Sharonna Karni Cohen, Igal Tartakovsky, Karina Dessau, and Roy Salomon
Navigating Trauma: The Festivals and Beyond

Sharonna Karni Cohen is the Head of Partnerships at Safe Heart, having joined the organization six months ago to assist with her extensive background as a social, wellness and arts entrepreneur. She is the founder of Dreame, a global collective of artists, known for creating bespoke art installations and fostering community through art across multiple countries. At Safe Heart, she focuses on developing strategic partnerships that enhance the organization’s mission to support the festival survivors.

Igal is a mindfulness-based psychotherapist (ACT, Satya) who specializes in psychedelic integration. He is also the founder of “Soft Landing” – a project that supports young people on their return to Israel from their post-army journey abroad.

Karina is the Head of Holistic Treatments and a co-founder at Safe Heart, where she leads the holistic therapy program. She practices as a psychotherapist at her private clinic, specializing in psychotherapist based Mindfulness-trained in the Hakomi method. Karina also brings her expertise as an Emotional Water Therapist and a Focusing-Oriented Breathing Psychotherapist to her role, enhancing the therapeutic offerings at Safe Heart. She is also currently completing a degree in Social Sciences at Bar-Ilan University.

Professor Roy Salomon is a Full Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Haifa. His research primarily explores perceptual consciousness and bodily-self-consciousness, utilizing advanced techniques such as virtual reality, computational models, and neuroimaging. He earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, and completed postdoctoral training at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), focusing on bodily-self consciousness and multisensory integration.

Prof. Salomon has made significant contributions to understanding non-typical states of consciousness, such as those experienced in psychosis and under psychedelics. His research is known for its innovative approach to empirically studying the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying “big” questions like “What is the self?” or “How do we know what is real?”.

In addition to his academic achievements, Prof. Salomon is a co-founder and board member of SafeHeart, a non-profit NGO dedicated to assisting trauma survivors, particularly those affected by the large-scale terror attack during the Supernova music festival in October 2023. This tragic event provided a unique opportunity to study trauma processing under altered states of consciousness, an area where Prof. Salomon’s work is pioneering. His efforts in this field aim to offer new insights and potential therapeutic approaches for treating trauma and related mental health conditions.