What former participants describe — overview ↑ Top
Reviews of ISTA workshops published in mainstream journalism, podcasts, and parliamentary testimony share a recognisable shape. Participants describe entering ISTA looking for personal growth, sexual healing, or spiritual community; finding an intense, group-bonding environment that felt powerful in the moment; experiencing or witnessing things during the workshop that they later struggled to reconcile with their own values around consent and bodily autonomy; and spending months or years afterward processing what happened — often in private at first, sometimes finding language for it only after encountering other survivors’ accounts.
The sections below summarise these stages using only voices and accounts that have been published on the record. Direct links to the underlying podcasts, articles, and videos are throughout so you can hear the words from the participants themselves.
Before the workshop — how people describe arriving ↑ Top
Across the published accounts, participants describe being drawn in by the framing of ISTA’s “Spiritual Sexual Shamanic” (SSS) workshops as transformative healing, often via:
- Personal recommendation from a trusted friend, partner, or therapist already in the network.
- Workshop language emphasising consent, choice, and empowerment.
- A graduated commitment structure — introductory events first, then a multi-day Level 1, then Level 2, etc.
- A sense that this workshop was different from anything they’d tried before, and that “ordinary” objections wouldn’t apply.
Marketing language and recruitment dynamics are discussed in detail on the A Little Bit Culty ISTA two-part interview (April 2026) with Cara Cordoni and an anonymous participant (“Lina”), and in the Becky Garrison OnlySky investigation.
During the workshop — what people report ↑ Top
From the on-record accounts, the patterns described inside ISTA workshops include:
- Long days, short nights. The Israeli Center for Victims of Cults (ICCV) describes sleep deprivation as part of the “process,” reducing participants’ capacity to assess what is being asked of them.
- Reframed consent. Multiple accounts describe being told that a “no” reflects personal blockages to work through, rather than a boundary to be respected.
- Group sexual rituals presented as healing. Documented in The Cut / NYM, Haaretz, and OnlySky.
- “Sexual healing” framings involving senior facilitators. Reported in the RNZ investigation and in Becky Garrison’s reporting.
- Strong group cohesion language that frames doubt or hesitation as a sign of unhealed personal material rather than a reasonable response.
- Pressure to advance to the next workshop level while still in the emotionally elevated state induced by the current one.
None of these are universally reported by every participant; many people describe ISTA workshops as ordinary or positive. The point of cataloguing the patterns above is that they appear across independent accounts in different countries, by people who did not know each other, which is the threshold journalism uses to take a pattern seriously.
After the workshop — the months and years that follow ↑ Top
The aftermath is the part participants describe spending the longest with. The published accounts include:
- An initial sense of openness, breakthrough, or fresh connection that gradually shifts as the post-workshop community structures recede.
- Difficulty articulating what happened, especially around sexual content, to friends or therapists outside the network.
- Encountering other people’s critical accounts — sometimes years later — and only then having language for one’s own experience.
- Feelings of shame, self-blame (“I consented at the time”), and reluctance to speak up given the social cost within the community.
The IndoctriNation podcast interview with Cara Cordoni (“Cult Hopping Chronicles pt. 2”) goes into the recovery process in detail. Cordoni returns alongside Dave Booda on Chris Shelton’s “Good Sex and Bad Groups” (Apr 2025) to examine the large group awareness training tactics that shape these dynamics.
Named voices on the record ↑ Top
Participants who have spoken publicly under their own names — allowing direct quotation and follow-up — include:
- Cara Cordoni, on A Little Bit Culty (Part 1, Apr 2026), A Little Bit Culty (Part 2, Apr 2026), the IndoctriNation podcast, and Chris Shelton’s Speaking of Cults (“Good Sex and Bad Groups”, Apr 2025) with Dave Booda. She describes ISTA’s marketing, the moments that changed her perception, and the mechanisms she now recognises as control.
- Anke Richter (cult journalist, NZ), whose testimony to the Victorian Parliament Inquiry into Cults & Organised Fringe Groups includes ISTA from the 2:08 mark.
- All of the recorded first-person accounts above are summarised and timestamped in our media archive, so you can go straight to the passage you need.
- Bronwyn Rideout (NZ Skeptics) and Dave Booda (3SC — Safer Sex-Positive & Spiritual Communities), on the Decult Conference 2024 panel on ISTA, with video input from activists Shany Kedar and Mordechai Braunstein.
- The named former participants quoted in The Cut’s February 2025 investigation.
Anonymous and pseudonymous accounts ↑ Top
Other accounts are pseudonymous — participants who chose to share their story but not their identity, often because their professional or family circumstances make public naming costly. These are still on the record in the sense that a named journalist or podcast host verified the source and is accountable for the publication:
- “Lina”, anonymous participant, on A Little Bit Culty.
- The NZ complainants interviewed by Radio New Zealand.
- The participants quoted by Haaretz in its 2022 Israeli investigation.
Looking for ISTA reviews on Reddit? ↑ Top
Reddit threads about ISTA exist and are searchable, but they are uneven: some posts are by genuinely independent participants; others are from people inside the network defending it; some are anonymous to the point that the experience is impossible to evaluate. The accounts linked from this page are different in one important way — each has a named journalist, podcast host, or organisation taking responsibility for verifying and publishing it. That makes them easier to weigh.
If a specific Reddit thread is the only place you’ve seen a claim, treat it as one anonymous data point. The published accounts above give you a baseline to compare against.
If your own experience needs support ↑ Top
Reaching out is hard even when your experience was clearly harmful; it’s harder still when you’re unsure. The following resources are run by people familiar with high-demand-group dynamics and the specific ISTA / sacred-sexuality context:
- Safer Sex-Positive & Spiritual Communities (3SC) — volunteer survivor-advocacy, formed May 2022 in response to harm reports at ISTA / Highden Temple. Peer support and clinician referrals.
- Freedom of Mind Resource Center — Dr. Steven Hassan’s organisation. Resources for understanding the BITE model and finding cult-recovery clinicians.
- Israeli Center for Victims of Cults (ICCV) — primarily Hebrew, but with English materials. The organisation that published the 2023 and 2025 statements about ISTA.
- MIVILUDES (France, in French) — the French government’s interministerial mission against sectarian abuses (dérives sectaires), created in 2002 and attached to the Ministry of the Interior. It publishes guidance on recognising coercive-group dynamics, advises the public, and accepts online reports of a suspected dérive sectaire.
The full archive ↑ Top
This page is a summary. The full set of podcasts, interviews, articles, and survivor testimonies lives on the istaAwareness.life homepage:
- Podcasts & interviews — A Little Bit Culty, IndoctriNation, Speaking of Cults, Decult Conference panel, parliamentary testimony.
- Key investigative articles — The Cut, OnlySky, Becky Garrison’s Substack.
- International media coverage — RNZ, Haaretz, DV Iceland, TAZ, Politis (Cyprus), 20 Minuten (CH), Bali News.