Frequently asked
Considered answers to considered questions.
The work
A practice for looking at the assumptions a decision is already resting on, while the decision is still being made — taught as a procedure, step by step, and applied to your own week. It trains four things: holding attention where you put it, noticing that you are thinking while you think, holding a thought as a thought rather than as a fact, and updating when updating is expensive. Each of those has a name in the research literature and an instrument that measures it. See Methodology.
Parts of it look like meditation, and the daily sitting is one. We avoid the word as a description of the whole because it suggests relaxation, and the work is analytic: attention placed deliberately, then used to examine what attention is doing. The sittings are short, they start at fifteen minutes, and they are done at home.
No. Our programmes are education in a method. They are not medical care, psychotherapy, counselling or psychiatric treatment, and they are not a substitute for any of them. We treat nothing and make no health claims. If what you are carrying needs clinical care, a clinician is the right place to start, and we will help you find one where we can. If you are already working with one, tell us at screening — for most people that is a question about timing rather than a closed door.
We make no health claims and do not sell on that basis. Our subject is attention and judgment under load, and what we can describe honestly is what the practice is used for: the meeting that is still running at midnight, the conversation you are still re-arguing, the decision being made under pressure. The published evidence on stress against an active comparison is considerably weaker than this industry suggests, and it is set out in full on Evidence and limits.
We treat nothing and make no therapeutic claims of any kind, so the honest answer is that a clinician is the right place to start, and we will help you find one where we can. Some histories mean the answer at screening is “not now” — that is a judgment about timing and support, and it is made with clinical input rather than at commercial discretion.
None is assumed. The Six-Week Cohort is written for people starting from nothing. Prior contemplative experience is neither required nor an advantage — occasionally it is a mild obstacle, because the work asks you to examine assumptions you have not yet noticed you hold.
None. There is no doctrine, no membership, nothing to join, and no metaphysical commitment implied or requested. The origin of the method is contemplative and we say so openly. The method itself is analytic and secular.
It draws on published research in attention and metacognition, conducted by other people on their own programmes and populations. The evidence base is genuinely mixed, and both halves of it — what it supports and where it stops — are set out with citations on Evidence and limits, so that you can weigh it yourself.
Admission
Because this work suits some people at some moments, and the published literature on adverse effects is clear enough that screening is a safety requirement. Every applicant completes a health and history questionnaire and speaks with a member of our teaching team before a decision — a conversation that runs in both directions, and costs nothing.
Screening looks at psychiatric history, at whether the last year has contained a bereavement or something comparable, at whether you are here voluntarily, and at whether training is what you actually came for. Criteria are written down, set with clinical input, and applied consistently. Where the answer is no, we say why, it is often “not now” rather than “not ever”, and you pay nothing.
Five working days from the conversation, with a reason given either way. Nothing is charged at application.
A limited number may be offered on the Six-Week Cohort. There is no published scheme and no guarantee; if cost is the obstacle, say so in your application and we will tell you honestly whether anything is available.
Practicalities
Live sessions with a teacher, a short daily sitting that begins at fifteen minutes and builds, written work read and answered by a person, and — from the second week onwards — the practice applied to decisions you are actually carrying. No phones during practice periods, no performance, no sharing circles, and no group processing of personal history.
Take the cohort if the situation can be discussed in a room with other people in it, without naming the person, quoting the number, or disclosing anything that should not leave your building. Take the individual programme if the material cannot go in that room at all, the schedule has to bend around a diary you do not fully control, and you want the work done directly with the person who wrote the method. Take the institutional programme if the problem sits in how a particular leadership group makes a live decision together. All ten points of comparison are set out side by side in the programme table.
A defined process for making decisions under pressure, taught to the point where it runs with no teacher in the room, and handed over in writing. On the eight-week programme that is: a signed statement of what is being worked on, the five-question worksheet, a practice programme set to your own week, sixteen sessions with the man who wrote the method, written correspondence between them, a mid-point review in week four, both sets of instrument scores with an interpretation, a two-page written review, and follow-up at one week and one month. Teaching time per participant is the cost structure, and the founder taking every session of that programme himself is why few of them exist in a year. What the fee buys sets out the behaviour the work is aimed at, how progress is recognised, and what happens if nothing has moved at the mid-point.
On the eight-week programme the work stops at the end of week four for one scheduled session that examines the work itself, against the written statement you both signed in week one. The finding is written down and signed by both of you, including where the finding is that nothing has moved. Where neither of you can point to anything, you choose one of three things: the object of the work is changed and the remaining sessions re-aimed, the engagement is paused and the unused sessions carried to a later date, or it ends there. The fee consequence is stated in the terms you receive before you pay anything.
The Institutional Programme has no application form. It begins with a scoping conversation, usually with the sponsor and the chair or equivalent, and mutual non-disclosure can be in place before that conversation happens. What you receive afterwards is a written scope: participants, group and individual hours, dates, the named teaching team, the sponsor deliverables, the reporting boundary between individuals and the organisation, the agreed success criteria, and the fee against that scope. Nothing is payable until that and the engagement letter are signed. How it is scoped · Discuss a board-level engagement.
The Six-Week Cohort may be paid by card. The Institutional Programme and Individual Deconstruction are invoiced and settled by bank transfer. A deposit secures a place and the balance falls due before the programme begins — we never take the full fee up front. Full terms are provided before any payment is taken.
Every participant has an unconditional 14-day cancellation right from enrolment, with a full refund of everything paid, including the deposit. Separately, consumers in the EU and the UK have a statutory right of withdrawal which we honour where it applies. After that window, refundability reduces as the programme date approaches, because places are held and commitments made. The full schedule is in the Refund Policy and is shown in full before you pay.
Yes. We publish no participant names, use no client logos, and ask the same discretion of participants regarding one another. Private and institutional engagements are covered by mutual non-disclosure as standard. Confidentiality runs one way only: nothing we ask you to sign restricts your ability to review, criticise or publicly describe this Institute, including negatively.
The Institute
No, to both. Atma Clarity LLC is a private commercial training provider. It is not an accredited educational institution, is not authorised to grant academic degrees, and awards no academic credit. It is not affiliated with any university. “Institute” appears in our mark descriptively and denotes no accredited or degree-granting status.
No. We are an applied institute: we cite published work by others, and we measure our own participants with validated instruments so that each of them receives an honest account of what moved and what did not. That measurement is for the participant. Uncontrolled before-and-after data cannot support a causal claim, so it is not published as though it could.
We take enquiries from public-sector and institutional clients and assess them individually. Requirements around procurement, data handling and reporting are agreed in writing before any engagement begins.
Atma Clarity LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company. Its founder and Director of Practice is Salvador Atma, who separately runs Atma Retreats Ltd in the United Kingdom — a distinct company with separate operations, contracts and records.
Write to corrections@atmaclarity.com. The rule we hold our own copy to is that we describe what is taught and what is measured, and leave what happens to you to you. If you find a line anywhere on this site that breaks it, or a citation we have read wrongly, we will correct it and say that we have.
Still deciding?
The programmes page has the shape of each week, the fees and the terms. Evidence and limits has the research, in full, with the citations. Either is a reasonable place to go next.