Lifespring
| For-profit, private company | |
| Industry | Self-help |
| Founded | 1974 |
| Founder | John Hanley Sr. |
| Defunct | Mid-1990s |
| Headquarters | United States |
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Key people
|
John Hanley Sr. Charles Ingrasci |
Lifespring, founded in 1974, was a private, for-profit, New Age-human potential training company. Lifespring claims more than 400,000 people participated in its trainings.
The company, which promoted itself through books and word-of-mouth advertising, was the subject of investigative reports by the media, and was criticized by a few former staff members and participants. At least 30 lawsuits sought to hold Lifespring responsible for participants' deaths or their mental damages. The company paid to settle some of the suits before trial and in other cases lost jury decisions.
John Hanley Sr., Robert White, Randy Revell, and Charlene Afremow founded Lifespring in 1974. As of October 1987, Hanley owned 92.7 percent of the company. Prior to Lifespring, Hanley worked for the company Holiday Magic. He and the other founders also worked for Mind Dynamics with Werner Erhard, the founder of est, which became the basis for Landmark Education.
Lifespring concentrated on how people experience each other, whereas est dealt with changing the way people experience themselves. However, there were many similarities between the two.
The former Director for Corporate Affairs of Lifespring, Charles "Raz" Ingrasci, also worked with Erhard, promoting an est mission to the USSR and the Hunger Project. Ingrasci is now President of the Hoffman Institute which offers programs such as the Hoffman Quadrinity Process which some regard as similar to Lifespring.
Though Hanley denied that Lifespring was a duplicate of est, in their 1992 book Perspectives on the New Age James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton describe the similarities as "striking." They note that both Lifespring and est used "authoritarian trainers who enforce numerous rules", require applause after participants "share" in front of the group, and deemphasize reason in favor of "feeling and action". 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.
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