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On a Sunday morning in downtown St. Louis, 34 men and women are milling around in a conference room without windows. They are beginning the 21st hour of an intense, four-day, 33-hour experience known as the Phoenix 2000 Basic Course.
The aim? Nothing less than transformation or, as the promotional literature puts it, a return to the "Natural Self."
The $395 course is pan of the growing self-improvement movement that traces it roots to the sensitivity training and self-awareness movement of the early 1970s.
Unlike the '70s movement, however, which promoted self-enlightenment for enlightenment's sake and tended to attract a counterculture clientele, the '90s versions are selling personal development as a path to professional success. And the career-minded are lapping it up.
About 1,000 people in St. Louis, from chief executives, entrepreneurs and civic leaders to truck drivers and postal office employees, have gone through the Phoenix Basic Course since it first was offered here eight years ago.
Dan Lauer, the creator of Water Babies; Sheila Stix, an urban planner; and Brian Clevinger, president and chief executive of Megan Health, give Phoenix glowing reviews.
Other happy graduates: Al Kerth, founder of the Eads Center and former spokesman for Civic Progress, and John Moten, vice president of public relations at Laclede Gas Co.
In May, 48 hotshots from the Young Entrepreneurs Organization -- at the urgmig of YEO's president, Lauer -- spent two days of an annual retreat in Kohler, Wis., taking a condensed version of the Phoenix course.
YEO member Steven Starr of Starrco Co. Inc., a Maryland Heights manufacturer of modular offices, was at the retreat and has done other programs like Phoenix.
"These sort of courses are very cathartic, very uplifting. You let go of a ton of stuff you're carrying around," said Staff, adding that the Phoenix course has the added benefit of a dynamic leader. "Martha is just incredibly awesome and powerful."
"Martha" is Martha Borst, a self-described "visionary" and "coach" with a degree in education from Simmons College in Boston, a daughter in college, an ex-husband and two decades of experience in a field loosely defined as personal development. The 55 year-old Californian founded Phoenix 2000 Inc. in 1995. The for-profit corporation has about $250,000 in annual sales.
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