Since many of you reached out to me in the past weeks to find out if I was still travelling the world and how things were going, I thought I’d reconnect with the online world and write a blog post again.

After a bit more than a year, my sabbatical is coming to an end now. I had a lot of time to reflect, recharge batteries, be curious again, travel and make new experiences.

In December ‘16 I fled the winter in Germany and went to Ecuador. Curiosity was my guidebook, I slowed down, let nature sink in, enjoyed the food and hospitality of the country, met many simply beautiful people along the way, learned some Spanish, went scuba diving with hammerhead sharks and manta rays, sat on top of mountains, hiked, listened to stories from village elders in Kichwa around the fire, went paragliding, camped in the jungle with Shuar people, befriended a macaw in a hippie village and got inspired by many long conversations.

As always when I’m travelling, my list of recommended next destinations grew and I could easily have gone on. After some weeks, I decided to get back to Berlin though and venture new paths there.

When I first got involved in Ubuntu, I was finishing my studies in Computer Sciences. Last March, thirteen years later, I felt the urge to study again. To open myself up to new challenges, learn entirely new skills, exercise different parts of the brain and make way for a possible new career path in the future. I felt quite uncertain, I wasn’t sure if I was crazy to attempt it,  but I was going to try. I went back to square one and started training as a psychotherapist. This was, and still is, an incredibly exciting step for me and has been a very rewarding experience so far.

I wasn’t just looking for a new intellectual exercise - I was also looking for a way to work more closely with people. Although it’s quite different from what I did up until now, this decision still was very consistent with my beliefs, passions and personality in general. Supporting another human being on their path, helping to bring out their potential and working out new perspectives together have always deeply attracted me.

I had the privilege of learning about and witnessing the work of great therapists, counsellors and trainers in seminars, workshops, books, talks and groups, so I had some guidance which supported me and I chose body psychotherapy as the method I wanted to learn. It is part of the humanistic psychotherapy movement and at its core are (among others) the following ideals:

  • All people are inherently good.
  • People are driven towards self-actualisation: development of creativity, free will, and positive human potential.
  • It is based on present-tense experience as the main reference point.
  • It encourages self-awareness and mindfulness.
  • Wikipedia quotes an article, which describes the benefits as having a “crucial opportunity to lead our troubled culture back to its own healthy path. More than any other therapy, Humanistic-Existential therapy models democracy. It imposes ideologies of others upon the client less than other therapeutic practices. Freedom to choose is maximized.”

If you know me just a little bit you can probably tell, that this all very much resonated with me. In a way, it’s what led me to the Ubuntu project in 2004 - there is a lot of “humanity towards others” and “I am what I am because of who we all are” in there.

Body psychotherapy was also specifically interesting to me, as it offers a very rich set of interventions and techniques, all experience-based and relying on the wisdom of our body. Furthermore it seeks to reconcile the body and mind split our culture so heavily promotes.

Since last March I immersed myself in this new world: took classes, read books, attended a congress and workshops and had quite a bit of self-experience. In November I took the required exams and became “Heilpraktiker für Psychotherapie”. The actual training in body psychotherapy I’m going to start this year in March. As this is going to take still several years, I’m not exactly sure when or how I will start working in this field. While it’s still quite some time off and right now only an option for some time in the future, I know that this process will encourage me to become more mindful, patient, empathic and a better listener, colleague, partner and friend.

Does this mean, I’m going to leave the tech world? No, absolutely not. My next steps in this domain I’m going to leave to another blog post though.

I feel very privileged having been able to take the time and embark on this adventure and add a new dimension to my coordinate system. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without close people around me who supported and encouraged me. I’m very grateful for this and feel quite lucky.

This has been a very exciting year, a very important experience and I’m very much looking forward to what’s yet to come.