People

David Dubois, PhD, is a comparative philosopher, author, and Sanskrit scholar. David is one of the leading scholars on Kashmir Shaivism, a branch of classical tantra. He has translated and commented on numerous tantric texts such as the Vijnâna Bhairava Tantra (Almora, 2015). He is the author of over twenty books on the subject and on other spiritual themes. David studied Sanskrit and Tantra amongst masters of the tradition in India, where he also trained in Indian martial arts and Ayurveda. He believes in an approach rooted both in tradition and democracy. He teaches the yoga of space and the path of desire in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism but is also inspired by Christian prayer as well as other wisdom traditions from the East and the West alike.

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Nino Naneishvili holds a Bachelor of Arts in Piano, a Master of Sacred Music from Tbilisi State Conservatory, as well as a PhD in ethnomusicology from Ilia State University. Nino is a lecturer at the University of Church Chant and at Rose Bruford College in London, as well as an assistant professor at Giorgi Mtatsmindeli University. She has published several articles on the Georgian singing tradition, especially on sacred music. As an award-winning singer, she was a member of various folk ensembles and church choirs such as the Sathanao choir and the Alilo Ensemble. She has performed and offered workshops throughout Europe. Nino also served as strategy coordinator for the Ministry of Culture from 2015 to 2016 and has been guiding annual tours in a dozen Georgian regions over the past 20 years.

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Ewa Zurakowska, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist, performer, singer, and theatre director. Ewa attended the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices and graduated from the University of Warsaw with an MA degree in Cultural Anthropology. She wrote her doctoral thesis on traditional songs and site-specific theatre at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where currently teaches performance and ritual at the Anglo-American University. Since 2010 she has been performing as a singer for Korjen, whose music draws inspiration from her ethnomusicological journeys to the Balkans, the Republic of Tuva,Lapland, Eastern Poland, and Ukraine.

Her artistic work explores the connection between space, sound, and body. She performed for the Czech company Divadlo Continuo and for Teatr Novogo Fronta as well as for several other organizations such as Studio Matejka (PL), Budalasultan (Turkey), and Rose Bruford College (UK). She directed the documentary musical performance based on mining folklore and taught at the Milon Mela Centre for Performing Indian Arts. Ewa also works as a coordinator for Polish-Czech cultural partnerships and supports the Gorzanow Castle Foundation in Lower Silesia Poland.

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Riki Parenti is a certified music therapist (Les Heures, University of Barcelona) and an accredited neurologic music therapist (MTAE-53). He hold degrees in music from the University of Bologna and in transpersonal psychology (IPTB). Riki has been working as a music therapist since 2010 and specializes in neurorehabilitation. As a singer, he has been exploring the voice in its most ancestral aspects, mastering the overtones singing technique. He was a member of MuOM Overtone Singing Choir with which he released two albums and toured internationally. In recent years, he has been deepening the Dhrupad singing technique. Riki facilitates the personal growth laboratory "Journey through the Voice" where he mixes body and vocal work with transpersonal music therapy.

Olga Lidia Kozłowska is a licensed psychologist, singer, and voice coach. She is certified in Core Energetics Body Psychotherapist, Process training (A&A Mindell), and holds an MA in education. Drawing inspiration from Alexander Technique and Polyvagal Theory, Olga approaches voice work in a holistic and embodied way. She specializes in traditional Slavic and Georgian singing, choral music, and improvisation. Her teachers include Franke Kane, Natalia Polovynka, Emma Bonnici, Amit Carmeli, Kristin Linklater, and Lane Aryne. She is the founder of Authentic Voice and has been leading workshops since 2011.

Marta Carvalho is a visual artist and a creative healer. She has been creating sacred spaces of transformative and healing arts since 2012. Marta holds degrees in Graphic Design and Visual Arts Theory. Her approach merges intuitive painting with vocal improvisation, somatic awareness, and performative practices. For the past four years, she has been developing numerous collaborative, interdisciplinary, and participatory art projects in Portugal. She guides personal and artistic development processes through individual mentoring, art therapy courses, and art residencies.

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Tiffany McSwaker is a dancer and performance artist. She studied dance at the Iceland University of the Arts and contemporary creation at the Sorbonne University. Her approach to movement and dance integrates body-mind connection, emotional awareness, healing modalities, and spirituality. Tiffany is the founder of Transcendental Embodiment. Informed by phenomenology and metaphysics, Transcendental Embodiment approaches dance as a holistic and transformative experience. Transcendental Embodiment is for dancers, movement lovers, and for people seeking psychological and emotional support through the practice of dance. Tiffany teaches online as well as in live events across Europe and Central America.

Aaron Finbloom, PhD, is a philosopher, performance artist, and pedagogue, as well as the founder and director of The Deep Play Institute and co-founder of The School of Making Thinking. Aaron earned a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University and an MA in Philosophy and Art from Stony Brook University. His work involves designing performative “conversation pieces” for transformative inquiry that seek to aesthetically expand the scope of philosophical, academic, and psychotherapeutic pedagogies. He has presented these works internationally at conferences, exhibitions, and theaters such as The School of the Art Institute (Chicago), Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei (Berlin), and UNAM (Mexico City). The scores of such works have been published in multiple platforms including “Propositional Attitudes” (Golden Spike Press, 2018) a book of performance scores which showcased at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. His research into philosophical-performative pedagogies has been published in journals such as Performance Research and TENOR. Aaron currently teaches philosophy at The City College of New York and at the University of Portland. 

Kamil Remes is a musician, conductor, and researcher. Kamil studied guitar at the Conservatory of Pardubice, musicology at MUNI Brno, as well as Persian traditional music and Tar with Ashkan Rahbar in Esfahan. As a researcher,he specializes in the Early Modern Period as well as in non-European ethnomusicology and in anthropology of music. As an active musician he has been involved in many music projects across the genres – alternative music, world music, and early music – where he uses a wide range of historical and ethnic stringed instruments. Kamil is a theorbist and co-founder member of La Bilancetta ensemble, which focuses on Renaissance and Early Baroque music.

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Annalisa is an Italian contemporary artistand macrobiotic chef based in Ibiza. Her work is the result of many years of multidisciplinary study in art education and therapy as well as Easter philosophy. She works with various natural media such as Chinese ink, sand, soil, and clay. Seeking to translate presence and silence into art, Annalisa empowers others to pay attention to the beauty of the perfect imperfections of life. She views her own body as an instrument of expression, and the brush as an extension of the mind and heart.

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Kythe Maryam Heller, PhD, is a poet, essayist, interdisciplinary artist, and scholar who completed her doctorate Harvard University in Comparative Religion with a secondary field in Arts, Film, and Visual Studies. Kythe also holds an MDiv from Harvard Divinity School, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BA in English Literature from Reed College. She is author of the poetry collection Firebird (Arrowsmith), editor of the anthology The Soul Conveys itself in Shadow, writing and inter-media works including Immolation, Thunder Perfect Mind, and Rite of Spring, film and installation work presented in the US and Canada, and critical studies published by Cambridge University Press, Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, and Harvard Divinity School Graduate Journal. Kythe is also the founder of Vision Lab, a socially-engaged art and research collective in the future of the human spirit, editor-in-chief of Forecast Journal, and a faculty member of the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College.

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Linda Wise is an actor, director, and voice coach. Linda grew up in Kenya and trained as an actress in Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Linda worked the Roy Hart Theatre, an avant-garde company known for its radical approach to voice work from 1969 and was one of the founders of the Roy Hart Centre in France. She currently directs, with Enrique Pardo, Pantheatre, which they founded in 1978. Linda has performed, taught, and directed shows around the world. She has taught voice work at national theatre schools in Denmark,Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Scotland, and France. She performed Nedda in the Roy Hart Theatre’s OBIE winning performance of“Pagliacci” and later directed “Moby Dick” Prix Jean Vilar. She has directed a series of solos (Cassandra, The Song of Songs, Granade, Les sybilles) as well as a jazz-opera “Overflaten” in Norway, an immersive theatre piece in NY“ Inside the Wild Heart”. Her latest piece “the Invader’s Fear of Memories”, written and performed by Ben Rivers, premiered in Johannesburg in 2023.

Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, poet, and farmer, as well as the founder and director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to emergent ways of thinking about meaning-making and to advancing systems-based thinking about the things that matter most. ​Brendan holds a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and an MDiv in Religion and Art from Yale University. He is the author of the 7-volume Metamodern Spirituality Series and of Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics (ARC Press, 2023). He hosts the Metamodern Spirituality podcast and helps run retreats dedicated to exploring spiritual frame work beyond postmodernism. Brendan’s work seeks to find productive ways to bride the divide between science and spirituality, and to developing sustainable systems for life to flourish.

Enrique Pardo is a theatre director, performer, writer,and visual artist. Born in Peru in 1946, he went to school in France, studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art, and taught Fine Arts at Goldsmith College, University of London. He joined the Roy Hart Theatre in 1968, a utopian avant-garde company known for its radical voice work, with which he moved to Malerargues, Southern France, in 1875. In 1878, he founded Pantheatre (from Pan, the dancer-singer god), which he co-directs with his partner, Linda Wise. Enrique has collaborated with a wide array of artists, thinkers, and psychotherapists. One of his main intellectual sources of inspiration is the post-Jungian psychologist James Hillman, father of archetypal psychology, with whom he created the Myth and Theatre Festival in 1986. Enrique directs and teaches choreographic theatre and voice performance, weaving together movement and dance, music, voice and singing, with a complex poetical approach to the inclusion of text, which he describes as « Cubist, as in Cuba », that is, closer to voodoo than to formal cubes.

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Nataraaj (Noé Peyre) is a philosopher, painter, and musician. Nataraaj studied Ancient Greek and Indian Philosophy with a focus on Neoplatonism and Advaita Vedanta at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He weaves diverse traditions – Jewish, Indian, Sufi – into a tapestry of artistic expression. Nataraaj plays the guitar, sitar, sarod, and tabla. His music is a lifelong pursuit of a universal language, a non-dual harmony uniting art, philosophy, and spirituality. Nataraaj worked with the Jamaican spiritual teacher Mooji for a number of years. He currently teaches philosophy by the Lake Leman and paints calligraphy in a dozen languages including Sanskrit, Arabic, Farsi, and Japanese.

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Joanna Hruby is a visual artist, performance maker, writer and cultural activist based on Ibiza, Spain. She is the founder of the company Theatre of the Ancients, whose aim is to harness the myths, folklore, and ancestral culture of Ibiza through puppetry, mask theatre, and symbolic visual performance. The company has developed experimental work based on participatory, immersive, and ritual theatre, often in site-specific locations and in alignment with the seasons. Joanna graduated from London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2011 with a first class BA(hons) in Theatre Practice – Puppetry. She has since undertaken an internship with the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont, USA, and studied myth and storytelling with the British mythologist Martin Shaw. Joanna produces a podcast called The Wells of Tanit which is recorded beside Ibiza’s ancient wells, and her writings have been published by the Dark Mountain Project and the independent publishers Hedgespoken Press. She sees the multi-disciplinary branches of her Ibiza-based work in myth, story and folklore as strivings towards a global movement of regenerative, localized culture in times of societal and climate collapse.

Andrea Saito is an artist, art therapist, and researcher. She holds MAs in Cultural Management (International University of Catalonia) and in Artistic and Creative Therapies (ISEP, Barcelona). She also studied engraving (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Japanese Woodblock (University of the Arts, London). She published Essencial Tune (2016) and Art Lab vol.1 (2017) in collaboration with Radar Art Lab. Andrea led interdisciplinary art labs in Lima and was in charge of the Cine Olaya Cultural Center. She worked as a cultural manager at Nau Bostik and Acid House in Barcelona. She currently offers Art Therapy sessions for individuals and groups and is a Dance Therapy teacher at Holistic Dansart, Puigcerdà.

Holly Taylor-Zuntz is a singer and choir director. Her mission is to bring the folk music of Georgia to a global audience. She holds a BA (Hons) in European Theatre Arts from Rose Bruford College and studied Natural Voice Leader with Frankie Armstrong as well as Advanced Circle Singing and Vocal Improvisation leader training with Guillermo Rozenthuler. Over the past five years, Holly has been conducting research on Georgian polyphonic music, spending several months a year in Georgia learning from local ethnomusicologists. She created three theatre shows about Georgian music in the UK. She is the founder and co-host of the Voices of the Ancestors podcast and directs the Georgian choir in Oxford. Holly also leads open-access community choirs and offers workshops that encourage everyone to sing, no matter their vocal experience.

Mezu Ofoegbu is a Nigerian-American artist born in Los Angeles, California. Their work bridges sociology and art, informed by his graduate studies at St. John’s University. As a socially-engaged artist, they use data as a medium to translate lived and (re)imagined experiences through an afrofuturistic lens.

At present, Mezu is the founder of Infinity Village Lab (ILab), a lab dedicated to cross-innovation. ILab advocates for socio-technical approaches to effect transformational climate action. Abstract intellectualism and world building fuels their creative processes, enabling explorations into complex themes that reshape existing boundaries.

Notably, Mezu’s artwork was selected as a winner of the Black Art Rising Award,presented by LIFEWTR. Through their work, he actively calls for socio-environmental transformation and provokes viewers to engage their own critical experiences.

Jorge N. Ferrer, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, author, and educator. Jorge was a professor for more than 20 years at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he served as chair of the Department of East–West Psychology. He is the author many articles and books on transpersonal psychology, integral education, religious studies, and intimate relationships, including Espiritualidad Creativa: Una Vision Participativa de lo Transpersonal (Kairos, 2004), Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion (SUNY Press, 2017), and Love and Freedom: Transcending Monogamy and Polyamory (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). Jorge was a member of the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research as well as an advisor to the Religions for Peace organization at the United Nation.

Kara Leva is a singer and pianist as well as a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher. She holds an MA in Transdisciplinary Studies at the Zurich school of Arts. She works on intercultural and transdisciplinary projects focusing on the embodied voice in diverse and multimedia contexts. Kara gives workshops for theater as well as dance productions.

Rafael Duarte-Uriza is a researcher and transdisciplinary artist. He empowers people to comprehend that we part of parcel of the interdependent web of nature. Rafael studied Fine Arts at the National University of Colombia where he created the piece “Reciprocal Compression, a refuge for bees” with the support of The Foundation for Colombian Biodiversity. His work focuses on radical interdependence, coexistence, and regeneration to create art installations providing spaces of ecological awareness. His performative practice is also informed by Vipassana meditation and Contact Improvisation. As a researcher in Geobiology and Biohabitability, he is investigating georelations and respiration. His current project is entitled "Breathe deeply, dwell slowly, walk silently”.

Daniela García Castro is an actor, playwright, and voice coach. She holds a BA in acting from the University of Chile in Santiago and an MA in Theatre Studies from the Sorbonne University in Paris, exploring the place of vocal research in the actor’s education. She is the creator of Voz en movimento as well as a certified voice instructor from the Roy Hart Centre where she is a resident teacher. Daniela co-founded the Compagnie des Chimistes and collaborates with a number of theatre projects such as Pantheatre, BigCity, L'autre bout du monde, and Points de suspensions.

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Stephanie Canavesio is a therapist and meditation teacher. She builds a safe space for expansion, leading with empathy and listening. Each time she comes to the cushion with her students it is together with equality and equanimity, truth and trust – from a place of knowing the work that is necessary to reach our fullest potential, awareness of narrative, a conscious mind, and an open heart. No stranger to the limitations of our addictive patterns, Stephanie is an authentic guide for the healing journey. She is the founder of Presence Embodied, which brings together Compassionate Inquiry, meditative practices, and various other healing modalities. Stephanie connects you to the present moment to restore you to your truest expression and the practice of consciousness.

Maria R. Sideri is transpersonal psychotherapist and creator of the methodology of Transpersonal Dance Therapy. Student of different teachers of the buddhist and the shivaist tantric tradition. Therapist and teacher of body oriented psychospiritual integration. She holds a degree in Psychology from the Panteion University of Social and Political Studies of Athens as well as an MSc in Culture and Mental Health from UCL London and an MA in Dance Movement Therapy from the University of Barcelona. She trained in Reichian/Lowenian body-oriented psychotherapy, holistic sexuality, female sexuality and systemic constellations.  She has designed and leads a four-year training course in Transpersonal Dance Therapy: transpersonal psychotherapy through dance, movement and creativity. She lives and works between Ibiza, Barcelona, and Athens.

Karina Bertolotto is a psychologist and art therapist. She trained in Humanistic Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology, Artistic Expressive Therapy, and Integrative Somatic Therapy. Since 2005 she teaches Art therapy and Expressive Movement at the University of Barcelona and she is in charge of coordinating the Psychology programme for the Master's of Music Therapy at Barcelona University. She is a PhD candidate at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Her doctoral research focuses on performance as a contribution to Art Therapy practices and sacred dimensions of the feminine. She is student and a collaborator of Claudio Naranjo and organizes his teachings for SAT programmes in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Uruguay, and China.

The Chamgeliani Sisters – Ana, Eka, and Madona – are a trio coming from a long lineage of singers from the isolated and mountainous province of Svaneti. Keeping their oral tradition alive, they sing songs that have been passed down for centuries from generation to generation.

Ana, Eka, and Madona grew up in Svaneti and deep knowledge of the ecosystem and the culture in which the songs emerged. Ana, who is also a member of ensemble Sathanao, is a virtuoso on the ch'uniri, a 3-string bowed viol. Madona is an ethnomusicologist and scholar of Svan culture.Her research includes studying and recording ancient songs about the forest queen Dali. Eka is a housewife and plays an important role in hosting guests at their home in the village of Lakhushdi. All three sisters are at the helm of the effort to preserve and continue the singing tradition of Svaneti.

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Adriana Medina is a clown artist. She is co-founder and co-director of the clown company Yo SoY Semilla as well as the founder and artistic director of the interdisciplinary clown project Bee Infinite. Adriana has been performing as a clown and leading workshops for over 20 years, inviting people to laugh,cry, and play to cultivate joy and curiosity. To her, the art of clowning is a way of opening our hearts and of allowing creativity to spring forth through presence, simplicity, and awe. She draws inspiration from her training in voice work, yoga, Qigong, and reiki, as well as on her work as a visual artist. Since 2018 she has been organizing networks of creatives composed not only of professional artists but of diverse local communities. Adriana has taught workshops, exhibited, and performed in different cities of Mexico, as well as in the USA, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica, and China.

Benedetta Fabbri is a classical violinist, holistic sound practitioner, teacher, and translator. Benedetta holds a master’s degree in Violin and Music Performance from the Giuseppe Verdi State Conservatory, Turin, Italy.Her work revolves around the call to facilitate communication as a form of translation. Communication between her embodied self and the world as well as between languages, people, and nature. As a stage musician, recording artist,and orchestra teacher, she always aims for the commingling of instrument al languages and contemporary music genres.

Benedetta lives part of the year on the small volcanic island of Filicudi (northeast of Sicily) where she focuses both her artistic and personal research on the inner need to connect with the energy of nature through the vibration of her violin – a project called EolieMusica. The performance stands between free improvisation, sound meditation,ritual, and sensory experience.

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Shreya Radhika Lakhani is a Sanskrit scholar and mantra singer as well as a social impact consultant. Shreya has studied Sanskrit and been immersed in Vedic traditions since the age of six. She holds an MA in Sanskrit from Balliol College, University of Oxford, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Law. She deepened her knowledge of Sanskrit at Chinmaya Vishwa Vidyapeeth, Kerala, and at Parmarth Niketan Ashram, Rishikesh, the latter of which has been her spiritual home. Her expertise includes Pāninean grammar and linguistics, Advaita Vedanta philosophy, epics, poetry, and other literary works and thought systems. Shreya also has a breadth of experience across the social impact sector. Her work has spanned interfaith dialogue for WASH, women’s education and menstrual health, climate tech and policy, and social activism for decolonisation. She believes Sanskrit,mantra, and ancient wisdom have the power to transmute our inner worlds and transform our communities to create harmony in the world.

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