Natacha Calestrémé happyness therapist, personal development superstar<

"Will I tell you?" an enthusiastic voice calls out over the phone. Mediums, energies, healers, it's not my thing, I'm Cartesian from Cartesian. I was operated on for a herniated disc, I suffered like crazy, before and after. She came back a few months later with unbearable pain. One day, I'm on morphine, in my car before an appointment, I'm crying so much it's unbearable. I receive a phone call from Natacha, whom I met recently. She offers to guide me for ten minutes. At the bottom of the hole, in my car, in the rain, I have nothing to lose. She gives me a shamanic protocol, a kind of hypnosis in which we imagine a specific animal that would come and take our pain to relieve it and repair the injured place. I find it delusional of course, but I am immediately relieved. So, I do it again alone the next day, and then the days after. My hernia disappeared in three months. Without operation. You don't have to believe me. My doctor couldn't believe it. I send you my scans and MRI before / after? Want to call the doctor? His protocols are so powerful, I don't know how it works, but it's crazy. “It must be said that this whole man, who we guess emotional, is Mathieu Johann, the press officer of Natacha Calestrémé for Albin Michel. A boy more accustomed to promoting the stars of the small screen than the authors of bestsellers, skilfully chosen by the publishing house for his ardor as a convert. We can think that he does his job well. However, similar testimonies have been invading social networks for a few months, in particular the You-Tube channel with nearly 67,000 Natacha Calestrémé subscribers.

©Audoin Desforges

Its extraordinary success is only boosted by word of mouth

You may never have heard her name, but since the start of the school year, this journalist and therapist trained in hypnosis has been filling theaters in France and Belgium. Its conferences and workshops are sold out as soon as they are announced and bring together up to 500 people, the overwhelming majority of whom are women. On Instagram, the public asks for more on the mode “when in Finistère? “ (@sevelmt), “in Corsica? “ (@laeti.therapie), “in Haute-Loire? “ (@evelyne.d.vincent), “in Limoges? ” (@dudobroth). This tall, spectacularly beautiful blonde is becoming a personal development rock star, the embodiment of a small social phenomenon.

Released at the time of confinement, deprived of any promotion, his book "The Key to your energy" is still at the top of the best sales of the new school year in non-fiction: more than 300,000 copies according to Gilles Haéri, the very happy boss of Albin Michael. It's more than Amélie Nothomb. An extraordinary success, only boosted by word of mouth. It has already been sold in seven countries and should be in various Asian countries before Christmas. Released on October 13, “Find my place. 22 Protocols for Accessing Happiness” is already rising alongside the first in the lists, with 110,000 copies sold in two weeks… And you could well find it under the Christmas tree, offered by a soul who wishes you well. A spectacular success compared to its previous thrillers, woven far from the mainstream mainstream media. Yet each of his appearances arouses a rare fervor: more than a million views on Fabrice Midal's YouTube channel, the same goes for the "Metamorphosis" podcast, which until then was confidential.

Who is this woman who says she receives between 50 and 100 personal messages of gratitude every day? A new wellness guru, a magician promising mountains and wonders, including miracles? Its success tells of a society that is going badly, in search of turnkey solutions to get better, "to free itself emotionally", as the banner of one of the books announces. Until then, the famous apostles of personal development were mostly men, Christophe André, Frédéric Lenoir, Matthieu Ricard, Fabrice Midal… Here, it is a tall, bright girl who arrives at our meeting in a hotel in Montparnasse, landing just from the Lot where she lives. Emotional, too. To be interviewed in ELLE when we wrote “Find my place” and that goal was the struggle of a lifetime, not only with a twin sister but also with a husband, that brings tears to her eyes. She sees it as a symbol, an accomplishment... and quite simply new proof that her method works beyond her expectations! Dressed in a snappy red suit, she embodies with a smile the serenity promised in her books, and this is not for nothing in her success. She confirms without squirming: “I think I am the living example of someone who has cleaned up his emotional wounds, erased his scars. Immediately, she says as a good friend, with a real talent for storytelling, where she was in 2015: “At the paroxysm of pain. That year, there is no longer a single area that fits in my life, she explains. Professionally and financially, I'm at ground zero. Family, after a very painful divorce, surrounded by people who wish me harm, I cry every day. My little sister died at 44 after several months in a coma. My best friend dies after being drained of her energy by bullying. And I find myself paralyzed by a double herniated disc. What was left for me? Almost nothing. I wanted to get out of it. »

©Nicolas Roses/Abaca

This is an anonymous order for @_byeongkwannie💕 The note says "Thank you so much for teaching us how to make butte… https://t.co/P51ah8rF4A

— // food Choice Café Sat Oct 17 20:57:47 +0000 2020

“I healed. My life has been transformed, sublimated”

Long reporter for "Extraordinary Investigations" on M6, this adventurer had met healers, mediums, shamans all over the world. By entrusting her with their healing techniques, they have, she says, perhaps like her grandfather, hairdresser by day and magnetizer by night, "encouraged her to take another look at the wounds of life". "I applied these shamanic and energy techniques that I transformed into protocols applicable to all," she writes. Week after week, month after month, I rebuilt myself by identifying my emotions, freeing myself from wounds inherited from my family, removing my fears, eliminating guilt. I healed. My life has been transformed, sublimated. »

Inevitably, it sells the dream. His method is based on principles that will make more than one hallucinate. First, that borrowed from Jung, according to which the trials of life are not there by chance but have a hidden meaning. All of them: from a water leak in the bathroom to the premature death of a loved one, through unhappy love affairs or serious illness. From the most benign hassles to the most cruel events. According to her, as long as we have not understood their symbolic message, we run the risk of seeing them reproduce ad infinitum. Instructions according to this therapist trained in hypnosis? “We have to identify the emotion associated with each event and go back to the origin of our injuries. We then identify the cycles that are replayed between the trials of the past and/or those that we have inherited from members of our family. This is what science calls epigenetics and psychologists call transgenerational inheritance. Like her husband Stéphane Allix, author of bestsellers revolving around the mystery of death (such as "Le Test", Mama Éditions), Natacha Calestrémé flirts severely with the irrational, but defends a Cartesian posture at all costs so as not to “being taken for an enlightened person”: “I am first and foremost a journalist and science reassures me, she defends herself. When I realized that the protocols worked on me, I first thought it was a coincidence. With the others, I was taken aback by the results. I wanted to understand why by meeting the scientists quoted in my books. Philippe Bobola, for example. Doctor in physical chemistry, biology, anthropologist and cancer researcher, he explains that our body is made up of almost a hundred times more (99.99%) energy and information than matter. Giacomo Rizzolatti, biologist and director of the department of neurosciences of the faculty of medicine at the University of Parma, demonstrated the role of mirror neurons: they make our brain believe that a situation imagined as real is very real. This allows, by the force of the mind, to relieve physical pain and sometimes even to heal oneself. »

Wanting to appear rational even when she explains that doing a symbolic protocol in her corner with or without a candle can have an impact in reality in the days that follow, on the pretext that "the universe responds"? Not even afraid ! For her, everything is good as long as there are concrete, tangible results, in the form of changes. She stands somewhere between the Bible ("Help yourself, heaven will help you") and Jean-Paul Sartre ("We can always do something with what has been made of us") and assures a certainty, almost an evidence: "If we change the way we look at them, our trials allow us to open a path to free ourselves and get better, recover an energy we never had, finally succeed to feel good in our couple, at work, with our children. Often it is about clearing the ties of suffering with people living or dead in our lineage, and thus freeing ourselves from the emotional burdens that weigh on our shoulders. »

©Instagram@natachacalestreme

“Natacha is the first to have been able to popularize hastily rejected themes in the field of esotericism”

These are not cooking recipes, we read, yet she gives the impression that for any problem, the solution is at hand, not without the help of “our spiritual guides”. At a time when witches are successful, is it magic? "No, it's anything but that!" she refutes. It is a sometimes difficult work of introspection that lasts a lifetime. But for it to work, you have to have a deep desire, to have the desire to move forward. We cannot be satisfied with the first positive results, even if they are sometimes dazzling and produce a “wow” effect. Other things take longer, three months, three years… As long as the expected results are not there, it means that we have not yet understood the important message of the test, probably a transgenerational heritage that we have not yet resolved. “Unstoppable argument?

"Natacha is the first to have been able to popularize and make discover to a large public themes hastily rejected in the field of esotericism, deciphers Gilles Haéri, boss of Albin Michel, who is amused to see how the employees of the house all started doing the protocols. She knows how to transmit with conviction the psychological experiences and intuitions that her personal and spiritual journey has enabled her to develop. The philosopher Fabrice Midal, who has the particularity of being both an author of bestsellers on meditation or hypersensitivity and a personal development editor, tips his hat: "What happens is very rare in the middle of the edition: we find a writing, a basic subject and an author perfectly aligned. Natacha suffered, she got out of it and she wants to give the keys to others. Its great strength is to have transformed ancestral knowledge and forgotten principles into symbolic rituals. »

We can also imagine that in an anxious society, suffering from constraints suffered and in particular those linked to Covid-19, the desire to get out of the feeling of powerlessness does the rest, with a promise of empowerment at stake. “By reading it, we are no longer locked in our misfortune, assigned by destiny and defined by it, contrary to a certain psychological discourse, specifies Fabrice Midal. We can discover that we have the power to free ourselves from it, that we are not a victim. The shrinks, who envisage inner transformation through an exclusive bond established between them and their patient, will not be on the same wavelength. "These books make people believe that you can do anything about yourself, that you just have to want it," criticizes a Parisian psychoanalyst who wishes to remain anonymous. The desire for narcissistic and infantile omnipotence is reinforced, hence their success. But it's a simplistic discourse that can be guilt-inducing, suggesting that if nothing moves for you, it's because you're unable to understand your family history, or not motivated enough, in short, really sucks! Natacha Calestrémé no longer takes on new patients, for lack of time, but she is sure that everyone now has the keys to getting by on their own and "doing their own personal grub". One day, she gave a lecture on “the soul of places to live” in front of former HEC students who became bosses of the Cac 40, who were largely doubtful. She ended up unjamming them with her good humor and unfailing pragmatism: “Whether we believe it or not, what does it matter? When you see that it works, why deprive yourself of the help of the invisible? »

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