My name is Mati Esther Engel. I am a practicing performance artist, theologian and spiritual care practitioner.
I’m currently available for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, Speakers Engagements, and Ritual & Performance Collaborations.
I’m a native New Yorker, formerly based on the Southside of Chicago. You might find me frequenting the streets of Berlin, Vermont - or someplace new.
A Still Small Voice
Chaplaincy Documentary
To book a screening email -
email.hedgehogfilms@gmail.com
with a speakers engagement reach out to mati.esther.engel@gmail.com
After graduating with a degree in Theology and Ministry, I spent three years training as a clinical hospital chaplain. I practiced how to accompany individuals and families through important life transitions, such as end-of-life, chronic illness, and acute trauma. I now work with plant medicine and provide relational support and spiritual accompaniment in more intensive emergent settings.
I am creative, constantly developing new techniques that combine theological praxis and contemplative practices, in the service of care, grief counseling, and performance theology.
Ketamine Assisted Therapy
I partner with psychedelic medical providers to support you before and after your medicine journeys. This is a 3-part series, where you and I design the kind of care and spiritual emergence that would be supportive. For consultation.
Founding Guide and Leader of Self-Expression Modality. Labyrxnth is a Modern Spiritual Care Community Platform that connects clients with expert practitioners with potent alternative modalities for personal growth and spiritual development. “Labyrnxth is a community-led spiritual care model designed for life’s inflection points. Through guided 12-week journeys, participants are given the structure, practices, and support for inward growth, using proven alternative modalities across brain, body, and soul”.
Performance Art
Using a P(a)R - practice as research - is the main methodology I use in my artistic practice. I use this technique as a way to bridge the worlds of theory and academic research with performance and artistic expression. My work is built on a variety of embodied durational-based practices; often anchored in literary, philosophical, and theological text.
Film and Live Performance.
“Performing Authenticity: The Last Redemptive Act”. Chicago, IL, 2019.
My research and performance work centers theology as praxis - an art that can be used, by communities and individuals to communicate and mark rites of passage.
Bio:
I am a queer Jewish feminist theologian, Humanist chaplain, and community organizer. In my ministry work, I utilize the arts, ritual, and experience design to facilitate meaningful rites of passage, community and connection. I grew up in an Ultra-Orthodox Hassidic community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, and have since felt at home in multiple and diverse communal settings. My love and commitment to the development of pop-up communities - be it in hospital settings, churches, forsaken synagogues, night clubs, or my kitchen table- has pushed me to develop my craft as an inclusive and compassionate leader with experience designing, facilitating, and leading vibrant and attuned spiritual spaces.
I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor, with family originating from Munkatz, Hungary, and Ukraine. I simultaneously feel deeply connected to my Afghanistani and Pakistani ancestral roots.