“you were not allowed to go to the bathroom save for scheduled bathroom breaks, and if you tried to get up and go to the bathroom outside of these breaks, you would receive a stern lecture about how you were breaking your commitment by monitors places at the back of the room next to the doors.”

I am confused, how would adults not be allowed to do anything? If the program was set up to train people to live as their word - to have a new relationships to their promises in life, and people chose to be in the est training and keep the promises of the course, what was so out of line to interact with people who were not keeping a promise that THEY chose to make? I have lots of friends who did the est training and all of them went to the bathroom, the doors were not locked and they went. AND throughout the course they were interacted with about their integrity, their promises as that was what est was about. If any adults were not allowing you to do something as is misrepresented here in this blog, that would have to be called forcible confinement and it it would have been appropriate to contact law enforcement and of course that never happened because what you described is not an accurate take on it.

Yes est was dramatic ad theatrical and over the top, a 70’s thing i guess, but I will also guess that that is what attracted you and others to it - because you heard it approached things a little different. No?