**Finding Home, Finding Stillness**

After nearly three decades navigating Berlin’s digital landscape as an IT professional, I traded server rooms for the salty breeze of my childhood home in Leer, where the North Sea whispers its ancient rhythms. But the real journey wasn’t the one back to the coast—it was the one inward.

My relationship with meditation has been, let’s say, complicated. For years, I was that person who’d sit on a cushion for a week, feel enlightened, then forget to meditate for six months. Buddhism fascinated me, Aikido grounded me (when I showed up), but consistency? That was harder to maintain than any server uptime I ever managed.

Everything shifted a few years ago through an unexpected gateway: a medical device project focused on mindfulness. There I met Shinzen Young, whose Unified Mindfulness approach finally gave my wandering practice a framework that stuck. Suddenly, meditation wasn’t something I did—it became how I lived.