It started with stress. Not the ecological kind — the ordinary, human kind. In my early thirties, I was a communication designer in Frankfurt who had run out of inner resources. Mindfulness found me before I found it. And once it did, it didn't let go.
That was more than twenty years ago. Since then, my profession changed and I’ve guided more than 2,500 people through MBSR — Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — in one of Europe’s most culturally diverse cities. I trained in Tibetan Buddhism and Vipassana, walked forests with Mark Coleman in the Awake in the Wild lineage, became a nature guide and nature coach, and somewhere along the way, the boundary between meditation cushion and living earth quietly dissolved. I no longer experience nature as something I go to. It’s the field I’m already in.
Then, a few years ago, Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects broke something open. I discovered — with something between astonishment and mild embarrassment — that an entire world of Eco-Awareness practice and inquiry had been quietly flourishing for decades, and I had barely known it existed!
I wanted a map. Not to have all the answers, but to see the connections. To find out who was doing what, where the threads ran between inner practice and outer action, between grief and regeneration, between the contemplative and the activist.
An esteemed MBSR colleague from the United States mentioned in a Zoom call that it’s surprisingly hard to find MBSR teachers who are also engaged with the Earth. That was the moment …
Now, four months later (March 2026), EARTH — eco-awareness.earth — is live. The website isn’t perfect yet (will it ever be?). But I am sure it’s good enough for now and safe enough to try.
I’m still very much in the middle of my own learning. I’m currently in the Earth Awareness Teacher Training, sitting with questions I don’t yet know how to answer.
My MBSP profile tells me my signature strength is “Love”, which still surprises me a little every time I read it. I think, in practical terms, this means that I notice things, become really passionately enthusiastic about them, and want to share them with others. Perhaps that’s enough to be helpful here.
“If I don’t do it, who else will?
But if I only do it for myself, what am I?
And if I don’t do it now, when should I do it?”
(Hillel, founder of the Talmudic tradition)
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