CANADIAN PHYSICIAN AND RENOWNED ADDICTION EXPERT, SPEAKER & BESTSELLING AUTHOR

A renowned speaker, and bestselling author, Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress and childhood development. Rather than offering quick-fix solutions to these complex issues, Dr. Maté weaves together scientific research, case histories, and his own insights and experience to present a broad perspective that enlightens and empowers people to promote their own healing and that of those around them.

After 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, Dr. Maté worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver.

His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction; When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder; Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers; and The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture.

His next book, Hello Again: A Fresh Start for Parents and Their Adult Children is expected in 2026. Gabor is also the creator of a psychotherapeutic approach, Compassionate Inquiry, now studied by thousands of therapists, physicians, counselors, and others in over 80 countries.

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST & FOUNDER OF ACER INTEGRATION

Dr. Watts is a clinical psychologist, a mother, and a nature lover. Her work as the Clinical Lead for Imperial College London’s psilocybin trial has made her one of the most prominent voices and minds in the field of psychedelic research.

Dr Watts has been named as one of the 50 Most Influential People in Psychedelics as well as one of the top Top 16 Women Shaping the Future of Psychedelics. However, what sets Dr. Watts apart is her focus on integration, harm-reduction and inclusion in the psychedelic space. 

Dr. Watts builds tools and structures to foster connectedness after psychedelic experiences, finding inspiration for their design from nature. Through all her work, Rosalind's main learning has been that safe and effective use of psychedelics requires substantial integration support. As a result, she co-founded the UK's first psychedelic integration group, and in 2022 launched ACER (‘Accept, Connect, Embody, Restore’) Integration - a global online integration community where participants follow a 13-month process together to connect more deeply to the self, others, and nature. 

www.AcerIntegration.com

BUDDHIST LAMA & FOUNDER, GAIA MANDALA

Cynthia Jurs, author of Summoned by the Earth: Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World, became a student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the 1980s and in 1994, received his transmission to become a Dharmacharya (Dharma Teacher) in the Order of Interbeing.

Cynthia has also studied and practiced deeply in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1990, she met a 106-year-old Lama living in a remote cave in Nepal, known as Kushok Mangdon (Charok Rinpoche). The question she asked him was, what can we do to bring healing and protection to the Earth? In response, she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases.

For 30 years, Cynthia traveled around the world to places of need with these holy vessels, and through her dedication, this ancient Tibetan practice has come alive for these times. In 2018, she was recognized as an honorary Lama at Tolu Tharling Monastery in Nepal. Inspired by her years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems to bring healing to the Earth, today Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia—a path deeply rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous traditions, and teaching an embodied sacred activism devoted to collective awakening.

Cynthia lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico where she is often found walking in the wilderness with her dog or gardening with her husband. You can find her offerings and join the global healing community she founded at: www.GaiaMandala.net e

HELLENIC WISDOM CARRIER & ANAMNESIS FOUNDER

Apostolia is a ceremonial performance artist, embodied spirituality mentor, and Hellenic wisdom carrier. Her life’s work, Anamnesis, bridges the performing arts with ancient Greek mythology, philosophy, and history. She creates contemporary rituals that activate sacred sites and evoke collective remembrance. Apostolia views ritual as the living enactment of myth, transforming participants into part of the narrative through her experiential ceremonial performances, presented at major archaeological and sacred sites across Greece. These works invite audiences to reconnect with their origins and honor the profound bond between Humanity, Nature, and the Divine.

She graduated with honors from the National School of Dance and spent five years in New York studying choreography and performance art. Supported by scholarships from the A. Onassis Foundation and the Goulandris Foundation, her time in New York deepened her artistic vision and honed her craft.

In addition to her mastery of choreography, her interest in healing and spirituality led her to lifelong studies that span Water Healing, Music, Voice, Physical Theater, AiKiDo, Scuba Diving, Craniosacral Therapy, Breathwork, and Reiki, reflecting a diverse and holistic approach to her art and teachings.

During the first 15 years of her career, Apostolia choreographed numerous productions of Ancient Greek Tragedy, skillfully blending Logos, Melos, and Orchesis (Word, Music, Movement) with a deep understanding of ritualistic performance. As the founder of The Happiness Retreat since 2016, she integrates her expertise in movement, healing arts, and spirituality to lead transformational workshops, retreats, and experiences.

Among her major achievements are Drops of Breath, the world’s first underwater dance performance; Synergy, the globally broadcast opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games; and From Darkness to Light, the first overnight performance at a Greek archaeological site. Featured in over 40 international festivals, Apostolia continues to inspire and empower through her visionary teachings and transformative performances.

FOUNDER OF ONE SANCTUM

Lara Tambacopoulou is a transdisciplinary practitioner whose work explores the intersection of the healing arts, altered states of consciousness, trans generational transmissions and ancestral wisdom. Swiss born and of British and Greek decent, Lara’s path continued to weave through languages, continents and disciplines—beginning in business, journalism and photography before deepening and spreading into the realms of therapeutic modalities, plant medicine, and indigenous healing traditions.

Influenced by her unique family background—her mother was married to Timothy Leary in the 1970s —and informed by years of research, as well as a close friendship and mentorship with Dr. Gabor Maté, Lara Tambacopoulou entered the field of therapeutic studies with a dedicated focus on the healing capacities of psychedelic-assisted therapy, systemic constellation work, and integrative models that draw from contemporary psychotherapeutic modalities as well as indigenous initiatory and ceremonial practices. Lara has engaged in immersive study with traditional communities in Central and South America, examining the ethical and relational dynamics of cross-cultural healing and has completed a three year course in psychedelics and mysticism with the AWE foundation. 

She founded One Sanctum, with the goal to foster a global platform dedicated to community-based inquiry into individual and collective transformation. Through her writing, speaking engagements, workshops, and ceremonial work, she invites others to remember their original belonging—to land, lineage, and the life that seeks expression through us. Her research and practice are rooted in a commitment to decolonial approaches to healing, narrative medicine, and the reintegration of our ecological and cultural contexts as essential pathways toward wholeness.

She currently resides between worlds, honouring the old while tending to the emergence of the new and she can most often be found under the blue skies of her beloved Greece.

RELIGIOUS & PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES SCHOLAR

Robert Forte is a scholar of the history and psychology of religion, with a focus spanning over four decades on the ancient and modern use—and misuse—of psychedelic substances, now often referred to as entheogens in spiritual contexts. Since 1983, he has conducted underground research on the effects of MDMA and worked with cancer patients using ayahuasca in natural settings in Peru.

His journey began in 1978, when a curiosity about meditation led him to explore the roots of religious insight. Fascinated by how ancient cultures developed profound techniques for understanding consciousness, he discovered the central role psychedelics played in many spiritual traditions—igniting a lifelong inquiry into entheogenic practices.

Robert has pursued this path as a student, guide, researcher, editor, teacher, and storyteller. He studied psychology, sociology, political science, and religion at several institutions, earning a BA in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz in 1981. Following an internship with Stanislav Grof at Esalen Institute, he completed an MA in Religious Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1985.

While most of his work has taken place outside traditional institutions, he has held faculty positions at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. James Fadiman once called him a “great, not well known hero of the psychedelic movement.”

Robert has been fortunate to collaborate with many of the founding figures of the modern psychedelic renaissance, including R.G. Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Stanislav Grof, Timothy Leary, Huston Smith, and others. He has edited and published several influential works, including Entheogens and the Future of Religion (1997), Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences of Timothy Leary (1999), and the 20th and 30th anniversary editions of The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries (1998, 2008).

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ORGANISATION FOR THE PREVENTION OF INTENSE SUFFERING

Jonathan Leighton, PhD, is an ethics strategist, writer and social change activist. He is the Executive Director of the Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS), a Swiss think-and-do tank he founded in 2016 to promote the prevention of suffering of all sentient beings as a top societal priority. Through OPIS he has been carrying out international advocacy for better access to effective medications for people in severe pain, including morphine for terminal cancer patients in lower-income countries and certain psychedelics for patients with horrendously painful conditions like cluster headaches.

OPIS also calls for an end to factory farming and the abuse and torture of animals. Jonathan has promoted pragmatic ideas aimed at creating a lasting peace in Israel-Palestine, including through a webinar and retreat with leading peace activists in 2024. OPIS is increasingly focusing on a multidisciplinary approach to collaborative systemic change and is releasing a Guide to Compassionate Governance in 2025. Jonathan is the author of two books, The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering (2023), in which he proposes a deep, rigorous reassessment of how we think about ethics, and The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe (2011), a reflection on the question “What matters?” A molecular biologist by training, Jonathan grew up in Montreal, Canada and holds degrees from Harvard University and the University of Basel.

www.PreventSuffering.org

WELLNESS COORDINATOR

Ioanna Soulioti began her career as a model in Greece and Europe, In parallel she started a very successful career as a TV and radio presenter, fashion and lifestyle journalist, columnist, and writer. She has been the Editor in Chief for the fashion magazine Harpers Bazaar Greece and she is the author of “The Book of Style”. 

Ioanna has been practicing yoga since 1994, is a 2nd-degree Reiki Healer, Yoga Instructor, and a member of Yoga Alliance 500RYT. Her affection for this ancient technique of well-being leads her to open the first holistic center in Athens, "iSoulYoga & Wellness", for all styles of Yoga practices, energy healings (Reiki, Quantum, Theta), and massage treatments. She has attended many workshops and seminars regarding yoga and wellness such as Kundalini, Tao, Restorative Yoga, and Yoga for Healing Pain and Trauma, by internationally acclaimed teachers (Nota Georgiou, Marina Efraimoglou, Mairi Aroni, Johnny-Lee Friel, Todd Tesen, Nancy Candea). She organizes, holds, or participates as an instructor,  seminars, workshops, retreats, and holidays all based on Yoga, Wellness, and Wellbeing, in energy-filled places in Greece.