Turning Fear into Ritual: Becoming The Protagonist of Your Own Healing Myth

Picture: Oskar Kokoschka - Salomé, 1906

As I wrote in my first post, the word Panik was born out of my personal encounters with panic attacks. These moments have deeply shaped me - and they continue to influence the way I move and navigate through the world. But that is only one part of the story. The decision to call this project Panik holds another meaning just as important, and is in many ways the poetic inspiration and essence of this project. So that other half comes from the concept of Psychomagic, developed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Psychomagic, sometimes referred to as a kind of artistic shock therapy, is based on the idea that symbolic, often surreal actions can reach the unconscious mind more directly than rational words or traditional talk therapy. These symbolic gestures, often theatrical, dreamlike or ritualistic are designed to bypass logic and speak directly to the emotional body, where old wounds are stored. The goal is to rewrite personal narratives, dissolve blockages and initiate healing on a deeper level.

Jodorowsky’s approach is highly intuitive. The solutions in Psychomagic are not fixed or formulaic - they emerge from an almost poetic sensitivity to the person’s life story and ancestry. It’s therapy as performance, healing as myth-making.

This project is not just about addressing individual moments of anxiety or fear - it is about creating a collective ritual space. Through shared experiences like performances, interventions, or participatory rituals, we explore the hidden tensions, traumas, and hopes that connect us. Transforming personal and collective anxieties into an expressive, cathartic experience it becomes a kind of living psychomagical act - a container for symbolic gestures, surreal storytelling and immersive theatre that allows us to confront what haunts us and in doing so begin to transform it.

Jodorowsky believed that art should heal. I share that belief. Art, when it is honest and raw and unafraid, can reach into places that language alone cannot. It can bypass shame, silence, and fear and communicate directly with the very core of our being, opening up new points of reference and offering new insights.

If we take things a step further we can begin to question some of the myths that may have originated from individual struggles as a medicine - struggles that over time revealed themselves as timeless human challenges. These stories remind us that history often repeats itself and that certain obstacles have persisted for centuries. In this way, myths and stories connect us all, offering a sense of unity and healing that transcends time and culture.

It’s also a reminder that, at our core, we are our own best healers. While I deeply respect and value the role of trained psychologists and psychiatrists (Jodorowsky himself is officially trained in psychotherapy) and it is the path I’ve chosen for myself as well, I believe it’s equally important not to underestimate the powerful miracles any of us can perform when the heart is open and aligned. Through dedicated self-work, reflection and shadow work, we begin to ground ourselves more deeply. From that grounded place, we can reconnect with our intuition, that inner compass we so often silence. And in doing so, we start to become our own best friend again - learning to listen, to understand, and to give ourselves what we truly need to heal on every level: mind, body and soul.

So Panik Project is hopefully not just a project. It’s a way of turning panic into power and fear into a collective form of healing. Using different ways, methods and therapeutic approaches of tapping into subconscious mind. And reaching for the roots of the problems that causes us suffering and eventually changing our lives for better.

This concept has simply served as a powerful inspiration for how I approach healing through art and it offers an angle which can then be widened, opened up for discussion and taken further into any direction. The idea of using creativity and figurative language as a healing force is something I have been reflecting on and exploring long before I discovered Jodorowsky’s work on Psychomagic. He was able to offer some kind of framework for it which seemed to sit well with my understanding and beliefs and all together he is a big inspiration for me not only as a filmmaker but also as an artist, thinker and healer.