Pseudoscience, esotericism: the strange references of Natacha Calestrémé, star of well-being

His name may not mean anything to you, but you must have already seen his smile on the tables of bookstores. Unless your mother-in-law or a friend has advised you to read her books. Because Natacha Calestrémé is the new queen of the “personal development” departments. Released in 2020, The key to your energy (Albin Michel) has been on the L’Express bestseller list for… eighty-eight weeks, and more than 340,000 copies have been sold (according to Editstat). find my place, released last fall, is also a hit, with already nearly 150,000 sales. Each of his conferences draws crowds. Ditto for his autograph sessions. It’s that the promise is beautiful: with the 22 “protocols” gathered by this spirited fifties, we could “free ourselves from our painful emotions” and “reconnect with our inner strength”. What to overcome our small difficulties and our big problems and finally “access to happiness”.

Beautiful, blonde, pleasant, now a real star, the former journalist specializing in the animal field and then in health is wary of her ex-colleagues. Solicited by L’Express, she first let us know, through her press officer, that she preferred to concentrate on her writing projects. We will have to meet him at a book fair to get an interview. It must be said that Natacha Calestrémé sparked controversy recently, with surreal remarks, in the program It starts today on endometriosis: a chronic disease due, according to her, to the “guilt”, to the “sadness” caused by the miscarriages of our ancestors … Words that she assures “taken out of context”. Anyway, France 2 had to deprogram the show in the face of the outcry aroused by these extracts broadcast on social networks. If the excitement is justified by the lack of scientific basis for such statements, everything was already in his book. She herself is surprised today: “Media like The Obs, She or Release praised it”, she explains to us behind her webcam, installed in the office from where she broadcasts her program every week Monday night, hope on Youtube.

“Beings of Light”

Several chapters of her bestseller are devoted to the “meaning of illnesses”, for which she offers us a “reading grid” somewhere between Lacan and Molière. Thus, angina “would be linked to the fear of saying too much”, otitis to “the desire to no longer hear discussions that make us sad or make us angry”. Alzheimer’s disease ? “Favored by the weight of an undisclosed secret, of a repressed guilt that is hard to bear”. Even cancer is linked to “remorse” or “emotional trauma”. We pinch ourselves. Natacha Calestrémé takes the precaution of using the conditional and specifying that the first thing to do in the event of illness, “is to go see a doctor”. But her speech, even if she denies it, recalls “biological decoding”: a thesis according to which it would be enough to identify the triggering event of a disease to cure, and whose main figures, Ryke Geerd Hamer and Claude Sabbah, were severely condemned by the courts. “Except for cardiovascular pathologies, the links between an emotional state and the occurrence of this or that condition are based on unproven hypotheses”, confirms Professor Cédric Lemogne, head of the psychiatry department at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris (AP -HP).

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The most esoteric is yet to come. Over the pages and protocols, we will learn how to heal our “emotional wounds” or to appeal to “beings of light”. Mysterious entities, supposed to help us find the name of our “guide” by randomly opening a book in his library. Thanks to them, we will free ourselves from our “emotional legacies” by “cutting the bonds of suffering”. To do this, all you have to do is sit in the middle of your living room and repeat a few sentences (“I free myself as I free you”), between the Coué method and “shamanic rituals”, discovered “during reports in South America” . We even learn that it is we who “choose our parents”, our soul deciding the family environment in which we would be born…

Wacky? On the contrary, a millimeter marketing object. Because, on closer inspection, Natacha Calestrémé has applied all the recipes for personal development, and drawn on the publishing successes of recent years. She claims it: “I didn’t invent anything, I make new with old.” The “emotional wounds”? Inspired by the popess of the sector, the Canadian Lise Bourbeau and her Five Wounds that prevent you from being yourself, sold over a million copies in France since 2013. Transgenerational heritage? Taken fromOuch, my ancestors! from the psychologist Anne Ancelin-Schützenberger, 400,000 sales since 2015. “Soul recovery” protocols? Borrowed from a healing medium. As for self-healing, the concept inevitably brings to mind David Servan-Schreiber (Cure, Anticancer).

Like any good author of “well-being” books, Natacha Calestrémé stages herself and recounts the difficulties, unemployment, double disc herniation, loss of loved ones, which led her to turn to ” unconventional means”. Readers will recognize themselves in it, and will feel less alone. With a simple, friendly tone, she explains that her protocols worked for her, then to “her great surprise” for relatives, and that she therefore had to share her discoveries more widely. A few edifying testimonials, a bit of magic, a lot of charisma, and voila. No reason why it doesn’t also work for us who have – necessarily – “the power to change”. Otherwise, of course, it will not be his fault, but ours: we will have “poorly formulated our request”.

“99.99% energy”…

We cannot escape either “energy”, a vague concept inherited from the New Age, this spiritual current which floods the field of well-being. Natacha Calestrémé thus indicates that the atoms composing our body would be made of “99.99% energy”, which, in essence, would explain why her protocols work: they act on this energy. Unstoppable? Not really, for physicist Sébastien Point: “An atom is a nucleus, electrons and vacuum. There is no energy independent of matter”, he recalls. The other scientific references – also an essential figure in personal development books – are of the same type: based on proven data, but diverted from their original meaning.

Epigenetics, for example, supposed to justify this idea of a transgenerational burden that we would inherit. The reality, of course, is more complex. “It has been shown that exposures to chemicals or stresses during pregnancy or early childhood can alter epigenetic marks that regulate gene expression and thus have an impact in adulthood. effects on the third generation, with epigenetic mechanisms, remain hypotheses under investigation”, explains Robert Barouki, toxicologist and professor of biochemistry at the University of Paris-Descartes. The same goes for the “mirror neurons” discovered by the neuroscientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, to which Natacha Calestrémé refers a lot to justify her protocol on self-healing. “I don’t know the work of Natacha Calestrémé. But I can tell you that mirror neurons are based on a basic neurological mechanism that has nothing to do with para-scientific theories”, tells us this professor at the university of Parma. “The link with self-healing completely escapes me,” he says.

But whatever ? The key is to tick all the boxes leading to success. Natacha Calestrémé, she defends herself from any calculated approach. During the interview granted to L’Express, she pretends to reveal herself, is moved, even cries at the memory of her past difficulties yet so often told. “Do you smell marketing in me?, she ends up getting annoyed. All the people who come to see me emphasize on the contrary my authenticity.” Today, in any case, all is well for her. His fans, at least those crossed at this book fair, have stars in their eyes when they mention him. Initially, in a context of pandemic and confinement, his work was also sold only by word of mouth. Then Natacha Calestrémé benefited from the support, even the complacency of many media, which depict her as a “shaman of the confined” or as a “happiness therapist”. In January, on France 5, facing an all-hearing Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine, she could assert that problems with leaks or heating in a house have a hidden meaning, linked for example to the heart. Rare are those which, like the Fact & Furious site specializing in “disinfox”, have dared to question its pseudoscientific discourse or its problematic references.

Practices in the sights of Miviludes

They are however legion. Philippe Bobola, for example, to whom she pays homage in her book. The one who presents himself as “physicist, biologist, anthropologist and psychoanalyst” (sic) and boasts of the “great quantum awakening” is nevertheless regularly present alongside figures from the complosphere, such as Jean-Jacques Crèvecoeur or Ema Krusi. A reference that has visibly become embarrassing for Natacha Calestrémé: “I interviewed him for a magazine. He told me about the fact that our body is full of information. “Had I known they were going to look for me on this, I would have rather quoted Einstein. To reduce my work to this reference to Philippe Bobola is a bit of a shame.” In her book, she also refers to Luc Bodin, a former doctor struck off in 2014 and closely followed by Miviludes, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses. Without forgetting many practices also appearing in the viewfinder of Miviludes: family constellations, geobiology, applied kinesiology…

“Geobiology has existed since the dawn of time. Cathedrals have been placed on telluric forces that cannot be explained. People perceive what makes a place unique. Geobiology is like magnetizers, healers, shamans. In the light of materialistic science, this of course seems strange. But I am only proposing things that have helped me” she assures. With her sister, numerologist Lydie Castells, and Lysiane Lévy, she has also published a box set Numerology in action containing 44 cards, presented as a “projection tool to help you position yourself in the face of a questioning, whatever it may be” (already 18,000 copies sold in less than a year).

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But the person most often cited is her husband, Stéphane Allix. This former war reporter has converted into best-sellers with sensational titles on the afterlife. His biggest success, The test. An incredible experience: proof of the afterlife? (230,000 copies sold, also by Albin Michel), is an adaptation of “work” by the Americans Gary Schwartz or Julie Beischel, who claim to prove through “scientific protocols” the ability of mediums to communicate with the dead. Natacha Calestrémé and Stéphane Allix share in any case a gift: that of passing off hazy theories for “rational” concepts, socially acceptable and very fruitful in bookstores. A real magic power in short…