01 · Story
What brings change in the world?
And more importantly, what kind of change is it? And what is its impact? These questions are the main focus of my interest and guide my work, whether it is with individuals, teams, or organisations.
My constant drive since my early years has been to know what's beyond and to keep expanding my inquiry. Part of it, till today, is childlike curiosity. Underneath it all, though, I always felt I didn't quite fit, and that led me to wonder.
For a long time, the wondering had a clear direction: physics. I approached my understanding of the world through knowledge, and the satisfaction of my aspirations through peeling off layers of understanding and experiencing the revelation of new ones. In that approach, the structures of the world appeared as big as the satisfaction of my aspirations, eternally infinite.
It was that drive that led me to a physics degree in Athens, a Master of Advanced Study at Cambridge, a PhD at USC on black holes and string theory, and later on in research at the University of Oviedo in Spain and at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Day after day, I studied the invisible structures that hold our universe together. Patterns we can't see directly, but shape everything around us.
But there were things science could not reach. Like how to connect better with myself and others, and how to be in the world in relation to the world instead of outside studying it. For years, I was ignoring these signals, mainly because I didn't know how to pay attention to them. I was simply ignorant of myself till I could no longer afford to be. Living with chronic pain taught me that understanding something perfectly doesn't mean you can change it.
Thus, I returned to my original drive, that of exploring what's beyond and expanding my inquiry. And that's how I found myself walking the path of many paths. Hypnosis, NLP, energy healing, parts work, mind-body methods, and a great deal of reading across all of them.
Expressive arts shaped me just as much. Music, sitar, and improvisational theatre became part of my skills and journey. They taught me about immersion, presence, consent, trust, and how quickly people change when they enter a shared imaginative space. Not surprisingly, hypnosis and theatre turned out to mirror each other, as they both rely on rhythm, story, and resonance to create altered realities and shift identity.
My journey so far had two parts. One of approaching the world through knowledge and structures, and another one of progressive and expanding intimacy with myself and others. Today, I bring together both of these elements in my approach to human creativity and change. My work is largely characterised by creating the right level of intimacy so we can find the hidden structures and openings where change becomes possible.
Only now, unlike with physics, the structures are human. What we notice, what things mean to us, what our body expects, and what different aspects of us arise along the way. Each of us carries a world like that, with something in it waiting to be born.
After all, this world we hold to deliver.
What we do with it, as long as we hold it, and how we deliver it, is all that matters.
Orestis Vasilakis, 17th of October, 2026.