ISTA Level 1 Experience
(N California Oct 21 – 27, 2025)
ISTA
“I came seeking a sense of safety in my own body.
Desires felt too dangerous to embellish.
Shame and fear strangling the life force within.
I left feeling lighter, playful, almost childlike in my innocence.
Social programming and personal insecurities illuminated.
Reclaiming my sacred essence and power within.
I thought it was going to be about sex.
Sacred sexuality was merely the siren’s song.
The Love that blossomed was for myself.
I knew that I was a doctor and healer.
My soul had always yearned to be a Medicine Man and Shaman.
Never in my wildest dreams did I realize a Temple Priest lay hiding within.”
~ Clayton Bell, M.D.
ISTA (International School of Temple Arts) was a new concept for me. I am an allopathic
medical doctor by training and have followed my curiosity to plunge deeper and deeper
down the rabbit’s hole. Some unique combination of my dharmic path in Medicine along
with an inner child insecurity regarding self-worth validation through accomplishments
has led to becoming quadruple boarded/certified in Functional Medicine, Integrative
Medicine, Environmental Medicine, and Family Medicine. I also have fairly extensive
experience/training/research in Ayurvedic Medicine, Psychedelic Medicine, and
currently specialize in personalized cancer testing and therapies as well as tickborne
infections such as Lyme disease and mold mycotoxins.
Essentially, I am the doctor who your doctor sends their most complex patients to and to
whom they may personally seek support and guidance for their own personal health
journey. This brief aforementioned background is given to provide a sense of
attunement and gravity for the following statement: “ISTA Level 1 training was by far the
most meaningful, informative, insightful and impactful continuing medical education
conference that I have ever experienced”. Obviously, one does not need to be a doctor
to undertake this “mystery school” training. If one does attend, they should anticipate a
transformative experience and expect to leave in closer communion with their internal
healing power and potential.
I am by no means enlightened and currently have minimal desire for that penultimate
destination. Instead, I am enjoying this cosmic game of playing hide and seek with
myself over and over again. Fleeting sunbeams of self-realization do occasionally break
through my nebulous sky of human experience and perhaps I shall eventually tire of this
karmic wheel and go home again. For now, it is fun experimenting as creatrix in “bone
world” (as my 6-year-old daughter calls it) and trying not to block the divine energy flow.
When I lived in Haiti, I had a good friend who was a Vodun priest. He was by no means
your typical “holy man”, but he did once tell me something so simple yet profound that it
will always be etched in my subconscious.
“It’s easy, just let it happen”.
That is the way my ISTA experience felt; it was natural to release decades of shame,
fear, and guilt that I had inherited from the collective subconscious of my “Bible Belt”
southern roots. We were merely fish swimming in water and had no idea there was any
other way of living. It has felt at times like I was dragging along a cross that was never
meant for me to carry. I came to the training in hopes of creating new realms of
psychological and neurological safety within my body that had previously been beyond
my grasp. Essentially my hardware (brain) needed a software (mind) update and I
needed help.
ISTA Level 1 training provided a well thought out and effective framework of intentionally
sequenced ceremonial experiences. The slow build allowed me to maintain a sense of
safety while slowly leaning into my edges and prevented me from going into a Dorsal
Vagal Freeze response. I have been working on systematically deconstructing and
rebuilding my neurological scaffolding for over 30 years now. Over these decades, I
have had many mountain top experiences with my fair share of crashes along the way.
If only I had experienced this training at 17 years old, life would have been so radically
different. My relationships with men might have been as comrades instead of
competitors. Women would have been revered for their power and beauty. I was never
taught how to show affection for women, men, or myself for that matter. Sadly, my
programming came from movies, television, magazines, and my clueless peers as we
boys clumsily attempted to become men by unceremoniously exploring a woman’s
sacred cave while never truly seeing her in the process. I am crying as I write this for
every time I acted out of the collective subconscious and eroded away the sanctity of
myself and another.
42 is not too old to begin to learn anew and start again. I hope that my daughter grows
up in a world where a women’s “No” is the strongest word spoken and men see women
not only as our equals but as our future and the sacred givers of life. One day we shall
realize what we truly are. At that moment, we shall collectively rise from our knees,
release our religious idols, and begin worshipping the God within. In the meantime, I am
happy and honored to play this role of opening my own heart and watching the whole
world expand and heal around me.
To further facilitate my personal process, I will be returning to ISTA for further trainings
as well as diving deeper into my own shamanic and spiritual practices. I came to ISTA
for the sex, but I left with my soul. The only one I made love to there was myself and I
did not even have to touch my cock.
Clayton Bell, M.D.
10.28.25 (San Francisco to Asheville, NC)