YEAR OF INQUIRY | MONTH 1 THE MONTH OF ΤΌ ΌV

For most of my life, I never asked the question: Where does healing begin

This question can seem almost insignificant. Healing begins when it begins. We meet a client, apply our knowledge, offer our presence, and accompany them through a therapeutic process. In many ways, the answer appears self-evident.

Yet that was not what the question carried for me.

The more I sat with it, the more it felt as though healing may already have begun before the first session, before the first intervention, and perhaps even before the conscious decision to seek help. The question gradually shifted my attention from what we do in the healing process to what may already be unfolding before we arrive. 

This subtle change in perspective began to reshape the way I understood healing. The more I lived with the question, the more I found myself revisiting experiences I thought I already understood. 

As I looked back over my life and work, I began to recognise how many assumptions I had unconsciously carried about healing. I had assumed that healing was connected to solving, helping, guiding, intervening, and taking a different course of action. I had assumed that being of service meant offering something useful, effective, and purposeful. I had assumed that healing was closely linked to what we do.

These assumptions led me into a deep exploration of therapeutic approaches, psychological models, and healing modalities. Looking back, I sometimes think of it as moving through a boutique shopping centre of healing modalities. Every doorway opened onto a different theory, a different process, a different understanding of human suffering and human flourishing; Each offered something valuable. Each illuminated a different aspect of what it means to be human. And I remain deeply grateful for what these approaches have contributed to my understanding and for the many teachers who helped shape me and my journey.

Yet as I followed the question more closely, I realised that some of the most significant experiences of healing in my own life had emerged elsewhere.

Long before I became a trauma psychotherapist and Brainspotting trainer, I was immersed in the expressive arts and I remain so today. Beginning in the late 1990s, I facilitated art workshops that interwove Eastern philosophy, inspiration from other rebel time voices, time for reflection, encouraging inner inquiry, and growing communities of friendship with the common bond of the expressive arts. People gathered to create, paint, mosaic, write, explore, and share their experiences creating works for themselves or for community public spaces. 

Something meaningful happened in those spaces.

People often left feeling more connected to themselves, more connected to one another, and more connected to life. There was a quality of aliveness, openness, and discovery that was difficult to explain and impossible to reduce to a particular technique. Something was unfolding that seemed larger than the activities themselves.

At the time, I recognised these experiences as valuable. What I did not fully recognise was that I was witnessing healing.

When I look back now, I realise that healing had been present throughout my life long before I had language for it. I encountered it in art studios, in reflective conversations, in, moments of creativity, and in spaces where people felt able to meet themselves with honesty and curiosity and exchanges stories and humour. I witnessed people becoming more connected to themselves, to one another, and to possibilities they had not previously imagined.

The question Where does healing begin? invited me to look again at experiences I thought I had already understood.

Once I began to see this, my understanding of healing gradually expanded. The question was no longer simply how healing happens. The questions became: What conditions are present when healing occurs? What kind of relationship is present? What quality of attention is present? What allows a person to encounter themselves, another, or life itself in a way that opens the possibility for something new to emerge?

Gradually, I became interested in the possibility that healing may be less connected to a particular method and more connected to the environments we create, the relationships we cultivate, and the quality of presence we bring. Perhaps healing emerges when certain conditions come together. Perhaps it arises through encounter. Perhaps it lives in the space between people, between experience and awareness, between expression and understanding.

As these questions deepened, they eventually led me to an ancient Greek phrase: τὸ ὄν, often translated as that which is or simply Being. It is an intriguing place to begin a year-long exploration of healing because it directs our attention toward something fundamental. The fact that something is. The fact that experience is occurring. The fact that life continually presents itself to us. And perhaps even more astonishingly, the fact that anything exists at all.

The ancient philosophers were captivated by this mystery. Before asking how we should live, they asked what it means that there is something rather than nothing. They turned their attention toward existence itself and the larger mystery of Being and the unfolding reality of which we are a part. 

Perhaps this is why  τὸ ὄν,  feels like such an appropriate place to begin.

Before healing, there is existence. I want to explore that existence.

Before understanding, there is encounter. I want to explore that encounter. 

Before meaning, there is experience. I want to explore that experience. 

Before every story we tell about ourselves and the world, there is the simple reality that something is.

As I begin this year-long exploration through twelve ancient Greek words, I do so with more questions than answers. Together we will explore a theme per month starting July 2026 with 1. Being and the following months 2. Presence 3. Wonder 4.Relationship 5.Dialogue 6.Mystery 7.Aporia, 8.The space between 9.healing 10.Creativity 11. Meaning, and 12.Becoming. It feels fitting to begin here. With  τὸ ὄν, With that which is. With the mystery of Being itself. And with the question that changed the way I approached healing: Where does healing begin?

A Gift from the Greeks. The phrase τὸ ὄν is usually translated as that which is. It comes from the ancient Greek verb εἶναι (to be).

Yet for the ancient philosophers, τὸ ὄν was far more than a grammatical construction. It pointed toward one of the deepest questions human beings have ever asked: What does it mean that anything exists at all?

That life is here.

That experience is occurring.

That the universe exists.

That we exist.

The philosopher Parmenides devoted much of his life to contemplating this mystery. For him, τὸ ὄν pointed toward Being itself, the reality that underlies everything that is.

In this sense, τὸ ὄν is not a thing.

It is the fact of existence itself.

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ABOUT A YEAR OF INQUIRY

Over the coming year, I will be spending time with twelve Greek inspired inquiries and the questions they invite. Some of these words are ancient. Others have travelled through philosophy, poetry, mythology, and everyday life. Each carries a way of seeing, a way of relating, and a way of accompanying us in our exploration of what it means to be human.

Rather than moving quickly from one idea to the next, I will be living with one inquiry each month. Listening to it. Exploring its history. And following the questions it awakens. What is this Inquiry About? What is Healing?

The inquiry will follow me in my work, my relationships, my conversations, and my own unfolding. Follow me (here and on Instagram) through this year long journey and be part of the Inquiry too @nouladiamantopoulos.