Voices of Recovery website (Lightning Process promotion)

Andy

Andy

Senior Member (Voting rights)
Looks to be a UK version of Recovery Norge - all stories mention the Lightning Process.

"Who We Are

Here at Voices of Recovery, we know that change IS possible.

We were founded in 2020 to represent the voices of those that have fully recovered from chronic illness, particularly Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) and fibromyalgia.

We know these diagnoses are not a life sentence! We have over 50 members who have all fully recovered to prove otherwise."

URL (copy and paste if you really need to use it)
Code: 
https://www.voicesofrecoverygroup.org/

An archived, at time of posting this, version
https://web.archive.org/web/20210714075836/https://www.voicesofrecoverygroup.org/
 
Trial By Error: Some Lightning Process Updates

"Who is ‘Voices of Recovery’?

I’ve checked out the website of a group called Voices of Recovery, which carries the headline “Live a Life You Love.” This group has become an official stakeholder in the ongoing process of the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to create new clinical guidelines for ME/CFS. In November, NICE released a draft version that explicitly recommended against the LP, and invited comments from stakeholders. The agency is scheduled to release a final version next month."

https://www.virology.ws/2021/07/13/trial-by-error-some-lightning-process-updates/
 
Andy said:
Voices of Recovery … … … We know these diagnoses are not a life sentence! We have over 50 members who have all fully recovered to prove otherwise."
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My study of logic was a life time ago, but if my memory services me correctly this would be a good example of the fallacy of ‘going from the specific to the general’.

- X had ME and tried the Lightening Process
- X recovered
- there every one with ME will recover if they do the Lightening Process

if you accept this reasoning then you can also say

- Y had ME and tried LP
- Y got worse
- therefore everyone with ME will be made worse if they do the Lightening Process

and

- Z had ME and didn’t try LP
- Z recovered
- therefor everyone with ME that doesn’t try LP will recover

and

- W had ME and didn’t try LP
- W got worse
- therefore everyone with ME that doesn’t try the LP will get worse

so if you want to recover you should both do and not do the lightening process, and if you want to avoid getting worse, you should both not do and not not do the LP.

[edited to add W for completeness sake]
 
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Sly Saint said:
seems to have started as a facebook group (75 members)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/128056252168684/
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Very suspicious. The Facebook group was created on November 19th, just 9 days after NICE released the draft guidelines for ME/CFS.

The domain name (voicesofrecoverygroup.org) was registered on December 8th.

@dave30th According to the UK government's Companies House, Artemis Coaching was registered as a private limited company on November 19th by Anjali Chatterjee, with an address at a studio in London. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13032021/officers

Chatterjee is also registered as the director of "TURQUOISE TREE: HOLISTIC HEALTH LTD. (08701429)". This seems to have been a dormant company (capital of 1 GBP), registered by Peter Valaitis from Bristol in September 2013 until Chatterjee took over directorship just a couple of months later and dissolved it in 2016.

ETA: Valaitis appears to be part of Duport Associates Ltd, which is a business registration company -- Chatterjee must have paid them to register Turquoise Tree --.
 
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cassava7 said:
Very suspicious. The Facebook group was created on November 19th, just 9 days after NICE released the draft guidelines for ME/CFS.

The domain name (voicesofrecoverygroup.org) was registered on December 8th.
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I am not sure ‘suspicious’ is a fair choice of word, though I do agree that the two events are likely to be linked.

If we had felt that the draft was unreasonably supporting GET and that we needed to gather information on the harms of GET we might reasonably start a website and Facebook Group at that time gathering evidence of harm.

It is not unreasonable for LP advocates to gather stories of recovery, but it is unreasonable for them to ignore stories of harm, and it is unreasonable to insist that they have no reason to address to apparent contradiction that for every recovery story there are many stories of no change or of harm. It is also anti science of them to assert that people who don’t recover didn’t try hard enough, when the only measure of trying hard enough is recovering/not recovering.
 
cassava7 said:
Very suspicious. The Facebook group was created on November 19th, just 9 days after NICE released the draft guidelines for ME/CFS.

The domain name (voicesofrecoverygroup.org) was registered on December 8th.

@dave30th According to the UK government's Companies House, Voices of Recovery was registered as a private limited company on November 19th by Anjali Chatterjee, with an address at a studio in London. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/13032021/officers

Chatterjee is also registered as the director of "TURQUOISE TREE: HOLISTIC HEALTH LTD. (08701429)". This seems to have been a dormant company (capital of 1 GBP), registered by Peter Valaitis from Bristol in September 2013 until Chatterjee took over directorship just a couple of months later and dissolved it in 2016.
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This is probably her (London, Manchester, fibromyalgia, rehabilitating long term health conditions, mindfulness, bowen etc): https://www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk/anjali-chatterjee

Edit: Peter Valaitis was the director of a million companies, all for a very short time (often only for a day): https://find-and-update.company-inf...cers/qVEwG2rzscbhP6o_l2wCSDYdQA8/appointments

Edit2: Oh, now I see you explained this above @cassava7
 
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Wyva said:
This is probably her (London, Manchester, fibromyalgia, rehabilitating long term health conditions, mindfulness, bowen etc): https://www.breathworks-mindfulness.org.uk/anjali-chatterjee

Edit: Peter Valaitis was the director of a million companies, all for a very short time (often only for a day): https://find-and-update.company-inf...cers/qVEwG2rzscbhP6o_l2wCSDYdQA8/appointments

Edit2: Oh, now I see you explained this above @cassava7
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Here is Anjali Chatterjee giving an hour-long presentation on "the Business of Buddhist Action" at the Manchester Buddhist Centre in June 2016.

"Anjali talks about a potential team-based right livelihood business inspired by the Dharma. Drawing on the radical example and ideas of Dr Ambedkhar, the business will aim to work in collaboration with the India Dhamma Trust"

Although not listed in her qualifications on the Breathworks website @Wyva has linked to, I assume she has undergone training to become a Lightning Process practitioner.



ETA: a 8-session, GBP 220 mindfulness course on "Living Well with Pain and Illness" at the Manchester Buddhist Centre that she has instructed, aimed at:

who is the course for?

People we have helped so far include those with chronic back pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, post-operative pain, cancer, multiple sclerosis, CFS/ME, neuropathies, Parkinson’s disease, and many other types of pain and illness. Each week on this eight-week course you will learn new strategies and approaches within a warm and friendly group setting.
​
3-page overview leaflet of the course

ETA2: this 2014 newsletter features a 2-page autobiography of Anjali Chatterjee. She is a leg amputee who lives with fibromyalgia but she says she managed to come off of pain medication with meditation and the "Bowen technique".

Excerpts (bolding mine):
In 2008 however, my body was to take another challenge when I developed Fibromyalgia. Again drugs were the preferred option from my GP but I was reluctant and with my health and meditation background intuitively wanted to explore a more holistic approach. I found a local Bowen Practitioner literally through a free national resource catalogue and felt instantly drawn to her, really out of desperation to understand what my body was trying to tell me at this stage in my life, now at the age of thirty-seven. I was soon to find out. Joy was a thorough and meticulous assessor and practitioner. No stone was left unturned when it came to my health history and the physical experience of the technique opened a significant doorway into my experience of my body.

(...) One treatment in particular opened my internal body eyes when I had that “felt sense”during the rest period after BRM 2 of the erector-spinae literally unravelling, reconfiguring, before then ravelling again. It was extra-ordinary.

[...]

Research has suggested that the brain retains a map of the whole body despite amputation or any limb loss, hence why some people experience phantom limb pain. I have had Reiki, massage on my stump and energetic body so I was curious as to what if anything I would feel with Bowen. I have been continually brought to tears at the effect that the Bowen Technique has on my energetic, physical and emotional experience. Immediately, there is an integrating effect so not only does my stump feel part of the rest of my body but energetically I feel 'whole' - complete even.
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It would be interesting to know if she is still actively involved within the FWBO, and combining that with being a Lightening Process practitioner. It seems to me that the Lightening Process is not not compatible with traditional understandings of mindfulness or right livelihood. It strikes me that central to LP is a denial of your subjective reality, which I would regard as incompatible with Buddhist insight practices, such as mindfulness, where the aim is to transcend mundane reality not deny its existence.

Though having said that in the past some members of the FWBO had an interest in NLP ([neurolinguistic programming]) and there is perhaps some overlap with the use of mantra repetition and associated practices, where aspects of a deity are invoked or envisaged in order to help realise their qualities in yourself. I have had no contact with the movement for some twenty years.

(An aside - Much of her talk above deals with the issue of converting Untouchables in India. This is interesting as it is based on the rational that the scourge of ‘untouchability’ is inherent in Hinduism, and that a solution is to convert Untouchables to Buddhism to take them out of the framework that makes them third class citizens. It could be argued that Buddhism is very relevant to this, given it is based on the idea that achievement is via your own efforts, though there are Christian groups justifying their missionary work with the Untouchables on the same ground. Further there are Hindus who would argue that untouchability is a cultural phenomenon and is not inherent in Hinduism itself.)

[corrected typos]
 
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Reading what @cassava7 has added to the above post, it seems (perhaps on the basis of insufficient information) that Chatterjee in her work through the Manchester Buddhist Centre was involved with ideas of personal growth and living with the underlying conditions, which is very different to the LP concept of curing the underlying condition.
 
Attempting to join the Voices of Recovery facebook group brings up a questionnaire that asks

What is your experience of the Lightning Process? Did you use it yourself, did you see someone recover using it, are you a trainer etc.? What issues did you/others resolve?

Are you interested in spreading the word that recovery is possible?

Would you like to get activitly involved in helping manage this group and promote the Lightning Process as a recovery tool?
 
strategist said:
Attempting to join the Voices of Recovery facebook group brings up a questionnaire that asks

What is your experience of the Lightning Process? Did you use it yourself, did you see someone recover using it, are you a trainer etc.? What issues did you/others resolve?

Are you interested in spreading the word that recovery is possible?

Would you like to get activitly involved in helping manage this group and promote the Lightning Process as a recovery tool?
Click to expand...

This is indeed very much like a cult.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if joining Voices of Recovery and writing something positive became a condition of doing an LP course, or part of the process to show your commitment and not incur the wrath and public humiliation of the trainer. So seen from that perspective (and I think it's a fair speculation, it's not as if LP coaches ever say "if you wouldn't mind, no pressure ...") these testimonies aren't worth a lot.
 
Even if the reports are genuine, they are highly filtered and thereby highly biased, because only successes ever get reported on Voices of Recovery.

To me the key issue is not about whether LP ever succeeds (statistically there will be some successes, given the ramshackle diagnoses that abound), but whether LP ever harms. With anything claiming to be a medical treatment, assessment of the significance of any harms has to take priority. There are equivalent reports of LP harming people, that funnily enough, PP fails to draw attention to. It's no good touting a few assorted miracles, if a trail of maimed and damaged individuals get left behind in its wake. I wonder if PP's organisation has ever stated its position on medical ethics?

LP DOES NOT WORK FOR ME

https://www.sayer.abel.co.uk/MESNORFOLK/LP.html
 
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