Access Bars and Access Consciousness: what it actually is
Thirty-two points on the head, a strange incantation, and a certification ladder. What is real here, and what is not.
5 min read · Published 16 August 2026
The short answer
Access Bars is a technique within Access Consciousness, a modern personal-development movement founded in 1990 by Gary Douglas and later co-led by Dain Heer. A practitioner lightly touches thirty-two points on your head — the 'bars' — which are said to release the electromagnetic charge of limiting thoughts, feelings and beliefs stored there. Sessions are pleasant and often relaxing, in the way a long scalp touch is relaxing. Beyond that, the specific claims are not supported by good evidence, the proposed mechanism is not physically coherent, and the surrounding system is built on a paid tiered-certification model that critics compare to multi-level marketing. It is best understood as a recent commercial wellness product, not an old tradition, and AsterNym has nothing to do with it.
What a session actually involves
You lie down, clothed, and a practitioner rests their fingers on pairs of points around your head for roughly an hour. Each point — a 'bar' — is named for a life theme: money, control, creativity, ageing, body, sexuality, and so on. Lightly holding them is said to discharge the stored electrical energy of the beliefs you hold about that theme, so you leave with less mental clutter and more possibility.
As an experience, that is a slow, quiet hour of gentle head contact, which many people find genuinely calming. The disagreement is not about whether the hour feels nice. It is about the explanation attached to it.
Where it comes from
Access Consciousness began in 1990 with Gary Douglas, joined a decade later by Dain Heer, who is now its most visible figure. Access Bars is the entry-level offering; above it sits a large catalogue of 'Body Processes', workshops and verbal tools, taught through a global network of certified facilitators.
The movement's signature tools are phrases: questions like 'How does it get any better than this?' and 'What else is possible?', used as habitual re-framing prompts. Those are ordinary, harmless self-talk techniques. The metaphysics wrapped around them is where the trouble starts.
The clearing statement
The system's core incantation, spoken after identifying something to release, is deliberately strange — it runs, in part, 'Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, POD and POC, All 9, Shorts, Boys and Beyonds.' Each fragment is an abbreviation for a longer bit of Access jargon.
Practitioners are told the phrase does not need to make sense, and that its not-making-sense is the point — it is meant to bypass the rational mind and dissolve a belief without engaging it. That is a convenient property for a claim to have, because a method that works by not being understandable is also a method that cannot be checked.
The business model
Access is structured as a ladder. You pay for a Bars class to be able to receive and give it; you pay more to advance through the Foundation and higher levels; facilitators pay to be certified to teach, and earn by running their own classes. Prices for the upper tiers run into the thousands.
Critics — and a fair amount of press coverage — describe this as resembling multi-level marketing: the people who benefit most reliably are those recruiting and training the next layer of paying practitioners. That is an observation about the structure, not an accusation about any individual, and it is worth weighing before a course rather than after.
What the evidence says
There is no rigorous evidence that Access Bars does anything beyond relaxation. The handful of studies that exist are small, often run or funded by people inside the movement, and lack the controls that would separate a specific effect from ordinary rest and attention. No independent, well-designed trial supports the specific claims.
The proposed mechanism does not hold together either. 'Thoughts stored as electromagnetic charge at points on the scalp, released by light touch' is not a description that maps onto how the brain, the nervous system or electromagnetism actually work. Skeptical and scientific commentators classify the practice as pseudoscience, and on the evidence that is the accurate word.
Is it harmful?
The touch itself is not. An hour of someone gently holding your head is low-risk and, for many, pleasant — and if that is all someone wants from it, the honest cost-benefit is simply the price of the session.
The harm, where it occurs, is indirect. It is the money, at the upper tiers especially. And it is the substitution: Access materials and practitioners sometimes present it as helping with anxiety, depression, sleep disorders or physical illness, and anyone who takes those claims seriously enough to delay or replace real medical or psychological care is taking a genuine risk. Relaxation is a fine thing to buy. Treatment for a condition is not what this is, whatever the marketing implies.
Common questions
- What are Access Bars?
- A technique in which a practitioner lightly touches thirty-two points on the head, each linked to a life theme, said to release the stored energy of limiting thoughts and beliefs. It is part of Access Consciousness, a personal-development movement founded in 1990. Sessions are relaxing; the specific claims are not supported by good evidence.
- Does Access Bars actually work?
- There is no rigorous evidence that it does anything beyond the relaxation of quiet, gentle head contact. The few existing studies are small and largely produced within the movement, and the proposed 'electromagnetic thoughts' mechanism is not physically coherent. Skeptical and scientific commentators class it as pseudoscience.
- Is Access Consciousness a pyramid scheme?
- It is not usually described in those exact legal terms, but critics and press coverage note that its tiered, paid-certification structure resembles multi-level marketing — practitioners pay to advance and to be certified to teach, then earn by training more paying practitioners. That is a structural observation worth weighing before enrolling.
- Is Access Bars safe?
- The light head-touching itself is low-risk. The real risks are indirect: the cost of the higher-tier courses, and the danger of taking its health claims seriously enough to delay or replace real medical or psychological treatment. As relaxation it is harmless; as therapy for a condition it is not evidenced.