Board strokes: Doing regression retraumatizes the nervous system unless there is a specific intention put into learning to regulate the nervous system once triggered. Clairvision "healing" retraumatizes people and it's destructive to ones mental health long term. This has been shown scientifically in the context of regression.
Clairvision is a cult. This isn't a debate by the way. Anyone defending clairvision is actually just in the cult still. It's normal for people in a cult to say it isn't a cult. That's classic cult behavior.
A few points about one's level of cult involvement
In all fairness there are probably some folks who get involved with clairvision and don't have the cult experience. If you just read the books and go to a course once a year then you're on the very outer periphery and it's probably not so culty as far as you're concerned. But those folks usually get roped into to coming to more and more courses and guilted into doing free labor and eventually the cult experience becomes evident.
Some folks are not in a financial position to attend a week long retreat especially if it involves international travel. Those folks can do the correspondence courses or knowledge tracks as they call them and read the books and probably not get the cult experience either.
Anyone who's been in clairvision for a while has heard the horror story's and seen the abuse. They have most likely also experienced the abuse, bullying and gaslighting. In addition if you're around it long enough you also become the abuser. When someone spends a lot of time in a community they become invested in the group or the organization. It's where their friend's are, often it's where the majority of their social interaction happens. Sometimes their income is also tied into the community and in clairvision the IST practitioner's make their income doing sessions. These are just a few of the reasons a cult member will insist their group isn't one.
The healing techniques that retraumatize the nervous system
The inner space techniques or IST as they call it (Previously know as ISIS or inner space interactive sourcing) all stem from the regression practice they teach. The regression is done from the experience of the third eye. So you often learn their particular third eye meditation before you do the healing stuff. The "inner space" is basically just a rebranding of a third eye type of experience.
The healing as they call it is really just a version of the regression therapy that was trending in the 80s and 90s. There was a whole wave or regression healing techniques in the new age and spiritual movements at the time. Clairvision sort of developed their own version of this. They claim that it is all about transformation. Basically it's a way to induce a cathartic experience. Lot's of other techniques do this as well, think rebirthing or holotropic breath work.
To do an IST session they get to lay down and go into a third eye meditation. The facilitator sits next to you and scans your energy then picks a spot on your torso to press. They hold their hand there for a time and eventually you start feeling different sensations in that area. Then the facilitator begins asking you questions about the feeling in the spot. Sometimes you begin to have various emotions come up and other times you can flash back to a memory that's not really part of your conscious set of memories anymore. Often these repressed memories are associated with difficult feelings or emotions and can sometimes cause deep feelings to bubble up in a session. Someone might re experience being yelled at by a parent at young age, or humiliated at school as a child. This is when you can have a cathartic release. You might get a bunch of grief come up or some other intense feelings might begin to surface. Often people cry or scream or feel really restless and frustrated. When the crying stops sometimes it feels like a big emotional release.
This moment of release feels good at the time. But it's a trap. It's not good for you. There have been studies in the field of neuroscience that now show that revisiting past trauma in some kind of regression basically just retraumatizes you. Your nervous system has moved on. It's in the past. But when you relive the experience in a session like this your brain doesn't differentiate between the real life experience and the experience within the regression session. They are both just as real as each other to the brain. So each time you regress to a traumatic episode you're re-imprinting that trauma on your nervous system again and again and again.
There are some other more well developed techniques that know how to mitigate this as well though. For example in EMDR they revisit trauma but they also walk you through a process of building a safe place in your mind. It's a way to regulate your nervous system. So you touch on the trauma and then you regulate your nervous system. In EMDR the healing isn't from revisiting the memory, the healing is learning how to regulate your nervous system when you get triggered.
Clairvision does not teach any methods to regulate your nervous system. They don't address it at all. They don't teach you how to self sooth or any other process for self regulation. They have this attitude that you should just decide to snap out off it. This is where a lot of the abusive behavior comes from. When anyone's upset they just tell them to stop reacting. There's no nurturing, no care, no support. They think they can just bully you into not being upset anymore.
So in their IST sessions they know how to open a can of worms, but they don't really know how to address it or resolve it and close the wound up again. So you end with all these people that are stuck in a state of hypervigilance and they are all reverbing off each other.
FYI to the marketing team who comes here to point out how great it's been for them...
Just a note for the existing cult members who come to defend the school. The logic is always the same. "Well it doesn't seem like a cult to me". This is like saying "I went to Epstein island and nothing bad happened to me. I actually had a nice time by the pool and enjoyed the buffet". Well just because it didn't happen to you doesn't mean it's a safe place. The same logic applied to a murderer would sound like, well he didn't murder me so he can't be a murderer. You're still a murderer if you only k1ll one person. You don't have k1ll every person you meet to qualify for the title. You do it once and the name sticks.
A note about qualifications
I've seen people get sent off to be an IST practitioner after doing classes for as little as 18 months and one time I think it was as short as a year. That's one class a week by the way. Compare that to say becoming a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT).
(AI Summery) Becoming a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) requires earning a master’s or doctoral degree in marriage and family therapy or a closely related field, such as clinical mental health counseling or social work, from a program accredited by COAMFTE or meeting specific state curriculum requirements.
(AI Summery) Following graduation, candidates must complete 1,000 to 4,000 supervised clinical hours (typically spanning 2–5 years) under qualified supervision, with specific requirements for relational or conjoint therapy hours in many jurisdictions. Finally, applicants must pass the MFT National Examination administered by the Association of Marital & Family Therapy Regulatory Boards (AMFTRB) and submit an application to their state’s licensing board, which may include additional jurisprudence exams and background checks.
So to become an LMFT you graduate → register as an associate → work under supervision in a group practice (or agency) → complete your hours → pass the exam → get your LMFT → then open your own practice.
In clairvision you basically have to pass a vibe test. If they like ya, fine off ya go. Start a practice as a healer and charge something like $150 to $230 per hour for sessions. No insurance, no qualification, no test and you never even had to read a book! Well not a book about therapy at least.
I've been in IST courses where everyone's learning how to facilitate the process and how to follow the process and a woman has a memory of a SA come up. Imagine doing a healing session with some random stranger who has absolutely NO IDEA what they are doing and all of a sudden you're regressing to something so traumatic. This is unethical and irresponsible. And dangerous for one's mental stability. Then after this they expect you to sit up, turn around and facilitate a session for your previous facilitator? Someone questioned this once and the response was that it builds inner strength. Okay...
Teaching people to facilitate these sessions should really involve some type of theoretical understanding. But in clairvision they just put two beginners together and hope for the best. They give you some guidance and some hints. But all in all it's off you go and best of luck. Oh, also here's your $1600 invoice and the toilet cleaning roster we added you to!
The interesting thing about this whole debacle is that once you do a few sessions you suddenly begin to feel like an emotional mess. So then you think you need even more sessions. It's a slippery slope. I'm not sure if that was planned but it's quite convenient when an organization stands to make good money off you the more you feel like an emotional mess. Especially when the thing they say will help you is the very thing digging you deeper into the hole.
The cover story for this goes something like this. You show up with all this repressed trauma and you're kind of fcked up but you manage to hide all that from the world with this convenient mask you wear to hide all the messy stuff beneath. Once you start doing "the work" the mask falls away and the real you, the messed up you begins to show itself. Now you're real, you're raw. Feeling exposed and vulnerable but at least you're genuine right? Now you have dropped the mask and accepted you're fallen nature you're ready to heal yourself and do the transformational work. Then you start doing session after session after session. You keep finding new traumas, new memories, new wounds to heal. Then you realize you've been opening all these old wounds but none of them are actually closing up. Don't worry, you're sure to have break through soon. You've been working so hard. If it's not working maybe you need to meditate for two full hours in the morning instead of just the one?
People who follow this process for any significant amount time end up in a state of hypervigilance that burns them out one way or another. They also begin to identify with the traumas more and more. Some folks end up with this list of current life and past life traumas that they constantly refer back to and view the world through. When you get too focused on the pain and the past you eventually forget how to actually just live your life and be present in the moment.
I've been in social situations where there's a person who's been doing clairvision for so long that they forget that talking about all this trauma from the past isn't actually normal and they start sharing stuff they are currently focused on with a non clairvision person and they just sound like an absolute nut case. It's often really hard for someone in clairvision to relate to "muggles" as they call them. There's all this language that they get so used to using that sounding like a normal person get's kind of difficult. That's when they start retracting themselves from the outside world and just connecting with fellow members. There's even a term for that! Fellowship! haha. Fellowship is like a good vibe that members emit. They can sense it in each other as well. Normal people don't emit this vibe so they can't be trusted or related to properly. But it's also measured on a scale as well, some people emit more of this good vibe and others less. Woe to he who scores low. You wont have any friends.
Well I guess I'm rambling a bit now. There's always more but I guess that's for another post.
I hope this post is helpful to anyone considering doing one of these IST 101 courses or doing sessions with a practitioner. I spent quite a bit of time writing this but I'm sure someone will accuse me of being a bot! Beep boop ;-)
