Welcome to “The Emergent Human where we explore Optimizing Health, Embodied Spirituality and Post Conventional Living. I am Michael Ostrolenk, a therapist, coach and educator and I am your host

Today’s show is brought to you by Cosper Scafidi, an amazing body worker in the Northern Virginia area who has integrated different somatic practices into his work. To learn more about his work, visit his website: www.cosperscafidi.com/.

A shoutout to my mentor, colleague and friend Stuart Sovatsky, a scholar of kundalini Yoga and author of “Advanced Spiritual Intimacy: The Yoga of Deep Tantric Sensuality”

Ostrolenk speaks to Christos Galanis (MFA) who is an interdisciplinary artist and human geographer who has spent the past 15 years or so tracking, and making visible, the various ’spells’ through which colonialism, human-supremacism, and narcissism inhabit and inhibit relationships - both individually and culturally. His recently launched business - Kairos - helps clients to integrate more meaning and beauty into their lives through individualised ceremonies and rituals. In addition to his academic publishing, lecturing, and ethnographic field-work, he also brings years of experience teaching workshops on walking, play, performance, kink, and eco-sexuality. A practicing Animist, he is a graduate of Stephen Jenkinson’s Orphan Wisdom School, and is completing a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

LINKS:

Website: www.christosgalanis.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christmas7

We will close out today’s show with one of my favorite singer/song writers Stuart Davis and his song “Nothing in Between”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdRqCc3LfDI

BOOKMARKS:

00:00 Intro

01:30 Christos' life-path, describing a spiritual awakening in his early 20s and a moment of grace one morning

06:30 What led from there to working with ceremony and ritual through Kairos, focusing on humans' capacity for creating beauty

10:30 Describing temporality as medicine and the meaning of time as Kairos, Chronos, and Aion in Greek.

15:15 Christos describes contexts where tuning into Kairos supports significant beginnings, endings, and transitions in life. How to slow down and allow your being to 'catch up' with what has already transpired in your life, where perhaps you didn't have the time and space to properly mark it

22:55 Christos shares the story of a significant rite of passage that he undertook, travelling to Spain to walk a pilgrimage to support the transition of a close family member's spirit who died tragically

26:40 Christos describes how his walking and movement practice is central to his maintaining a link to receiving input from Creation, which then serves as a source for the seeds of ceremonies and rituals.

30:30 Christos uses an example from Michael's own life to walk through what it might look like to work with Kairos with a prospective client. He describes how he supports the client to 'tune-in' to the un-rational, embodied intelligence that is Kairos in order to discover what the proper way to proceed might be. Christos also describes the importance of community and gathering together to witness, and to share stories.

36:40 Michael asks Christos to describe his relationship with beauty and how it's central to his work with ceremony and ritual. Christos then recounts a youtube video which documents a chimpanzee in a state of awe and exuberance as he interacts with a waterfall.

43:02 Michael and Christos discuss how important it is to bring more ceremony and ritual into our lives, especially for those who are not connected to any of the major world religions or ancestral traditions. Christos describes how ceremonies also ground us in place and connect us to our corners of the world and also to our non-human neighbours.

49:03 Christos gives info for how to reach him and work with him

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