The Path to Hippocratic Healing

Dr. Irini Vallianatou is biologist, Systematic Botanist – Phytosociologist – Ethnobotanist.  From 1993 to June of 2017, she was working in the Julia & Alexander N. Diomides Botanic Garden of the University of Athens where she was holding a curator position. Now she is working in the Greek company of natural products SYMBEEOSIS as a botanist.

As a researcher, she works on the study of the flora and plant communities of several areas of Greece. She also works on the conservation of endemic, rare, and threatened species of Greek flora as well as of special habitat types. In this frame she was a primary researcher of the Greek habitat project “Natura 2000” and of other projects concerning the recording and monitoring of conservation status for flora species and habitat types of community interest as long as the mapping of the latter. She holds dozens of participations in international and national conferences and many publications in international scientific journals.

She collaborates with Centers for Environmental Education all over Greece. She has studied ancient manuscripts, especially those of “Hippocrates collected works” and has a significant contribution in the creation of Hippocratic Botanical Gardens in Greece, as member of the board of directors of the NPO “Hippocrates for Life’’ and curator of these gardens.

Ioanna Kalypso Glypti is an affiliate of Doniert Evely: “My introduction to Greece, as an Alexandrian Greek, took place when I was a child, but one of many tongues and continents. The Greek islands were my summers, bathed by the phosphorescent blazing light on a white wall, the austere rocks, the dramatic mountains and the incandescence of the blue sky pouring into the sea. Under that light and the songs of Leonard Cohen, nostalgia took hold of me, as like the ship of Ulysses Nostos I began to learn how to word my emotions in this ancient tongue. This was a voyage into the light as I managed to escape my personal darkness and the various Labyrinths of my subconscious mind. In fact, I was finding a way to freedom through words.
Freedom, or Eleutheria, in my tongue means she who walks freely towards what she or he loves and brings love to his or her soul, because the chains are many and not always tangible, and so able to be escaped from.
In this moment I realized that my tongue embodied my spiritual essence. It is not surprising that everything here in Greece speaks now just as it has for centuries making everything clear -without being known. It is this clarity that I return to within me to understand what is unknown as we go through these difficult times. As I write the word clarity, everything becomes translucent like the morning dawn as the ancient God Apollo with his chariot announces the arrival of light.“

Sotirios Prapas, an internationally renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, was born in Sykourio, Larissa, in 1954. He graduated from the Medical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and specialized in Cardiothoracic Surgery under Professor Panagiotis Spyrou at the “G. Papanikolaou” General Hospital. He completed a two-year fellowship at the prestigious Brompton Hospital in London and worked for eight years at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center. In 2001, he organized and has since directed the Cardiac Surgery Clinic at Errikos Dynan Hospital, which he developed into an international training center for the anaortic off-pump coronary artery bypass (Anaortic OPCAB) technique.

A pioneer in the use of the “P-graft” technique—an arterial circuit that avoids manipulation of the aorta—Sotirios Prapas established innovative approaches to myocardial revascularization, providing highly safe solutions for high-risk patients. In 2005, he was the first in Greece to apply the method of injecting stem cells into the myocardium. His academic and scientific contributions are extensive, with numerous publications and presentations at international conferences. As the founder of the Euro-Asian Bridge, he has promoted scientific collaboration across more than 30 countries in the Eurasian region. He holds the position of Permanent Vice President of the World Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (W.S.C.T.S.), and is a member of more than 10 international scientific societies.

His international recognition includes praise from the famed cardiac surgeon Denton Cooley, live demonstrations of the “P-graft” method at international forums, and a personal commendation by Federico Benetti, who described him as “one of the most important cardiothoracic surgeons of our time.

“Where the love of medicine meets the love of humanity, there lies the essence of our art.” – Hippocrates