About us

We are a collective of clinicians, activists, and our people in exile supporting projects in scientific research and advocacy of safe, regulated psychedelic-assisted therapy in the Western Balkans. We believe we can change the culture around PTSD through the healing power of addressing and transforming trauma. 

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Healing Balkans Principles of Life and Work

May we each be accountable for the words and ways that we offer, use, speak and share …may we listen for what is authentic, true and serves the intention of healing, learning, community and love. May we awaken to what has been taken, invented, translated, stolen, or colonized – and pay attention to what we do  and who does it serve: May we give back, stand with and find the common ground of respect for all voices and gifts….for the life and well-being of all beings, on our land.

Healing Balkans is an emerging, grassroots organization, deeply committed to healing, regeneration and resiliency of the spirit, indigenous culture, and traditions of the peoples in the lands now known as the broader Balkan Region region. We, the founders of the organization, as Bosnians and Herzegovinians, many with hyphenated identities of our new lands feel that our commitment and passion are supported by how we have grown through our adopted identities. Therefore, as translators between these east-west cultures, traditions and worldviews, we are mindful and proud of how delicate a task we are undertaking in helping revive our own indigenous roots.

While our main focus at Healing Balkans is  on what we are going to do in this endeavor to heal our peoples and our land, we are  deeply in touch with how we are going to ground our work and nourish the healing process. In the decades since the latest wars in the region, each of us has seen and experienced through our own work, a repetitive re-injuring of our people, spirit, and traditions, through the colonizing approaches of western organizations and entities that have passed through, even when intending to help.

We, the founders, are people indigenous to the heart of the Balkans region, bringing both our love and Indigenous ways, as well as expertise as professionals in the Western fields of psychology, psychiatry, medicine, neuroscience, business, and nonprofit management.  We are committed to craft a well-informed, sensitive approach to our mission of bringing healing to our peoples and our land.  This includes bringing the best global practices, Indigenous and Western, in medicine-assisted individual, collective and inter-generational PTSD healing to the Balkans.

From that standpoint of professional knowledge and indigenous wisdom, we set out these core principles that ground ourselves and our work, and we ask that in collaboration with Healing Balkans, all our current and prospective partners, respectfully observe them, especially when coming to visit, work, or live in our lands:

ACKNOWLEDGING THAT:

1. Naša narodna mudrost – folk wisdom holds vital importance in our healing and re-rooting. Our people have existed and persisted in this troubled region for well over 2,000 years. Their resistance to various colonizers’ (Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, the Nazi occupation, etc.) attempts to alter both how and why life is lived here is what made them survive. We, therefore, oppose any approaches to healing and regeneration that attempt to assert worldviews and practices foreign and unnatural to us. 
2. Respect – We will treat you with utmost respect, as our “Guest”.  We will offer you our best food, accommodation, transport, music, humor, stories, and everything else, even it’s the last piece of food we have in the house.  It’s just who we are.  We also expect that you arrive as a “Guest”, and treat us, our land, our customs, our history, our stories with respect.
3. Sabur – which translates to patience/flow/emergence, is an important guiding notion for our people and way of life. Sabur encompasses the ideas of respecting the nature around us, the intuiting within us, and the time it takes for something we wish for, or something we are guided to, to emerge. We therefore recognize that healing cannot be rushed, scheduled or bestowed upon us from the outside, and that pushing against Sabur impedes healing.
4. Humor and laughter are central to our culture and have always served as both our medicine and our shield. While our sense of humor can be dark, understanding it means crossing most of the distance to understanding our culture. We therefore, honor, lift and celebrate that humor and treat the absence of it, in any work of healing, an oversight that needs correcting. We’ll never use humor to avoid, or be passive-aggressive, and any humor at anyone’s expense, we can easily substitute ourselves, or mothers, children, and our best friends.  Bosnian humor uplifts.
5. Chejf and Rahatluk – which translates to joy and the art of savoring, is an important cultural tool that we use to keep life and work in healthy balance, and give space and time for things to unfold without force, rushing, or insistence on other ways.  We say in Bosnia “Pozuri polako” (“Festina lente” / hurry slowly), which means you will get to your place, but you should not rush and you should not be slow, but rather follow the flow of our ancient indigenous ways.

–Healing Balkans Collective