Critical commentary & awareness istaAwareness.life

ISTA press kit

A fact sheet, dated coverage timeline, named expert contacts, and downloadable assets for journalists, researchers, and producers covering the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA). Curated by istaAwareness.life — an independent awareness project. Not affiliated with ISTA.

Fact sheet ↑ Top

  • Organisation: International School of Temple Arts (ISTA).
  • Founded: 2007, in Arizona, USA.
  • Founder: Robert “Baba Dez” Nichols.
  • Self-description (verbatim, ISTA’s own materials): “ISTA is part of a global transformational movement where human consciousness is being opened to its source as love and harmoniously integrating with other sentient kingdoms and dimensions.”
  • Organisational structure (per ISTA): a non-profit offering “Spiritual Sexual Shamanic” (SSS) workshops; described as a decentralised collaborative of approximately 100 faculty members with no central leader.
  • Where workshops are held: Retreat venues across multiple countries. Documented locations include the United States, New Zealand (Highden Temple, ManawatÅ« — the principal NZ venue), Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Iceland, Cyprus (Paphos), Indonesia (Bali), and more.
  • Affiliated venue receiving most media scrutiny: Highden Temple, ManawatÅ«, New Zealand, operated by Bruce Lyon.
  • Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_School_of_Temple_Arts
  • ISTA’s own response pages: ista.life/ista-responds

Summary of allegations ↑ Top

Multiple investigative outlets, two cult-victim advocacy organisations, a recognised cult-recovery expert, and named former participants and ex-facilitators have raised concerns about ISTA workshops. The principal documented patterns are:

  • Coercion and consent abuses during workshop sexual practices.
  • Sleep-deprivation patterns characterised by the Israeli Center for Victims of Cults (ICCV) as part of the “process.”
  • Group sexual rituals framed as healing modalities.
  • The framing that sexual interactions with senior facilitators can be therapeutic for participants.
  • Financial/organisational concerns, including a U.S. Bankruptcy Court memo (DOC 292, June 2024) that names ISTA’s president Richard Priddis and describes allegations that ISTA functions as Priddis’s alter-ego, with workshop income diverted to offshore investments.

For the consolidated overview see our ISTA allegations page. The full primary-source archive is on the homepage.

Named experts to interview ↑ Top

The people below have spoken publicly about ISTA. Public contact details for press are linked where available; we’ll happily make warm introductions where appropriate — just email us.

Cult-recovery experts

Cult journalists

Survivor-advocacy organisations

  • Safer Sex-Positive & Spiritual Communities (3SC) — volunteer advocacy formed May 2022 specifically in response to ISTA and Highden Temple harm reports. 3sc.community/about.
  • NZ Skeptics — long-running documentation of the Highden Temple / ISTA story in New Zealand. skeptics.nz/ista.

Named former participants on the record

Coverage timeline ↑ Top

Dated mainstream and specialist coverage of ISTA to date:

Story angles we can help with ↑ Top

Where we can substantively assist a working journalist with sources, primary documents, or background:

  • Workshop tourism — the venues hosting ISTA in your country (NZ, IL, CH, DE, IS, ID, CY, etc.) and how they were vetted, or not.
  • The U.S. Bankruptcy Court documents (we host DOC 292 on this site under fair use; the full docket is in PACER).
  • The structure of large-group awareness trainings (LGATs) applied to sexuality — comparative context with NXIVM, Landmark, and others.
  • How named former participants found language for their experience, and how that journey relates to broader cult-recovery research.
  • Coverage gaps — countries and venues that have hosted ISTA but have not yet had local-language reporting.

Downloadable assets ↑ Top

Logo files, free to use when crediting or referring to istaAwareness.life:

Screenshots of media coverage (already linked from the homepage), legal-document PDFs, and ICCV statement PDFs are all directly downloadable from the homepage. If you need higher-resolution versions or want to verify an asset is current, email us.

How to cite this site ↑ Top

For in-text reference, “istaAwareness.life” or “the istaAwareness.life archive” is appropriate. For formal citations:

If you need to cite a specific page within this site (e.g. ista-allegations or ista-experiences), each landing page’s canonical URL is published in its <link rel="canonical"> tag.