My Life Experience

After more than 5 years of traveling, and after my first very powerful encounter with Ayahuasca, I realized that I want to fulfill myself in life by helping and supporting people in need. I went back to Israel to start a professional path in psychology. Since I never graduated from high school, my only option for high education was by self-study through the “open university” in Israel. It took me 6 years but after 12 years of failing in school as a kid, I graduated and got my B.A in psychology with honor.

At the university I have learned about the history of modern psychology and its development, the different modern approaches for understanding the human psyche, pathology, therapy and scientific research.

Graduated as a trained couples counselor from the “Tel Hay” Academy, Israel

Through the course and by working with couples, I have learned to provide a non-judgmental space letting each one communicate and express their needs and feelings to the other. Guiding enabling them to listen and contain the other and bridge across their differences, needs and views.

As soon as I got back to Israel I started working and practicing as a psychiatric technician (guid) in different psychiatric rehabilitation programs and institutions. By the end of my studies I also had private clients.

The essence of this work is to company a person and support him through his process of rehabilitating himself back to normal life after a psychiatric breakdown.

In this time I have had many professional relationships with people encountering a very wide range of challenges in life, psychological, emotional, social and spiritual.

Through my work I cultivated empathy, non judgmental communications, mirroring, patience, seeing the patient, his/her needs and personal challenges.

I spent about a year and a half traveling and exploring through India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
I passed through different Ashrams (Yoga/spiritual schools), learned and practiced different kinds of Yoga and meditations.

Out of all the different practices I encountered, Vipassana meditation stands out as the most simple, pure, precise, honest and effective to me and I still practice it today.

From the practice of Yoga I learned to be aware of my body, my physical and emotional stress, how it affects my being and how to find relaxation, physical and emotional in face of stress.

From my practice of Vipassana I learned how to focus my awareness, how to identify emotional reactions, observe them, learn from them and let them go…. how to simply be present in the truth of the moment.

I would recommend Vipassana meditation as an amazing practical tool for self help and growth to any person in any stage of his/her life.

After I finished my service, still with absolutely no sense of direction or goals in life, I went on to travel and discover the world.

I traveled through many countries around all continents, some places for just a short visit and some up to a few years…. In this time I have made many close relationships with people all around the world, explored different cultures, religions, communities, beliefs and ways of life.

Through my exposure to the diversity of human cultures, I have learned to recognize not only the huge differences between the cultures in the perception of different life’s aspects, but also see the communality, the parts of life that we all share as humans and the challenges they bring, which we all have to face.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahai, Hinduism, Buddhism, Tantra, Indigenes practices and Shamanism.
I grew up in a very modern, liberal and secular home. Religion or faith of any kind were just not part of my world and their advocates were generally regarded as fools.

As my mind got opened up to all these concepts, I realized that there must be some truth and meaning in the scriptures that is valuable for me in my search to understand life and myself. I felt a strong urge to investigate and explore this mysterious aspect of human culture which I knew so little about.

Since I’m a Jew and speaks Hebrew, I first started to explore Judaism and Kabbalah. Even though I found lots of wisdom and mystery there, still, it didn’t feel like the path I need to follow and I kept on reading, learning, experiencing and investigating about all the different religions that I came across on my travels, always trying to enrich myself and absorb as much wisdom and knowledge as I can.

From my study of the different religions and faiths I learned that the human experience of spirituality is basically the same, our most profound spiritual challenges (fear of death, Good vs Evil, moral values and connection to nature and our fellow men) are the same while different cultures found unique ways to conceptualize these challenges and offer tools to face them. I believe we can find enlightening wisdom in all scriptures but never accept any kind of dogma in our lives.

At that time of my life I was still very immature, didn’t yet understand anything about politics, I joined mostly for the honor of my parents, because everyone else did it, and after all, it was the law in the country with jail penalty.

In the Army I learned about self discipline, Order and structure, punctuality, responsibility and team-work.