The Kalikalos Greek Authentic Holistic Community Project

Johanna Aro Louis with Jock Milleson in 2012

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!

Johanna Aro-Louis