re: #123 Barefoot Grin

In college a friend of mine convinced me to go to some frontage-road Holiday Inn for a presentation on EST. The big selling point was that the speaker was the actor Raul Julia. We smoked a little before we went in, which turned out to be a good thing, because they closed the doors to the conference room and manned them and situated people at the end of each aisle to discourage getting up and leaving. I got so freaked out by the vibe that I left my friend (tried to convince him to go), brushed past the guides, and bolted the room. Fortunately, my friend came out about 15 minutes later. It was fucking spooky. I could never watch a Raul Julia movie again without remembering that experience and getting creeped out.

One thing I recall hearing about EST was that the sessions were deliberately designed to make the attendees uncomfortable (no bathroom breaks, frex) - for whatever reason. Something to do with getting them to concentrate, or whatever…

I do recall also that every ESTy I ever met seemed to act like an obnoxious asshole on purpose: til I realized that EST was just a way to provide said obnoxious assholes with a formalized psychobabble excuse for their obnoxious assholery: no wonder they cleaned up back in the day.