make sense to. After all, the solicitation is made to areas of people's lives that are often rife with problems: Love, Intimacy and Sexuality.

Secrecy for me is the biggest issue, though I suppose my partner was more flawed in that aspect (that is he was incapable of intimacy and thus was secretive) than some folks may be. I can well imagine a recent attendee inviting a date into the workshops because he or she wants to share the experience with her or her. And things could go well for both of them. I don't wish to cast a value judgment on polyamory, even though I feel that the overt presence of it in HAI was incentive for my partner to try to push that choice off on me. Had we merely been dating and this was not available to him he may have been content to explore it in fantasy only. But because it was within reach....

He really did pressure me and when I was resistant he tried to cast it off on me as my idea in the first place. Frankly I would not be so stupid as to introduce a third unknown person into my relationship anymore than I would have casual sex without a condom, for the reasons I have mentioned above and the following. When you have sex with that unknown you're having sex with everyone they are having sex with. Given the descriptions of things it's not quite at the level of the bathhouses were in the 80s, but I suspect it could get there. And I have heard that there is an increase in AIDs in people in their 50s and 60s who coming out of divorces are beginning to date/swing.

Again secrecy. There is a kind of secrecy I enjoy in a partner and that is the unveiling of his genitalia at a romantic moment. It may not be the moment that we are going to first have intercourse. Maybe it is when we are cuddling. I really like the beauty of seeing my lover's penis for the first time. And while I know I don't own it, I do like the idea that he is for my eyes only. There is a kind of beauty in that, much as there is a beauty in not telling others that you are seeing someone and escaping off to your apartment for sex while everyone is away or not revealing a pregnancy right after conception, but having it be you and your partner's secret.

There is something really wonderful about secrets between couples. Maybe I am a romantic, but I like the idea of not everyone knowing what my genitals look like and it isn't from any shame at all, but rather the idea of having a secret flower that is my own. Also, I went through the whole genital inspection phase (speculums, mirrors and flashlights) back in the sixties/seventies with groups of women (all of us straight but reading Betty Dodson etc) and L1 is probably not going to make a terrible impression on me. But I agree it might help people feel less ashamed of themselves and to realize the variety of genitalia out there.

Siofra / Nan,

I have been reading this thread from the beginning and I believe you have been honest, objective, and honorable. I have a personal interest in HAI and would like to converse with you away from this forum about HAI and if it can help me with some issues. We should both be able to do personal messages, I think. Would you be willing to email me?

Sincerely, Sametanner

Seeking a path of self-development I have booked on an HAI level 1 weekend. However for-armed is for-warned. Please can someone post a spoiler (here or as a private message) as to what goes on so that I can be well prepared. I'm not bothered about knowing in advance what is likely to happen. I suspect the activities will follow a script. I have been warned that the Saturday afternoon session is 'clothing optional.' I think I might decline that. I will also take notes and upload a resume here. Many thanks.

Landmark is connected to HAI and MKP !!!!!

Re: Posting on "Challenge day" for school kids ...

Apparently there is a direct connection between the Human Awareness Institute (HAI), the Mankind Project (MKP) and Landmark (EST). AND THEY'RE NOW TARGETING SCHOOL KIDS.

[Human Awareness Institute and Challenge Day] share many common principles, beliefs and goals. Challenge Day requests that this 'connection' not be spoken of outside the HAI community due to sensitivity about programs for schools being associated with workshops on love, intimacy and sexuality" (Editor: HAI Community Journal (HCJ), Nov/Dec 2002).

Jeff Parrett, a current member of the Challenge Day Board of Directors, continues to be open about his association with HAI association and another mass marathon training organization called the "Mankind Project." (MKP)

According to Parrett, "Challenge Day is a one-day experiential workshop designed to help our youth connect with themselves and one another in a deep way. Similar to HAI workshops, the exercises in Challenge Day are done either in dyads, small groups or with the whole group. Each exercise builds on the next. THE DAY IS CAREFULLY SCRIPTED, (my CAPS) to take the participants either deeper inside themselves, or lighten the mood to prevent things from getting too intense, too quickly." (HAI Community Journal.)

I have read with much interest all the posts here about HAI. It is truly enlightening as a member of the HAI 'inner circle" to read the experiences, perceptions, concerns and comments posted in good faith on this Forum. The thing that struck me the most was the lack of clarity that has been communicated about HAI, HAI's workshops and HAI's beliefs. In the interest of shedding some light on certain questions I offer my perspective and, I hope, some useful information:

HAI offers clothing-optional workshops in a style that is not available anywhere else in the world as far as we know. There is nudity however it is not required. The nudity provides a possible opportunity for growth which is explained in much more detail at the workshop (I'm not going into detail here in the interest of brevity.) If this style of workshop is not appealing to you or not your "cup of tea" there are many other relationship/sexuality workshops that don't offer this option and I would encourage you to explore them. HAI is unique in this aspect. It is definitely not for everyone. It's not even for most people or many people. Basically a few thousand people a year, around the world, attend and either like or not.

Regarding coercion, at no point are any of the interns or assistants helping at the workshop told to stop anyone from leaving for any reason. Their instructions are to help the participant pack up and get their car and to make two requests of the person leaving: Will that person speak with a facilitator prior to leaving and would they like their name left on or removed from the mailing list? No other request is made. A facilitator is assigned to call each person who leaves to make sure they are alright. If a VM is left and not returned then that is the last contact from HAI unless the person chose to remain on the mailing list.

Subtle agenda? Hell yes. Not even so subtle. HAI has a point of view. The point of view is that human beings are naturally sexual and that we would have a healthier and safer society if we took the shame, embarrassment and humiliation out of sex. HAI is sex-positive. That means that HAI accepts all types of sexual expression except those which exploit or violate another person. There are not many places on the planet that aspire to this level of sexual acceptance. As a result there are people who are members of "fringe" groups, like polyamory or BDSM, who have found an accepting place to sing the praises of their relationship/s of choice. Does that mean HAI promote polyamory? Not at all. Just ask any facilitator their opinion about that topic and I think you will find that while they accept the lifestyle they do not necessarily embrace it or even recommend it. Do the polyamorists sometimes sound like the loudest voice in the hypothetical room? Yes. It's an illusion.

HAI has 7 levels of workshops with a few couples workshops as well. As no time, in any of the levels, is any instruction given to have sex, have oral sex, or to have intercourse. There is, at least on one occasion, the instruction not to have sex however.

There are no exercises where condoms are handed out prior to the exercise. There are no excercises where condoms are passed out at all.

The workshops build on the previous one/s and get increasing more challenging the higher you go. Challenging means that participants are given the opportunity to take greater risks. When those risks seem greater than the potential reward, a participant usually stops moving to the next higher level.

So what about the secrecy? Basically if you can't accept the need for confidentially to ensure the safety of the workshop participants then HAI is not for you. That's OK. There are lots of other sex workshops in the world. Participants need to know that what they say and do at the workshops is confidential. Otherwise they will not be able to take the risks they take or express themselves as freely as they do. HAI's trade-offs are that it seems "cultish," the fantasy of what happens far exceeds the reality and a certain number of people won't attend because they won't take the risk of not knowing exactly what will happen. That's OK. I'm sure we lose a certain number of people who would otherwise attend because we ask for an agreement not to partake in recreational drugs or alcohol all weekend either. Oh well.

Finally, the whole conversation about HAI and money needs to be addressed. HAI is a for-profit, family-owned business. Everyone who works for HAI does so for a fee or salary that is under market for their skills and talents. No one is rich. No one has a retirement plan. Almost everyone works second jobs. This is not the typical "cult of the workshop leader" that one imagines when they think of mind-controlling, hypnotizing gurus effortlessly emptying their followers' bank accounts of life savings. Wealthy, they ain't.

I hope I've shed a light on a few of the concerns expressed here. Mostly I agree that HAI isn't for everyone. Some fall in love with the work right away. For others it is an acquired taste. Others hear about the nudity and would never even consider attending a workshop. My sister came once, never took a single piece of clothing off and never came back. It wasn't for her. Some people adopt HAI as their chosen "family." That is not my choice. I have a family that I love very much and I'm not replacing them with HAI. HAI is a community of people that share a common experience. That's it. Different strokes.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this post. Namaste.

Quote
S_Byers666
Landmark is connected to HAI and MKP !!!!!
Dear S_Byers666:

I speak with intimate knowledge of the relationships that HAI has with other organizations and overlapping participation. There is absolutely no economic, social, commercial or relational connection between HAI and Landmark. I do not think more than 1 or 2 of the top people at HAI have ever done Landmark or EST.

And I've never even heard of MKP or anyone in authority at HAI ever talk about it.

There is a personal relationship between the founders of Challenge Days and many people who have also done HAI. It is mostly a mutual respect for the quality of work that each organization is doing with their workshops and their audience. For obvious reasons Challenge Days can never openly promote HAI. That would be easily misinterpreted and twisted and ruin the reputation of both organizations.

Having trained to be a facilitator for both organizations I can say with confidence that the only similarity and overlap is in the attitudes of tolerance and understanding. The rest is unique to each workshop and its audience.

If the fact that there is a mutual admiration between the organizations concerns you then I would stay away from both of them. This suspicion would probably get in the way of you receiving maximum benefit from your workshop experience. Good luck!

Re: Posting on "Challenge day" for school kids ...

Apparently there is a direct connection between the Human Awareness Institute (HAI), the Mankind Project (MKP) and Landmark (EST). AND THEY'RE NOW TARGETING SCHOOL KIDS.

[Human Awareness Institute and Challenge Day] share many common principles, beliefs and goals. Challenge Day requests that this 'connection' not be spoken of outside the HAI community due to sensitivity about programs for schools being associated with workshops on love, intimacy and sexuality" (Editor: HAI Community Journal (HCJ), Nov/Dec 2002).

Jeff Parrett, a current member of the Challenge Day Board of Directors, continues to be open about his association with HAI association and another mass marathon training organization called the "Mankind Project." (MKP)

According to Parrett, "Challenge Day is a one-day experiential workshop designed to help our youth connect with themselves and one another in a deep way. Similar to HAI workshops, the exercises in Challenge Day are done either in dyads, small groups or with the whole group. Each exercise builds on the next. THE DAY IS CAREFULLY SCRIPTED, (my CAPS) to take the participants either deeper inside themselves, or lighten the mood to prevent things from getting too intense, too quickly." (HAI Community Journal.)

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[i:05660578ae] Please make use of editing tools to set off parts you use from other posts. It makes your responses easier to read.

--Moderator[/color:05660578ae][/i:05660578ae]

Blueridgebaby –

I only attended levels 1 and 2, and I have no intention of going any further with the workshops. Level 1, I think I needed. But Level 2 slid in sneakily – while at the time, the exercises were uncomfortable but made sense, afterward they did not. I needed a lot of time to process what had occurred, and once I did, I realized that I’d never feel completely safe at a workshop again. The coercion at a workshop is often subtle, but it IS there. We are told that our “choice” is always to be celebrated, but there is gentle encouragement to make the RIGHT choice – which is to do whatever the facilitator had suggested in the first place.

The workshops are supposed to be about Love, Intimacy and Sexuality. However, in many ways it seems to me that the first two are skipped over in some respects, or only covered in order to get to the sexuality portion. To me, it seems as if everything is geared toward some form of sexual expression and if that means using love and intimacy to get there, so be it.

I understand that HAI has an agenda. Everyone does, whether it is admitted or not. The problem that I have with HAI’s agenda is that HAI’s mission statement says one thing, but the actions and atmosphere in general say quite another. I started out in HAI hoping to feel more confident in my own skin, and to learn how to establish healthy boundaries. But attending workshops and parties where I’m encouraged to be nude in front of strangers, touch those strangers and allow them to touch me, talk about sexual hang-ups with people I won’t actually be having sex with, all those things seem pointless. After all, naked touching and talking about sexual hang-ups are things I should be doing with my chosen partner, not a random exercise partner at a workshop. It just seems to me that by blurring the lines of propriety (for lack of a better term), HAI also wants us to blur the lines of personal boundary. And I can’t subject myself to that voluntarily. I won’t do it.