The seed of this project was sown in the summer of 1980 when I and my daughter Anna (better known as Poppy) spent the summer of 1980 at the Skyros “alternative” workshop Centre on Skyros Island, Greece.

‏In 1980 I had recently dropped out of a 2-decade academic career in experimental psychology, sensing that the University was on its way to becoming a kind of “educational factory”, and no longer providing the “Community of scholars” which had originally attracted me to an academic career. With no clear idea what my next steps would be, I set about travelling to various community projects, including “The Farm” in the USA, a Skinnerian “Walden 2” community in Mexico, and the Skyros Centre in Greece.

‏At Skyros I met Erica Caldwell-Light and her two teenage daughters, Nicola and Yoland. Erica had come to Skyros from Findhorn to teach Yoga. Lying on the beach at Skyros, I talked to Erica about my desire for community and how I would like to transform the Skyros Centre into a working community where the guests and staff together created the community, sharing the cooking, cleaning and maintenance. I contrasted this idea with the traditional business model (used at Skyros) where the staff served the guests. “You better go to Findhorn,” suggested Erica. “That’s what we are doing there.” Thus it was that in the autumn of 1980 I found himself at the Findhorn Foundation attending the Experience week.

‏Once bitten by the Findhorn bug, I knew that my next steps were to be there, so in 1981 I moved to Findhorn, attended the 3-month orientation programme and subsequently joined the Park Kitchen group.

‏Once a week I had an optional shift working at the Findhorn apothecary with Michael Gardner, ND, and later with Shell Hice, who specialised in Flower Essences. During this period I embarked on a correspondence course in Medical Herbalism, eventually earning an ND Naturopathic diploma. When Shell Hice left the community, I took over the focalisation of the Apothecary. During the mid 1980s Findhorn was in process of spinning off some of its assets and a group of members had become “independent”. These former Foundation members created “New Findhorn Association”, NFA.

Jock age 45 at the Findhorn Bay Apothecary

The Foundation offered to sell the Apothecary. I duly bought it and created the Findhorn Bay Apothecary in what had been the toilet block in which Eileen Caddy had often meditated and received guidance for the community. The renovation and transformation of the crude loo block to the Apothecary was carried out by Harold Armstrong and Gordon Cutler who created a “small is beautiful” structure that offered natural remedies and holistic consultations as well as healthy lunches. The Apothecary, now running as a business, continued the practices of Findhorn work departments, with a daily morning attunement, consisting of a council circle with personal sharing and working out the details of the daily work. I was joined at the Apothecary by Johanna Aro Louis, thus beginning a long collaboration and synergy which was to last for many years.

‏In 1987 I came down with the mysterious illness called M.E. (chronic fatigue syndrome), no doubt caused by my workaholic tendencies. I was obliged to leave Findhorn and the Apothecary was taken over and focalised by Johanna until 1990 when it was reabsorbed back into the Foundation as part of the Phoenix shop.

‏It was some years and a healing from Sai Baba before I regained full health. during which I lived in Arizona and wrote a book on “Psychological Medicine for Holistic Practitioners”, inspired from my own personal lessons in healing.

‏About 1995 I returned to Findhorn, renting a caravan in the Park and working as a Naturopathic practitioner at Healthworks in Forres. I continued to explore other communities, often taking my summer holidays at the ZEGG community near Berlin and its sister Centre, Tamera, in Portugal. But I never forgot my dream of creating a sister Findhorn Centre in Greece. Thus it was in 2000, when I lost the lease on the caravan that I had been renting, I invited Peter Jones, who had just finished a term of focalising the pink Minton House healing centre, to join me in a trip out to Greece to try to locate a property suitable and affordable to implement this dream.

‏In that autumn of 2000 I was led to a large former family house located in the Pelion Peninsula forest near the Greek village of Anilio about 3 miles from gorgeous white sandy beaches. Although the property was very rough, lacking even a group room for workshops, the potential was there for a transformation. Perhaps volunteers from Findhorn could be persuaded by the lure of a sunny summer beach holiday to come to assist with building the needed structures. The following summer, a trial programme with one Homeopathic workshop run by Healthworks homeopath, John Jezewski, was implemented. I later said that the reality was “even better than the dream”.

Kalikalos Authentic Holistic Community Project, Greece

Kalikalos Authentic Holistic Community Project, Greece

Thus it was that in 2002 a full programme of summer workshops set out in a colour brochure, run by a half dozen workshop leaders recruited at Findhorn and through national advertisements, was on offer at the “Kalikalos” Centre. The name “Kalikalos” came as a kind donation from a previous group who had offered programmes at this Anilio house.

‏The project grew in 2002 and 2003; but in the late autumn of 2004 Johanna decided that it was too difficult for her to come every summer to Greece and resigned. Left without my primary colleague, once again I suffered a relapse of M.E. and was obliged to depart the project. Andrew Aikman and several colleagues carried on throughout 2005 but gave up after the 2005 season, thus terminating the first attempt to manifest Kalikalos.

‏In 2007 I recovered my health and returned to Greece hoping to pick up the threads at Anilio. As it happened, another group had taken over the property and were running their own workshops, and there was “no room at the Inn”. That autumn I travelled extensively throughout Greece looking for a property. I eventually found a small traditional rustic hotel in Kissos, a charming village about 3 miles from Anilio and the same distance from the beach at Ag Ioannis. With the support of James Kelly, Craig Gibsone, Judith Bone and Johanna, this group created a non-profit educational company (The Holly Foundation) to run the revived project and to give it a sound financial footing.

From 2008 to 2016, Kalikalos developed and prospered as it incorporated its holistic vision, first at Kissos, and later at Anilio. Still later, it acquired a third centre at Hotel Alexandros very near to the beach. In 2010 the original Anilio property became available again, and a group split off from Kissos to take it on. Thus began the Kalikalos Network. In 2012 the project leaders were offered the modern Alexandros hotel, and Friederike Ernst, who had joined us a year or two earlier, agreed to focalise this new third venue. Now we were a network of three nearby centres, each with its own unique energy, but all three retaining the same closely related vision of authentic holistic community, with workshops serving as their primary source of income.

‏For some years, the Kalikalos network grew and prospered. The strength of this network was in its synergy and its diversity. In those days we were perhaps somewhat analogous to the Park, Newbold and Cluny. Staff, leaders and guests were encouraged to experience each campus, and we all met once a week for an evening meal at a local taverna. The focalisers and senior staff from each Centre also met once during the week for personal sharing and business at the late afternoon “Thursday bridge club”. The workshops offered ranged from Sustainable Economics and EcoVillage trainings, through Walking weeks, Creative Family Weeks, Sociocracy, Vipassana meditation, non-duality meetings, a yearly raw food fortnight, nonviolent communication, dance, painting, yoga and other healing modalities.

Kalikalos Authentic Holistic Community Project, Greece

‏Then, in January 2017, without warning, this project’s original vision holder suffered a stroke, and I was knocked completely out of life, becoming a semi-invalid. Since then I have lived as a recluse in an old people’s home in California. Fabien Barouch, who had been a staff member at Kissos for some years, stepped into the focalisation of Kissos, assisted by Adam Reising. They continued for a couple of years; however by 2019 Covid made it very difficult to maintain a viable financial enterprise at Kissos. Accordingly, in the summer of 2021, the Holly Foundation wound up operations, dispersed its assets and infrastructure at Kissos, and dissolved itself.

‏Anilio continues to offer a summer programme. Alexandros under Friederike Ernst is undergoing changes and will continue in some fashion, however the Kalikalos network of holistic Centres has apparently completed its life cycle.

‏Jock Millensen

Jock with Johanna at Kalikalos in 2012

‏Johanna Aro-Louis

In 2002 Jock asked me to join him in Anilio, Greece, volunteering in Kalikalos which meant building a summer community, basically running from early May to September/October. We would work, invite workshop leaders, and go to the beach every day.

‏The week-long, varied workshops would happen in the mornings, and the participants would do a few shifts a week in cooking, washing up, cleaning or gardening.

‏For staff every day was based on morning attunement and sharing, then spreading out to do whatever needed to be done. After lunch we all hopped into a car and headed down to one of the gorgeous beaches.

‏People came from Europe and far flung countries to experience this beautiful way of living. Life-long friendships were formed. The days were sprinkled with laughter, fun, work, togetherness and learning about oneself, others, and life.

‏The community life was full, people were amazing, and the sun was shining all day, every day. I walked the mountains, the beaches, swam in the turquoise clear waters in the Aegean Sea all around this gorgeous Pelion peninsula. The whole peninsula is magical with its lush forests, rivers and wildlife. The healer centaur Chiron lived here, and he still protects, and surprises you by revealing more and more of itself, if you listen.

‏Roger Doudna

‏I first met Jock at Findhorn in the 80’s. He was this strange guy who was converting the public toilet bloc where Eileen Caddy once went to meditate into an apothecary, and busting his bum to get it done over a period of months.

‏When I later got to know Jock better, he had largely finished the Apothecary and handed it over to his successors. His new thing was ‘Findhorn in the Sun’, an antidote to Scottish weather. So, he went travelling and eventually found this place in Greece that fitted the bill. It was a funky old ‘pensione’ on the edge of an old village in the Pelion area called Kissos. He needed people for his board of directors and invited me to join his enterprise.

‏Jock had once been a professor of psychology at a prestigious women’s college in USA, but he actually taught stuff related to ‘behaviour modification’, the least ‘spiritual’ kind of psychology going. He apparently ‘got religion’ at Findhorn and became a devotee of the kind of ‘circles’ that began and ended virtually every event there. And that became the main form of ‘practice’ at Kalikalos.

‏Every morning after a delicious and healthy breakfast we did ‘circles’ on the grapevine covered terrace in the morning sun. “What’s up?”, Jock asked us and usually shared first, setting the scene for the rest of us to open ourselves to one another. It was the glue of the place, and it informed and infused our shared work and play, including long afternoons on the glorious beaches that frame the exquisite Aegean Sea.

‏By the end of every week, we had all ‘fallen in love’ with one another and with life itself. “Something deeper than a suntan” indeed, under a warm and nourishing Greek sun.

‏Thank you, Jock!