In the Footsteps of Chiron

I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be hosting my first travel experience-retreat in Greece! This trip is the culmination of decades of experience leading travel-study programs. It is a personal milestone and a project that I have put all my heart, soul, and mind into.

My co-leaders are the dynamic duo at Vitalist Healing Traditions, Dr. Carina Lopez and Sakis Stamou. Dr. Carina Lopez has extensive experience studying homeopathy in the Greek islands. Sakis Stamou has worked as a chef and culinary tour leader in the Pelion region as well as the Dodecanese islands and Athens.

Together we’ve designed a ten day experience in Mounts Pelion and Olympus, an astonishingly beautiful and magical region of Greece. In the Footsteps of Chiron will inspire health and wholeness through simple living in harmony with nature. This retreat holds tremendous transformative potential through a personal encounter with the eternal stories of Greek myth and the ideas of Greek mystery practices. Participants will reconnect with their own deep well of health, well-being, and divine wisdom.

The retreat schedule allows for ample time for relaxation and reflection. The team will be available for one-on-one meetings for massage, dietetics, and astrology readings.

The inspiration behind this tour is the centaur Chiron, a wise teacher, healer, and seer of the Greek mythic tradition. The mythological context of our tour follows below.

To learn more about our magical journey, please visit our website or see my Events page.

The Mythological Inspiration for Our Retreat

The Centaur Chiron served as a wise and powerful guide to arts and medicine in the ancient Greek mythological imagination. Adopted by Apollo, Chiron taught generations of Greek heroes the craft of traditional medicine, sacred creative expression, and divine prophecy. As an immortal half-man and half-horse he lived between realms, privy to divine and terrestrial wisdom.

The beautiful wooded slopes of Mount Pelion were Chiron's vibrant paradise. In myth, this area was a magical forest where gods and mortals came to be healed, cavort with nymphs and muses, and experience ritual transformation.

Our journey will explore the forests, streams, and caves where Chiron is said to have practiced his healing, creative, and prophetic arts. With the guidance of experts in natural medicine, we'll explore the traditional foods, medicines, and healing practices of generations of Greeks living in this area. As we wind our way through Mount Pelion's slopes and coastline, we'll unravel the myths of Chiron, his fellow centaurs, and the heroes they influenced.

In modern times, Chiron is known as the "wounded healer" due to the story of the way he died: hit in the foot by one of Hercules' poison arrows, Chiron suffered the pain of a mortal wound that could not actually kill him because he was immortal. Eventually, Chiron could not endure the torment of this wound any longer and asked Zeus to give up his immortality for the sake of saving Prometheus from his eternal punishment. After dying, he ascended into the heavens as the constellation Centaurus and today has an asteroid named after him.

Chiron's status as an immortal mortal and a guide to both the terrestrial and celestial realms is reflected in the other mythical figures we will encounter on this journey-- Orpheus and Dionysus as leaders of mystery cults.

In addition to Mount Pelion, we will also visit the southern slopes of Mount Olympus and continue to immerse ourselves in forest glens, gentle streams, and sacred caves. Here we'll come face-to-face with the remains of Orpheus' and Dionysus' mystery cults which promised transformation, transcendence, and ecstasy through redemptive underworld journeys. As we traverse the vale of Tempe and the southern slopes of Olympus, we'll visit churches and shrines that continue to offer the promise of miraculous healing.

The myth of Orpheus and his mellifluous lyre has remained an inspiration for musicians and artists for thousands of years. Enchanted by muses, he is said to have danced and sung his way through the forests we will visit. But the story of Orpheus and the spiritual practice he founded is more than just inspirational music. The text of the Orphic hymns reveal the power of words and music to summon the gods for the purpose of personal transformation. The basic tenet of the Orphic mysteries is to embrace darkness and the underworld in order to receive illumination and transformation.

Our journey together will reveal the stories, symbolisms, and places where Greeks have been seeking regeneration for thousands of years.

Image Credit:

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. "Orphée charmant les faunes [sic]" New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed December 6, 2018. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-b3d6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99