Dear reader,

A short readers guide - I will start with some impressions from my last experiences on the road. In the second half I want to take you along in some more details of my research question and end with a request to you! Stay tuned…

What’s in name

As my Uber is driving me off on a very stormy Tuesday morning, I ponder on how much I still have to learn about vagabonding life. For example, even though it's not raining inside my tent, it doesn't mean my bags and clothing cannot grow moldy. Winter has arrived in the Algarve, days grow short, rains come and go and everything is perpetually damp. Over the past weeks, community world with its own values, habits, vocabulary and beings has become increasingly familiar. So, even though my guitar has mild and all my clothes are either dirty or wet, I still look up and thank the rain.

I’ve spent four weeks in Cristaland (see my previous letter on how I got here). I chose this place for two main reasons- their attention to spirituality and the events they host. Spirituality and togetherness is shaped by small but meaningful habits. We start our meals holding hands and sharing gratitude, our meetings with a (heart) sharing or Qigong practice, someone feeds the altar for the invisible beings with our daily lunch. Evenings are for yoga, dancing, singing circles, womens circles, massage nights, sauna or pizza-parties out of the stone oven. Or movie night, at least, when the power doesn’t run out in this completely solar powered community.

Words matter. People (and trees and..) are beings, meetings are gatherings, dates are encounters. I called one of the residents a hippie and almost got slapped in the face. ‘I am not a hippie!’ ‘But… you talk to trees?’ He is still offended. ‘Hippies are these lost people’. After four weeks, I think I understand him better, when we are on a painstaking mission to remove the hairy caterpillars one by one from the oak trees, before they will grow large and their tiny hairs cause irritation to us -human- beings. Maintaining a community is a matter of commitment and hard work. “Some people just come here for cheap living, with money on their bank account, they don’t put any effort in” someone comments on her community experiences elsewhere.

What beings co-exist in this community? After lunch I see a very visible being feasting off the invisible being altar: one of the many adopted cats. One cat is missing a tail, one cat is missing a leg, the other one is being nursed from some gut infection. All somehow outcasts from their own cat lands. Here, they are lovingly picked up and cared for.

There is subset of human beings that find a temporary place here also seem to look for a break from the ‘outside’ world. Looking for peace, a place to retreat, rethink, reconnect. The inhabitants quietly make their cup of tea in the morning, while listening to a meditation or lecture from the Pope, doing yoga, having a note with ‘silence’ written pinned to their chest.

I wonder if the cats ever exchange meow is about system change. They certainly have also no care for productivity or efficiency. Instead of deterring and catching mice, they hang around the cat-tent or the kitchen for food. Meanwhile, mice happily roam the open kitchen and food storage. I try to ignore the fact that somebody saw the cats pee all over our fresh vegetables or the mouse inside the nut storage. We set mice friendly traps, and one of the residents here bikes 20 minutes with the live mouse to set it free. Once a mouse got stuck a whole day in the trap, and some people got concerned for its health.

Even the mosquitoes get a new place in this world. While my first reflex is still to squash the mosquito that is sitting on my face, I get told off: “the mosquito is increasing the amount of pleasure in the world by drinking your blood. Thank you for offering your flesh to it!”, and I can only smile at this change of perspective. Even more so, as we are also ourselves doing quite a good job increasing the pleasure in the world, lying naked in this other being's van, who refuses to tell me their name as long as I refuse to tell my age.

This hippieworld without hippies is filled with care, with time, with gratitude. And with discomfort, contradictions and paradoxes. The struggles that come up time and again are of the social kind- who is responsible for what, who gets to decide what. It is far from perfect, finding a different way to live together and be connected. And all the little habits, the different words.. they make a real difference.

Why am I here?

After a first update of my time in Tamera, I get a Whatsapp from a friend:

He helpfully includes a list of suggestions from chat-GPT: “Here are a variety of career ideas blending medical background with interests in environment, peace, community, and sports, including concrete roles and sectors” followed by several NGO’s and organizations.

He's right. I love him exactly for this honest mirror, keeping me grounded. I could do that. I would be good at it too. I have no rational explanation why I am sitting in a tree with my medical degree. Playing guitar, chopping wood, cleaning the toilet, making a food mandala - spending a whole morning arranging and making an edible artwork. There is something very frivolous about living this community, nomad life.

I know that Rosa takes this comment to heart. Totally convinced of this narrative, where purpose is making a concrete, measurable impact. This script uses words like goals, efficiency and is concerned with doing something useful. 

Here, this vocabulary loses its importance. Instead of purpose, I tend to think more about meaning. Instead of making an impact, like a wrecking ball, I visualize my influence as ripples that form around my path. Right here right now, and presumably, rippling out beyond my sight. In this world, succes is not measured in KPI or money. Instead, I receive numerous words of apprecation, goodbye hugs, voice and text messages with a love and kindness that seem unthinkable in the ‘outside world’.

My mother tells me she sent handcrafted, handwritten christmas cards this year. And, for the first time, she expressed to some friends how much she loves and appreciates them. Persons whom she has know for over 20, even 30 years. ‘You would never say how much a persons means to you in person… that seems too… sweet’ she tells me ‘but written.. you can get away with it. At least once’. I believe we don’t talk about love enough. Not enough in the real way it shapes our lives, gives meaning and fulfillment.

I respond to my friend: thank you and I still have something to learn here. I will continue this quest for connection, imagination, for love. Damn right, I AM a hippie!

How to connect? Some lessons from embodied work

The events in Cristaland involve many embodied practices.

An embodiment practice is a method of using the unique sensations of our body as a tool to develop awareness, stay present, self-regulate, feel whole, find balance, feel connected, know ourself, love ourself and be empowered.

Four days out of seven the Dome (a very big tent) is open for facilitators hosting a variety of events, such as yoga, voice liberation, ecstatic dance, contact improvisation, conscious dance, conscious theater and soma groove.

I attend as many workshops as I can, fascinated by the diversity and creativity of these “in between” spaces. Talking to facilitators and participants, I rapidly expand my knowledge of this field. I never heard before of authentic movement, ocean dance, shamanic clowning, circus dance and probably there are many still more.

A first impression of this data gathering: embodied work seems to come from a few different traditions, each with their own underlying assumptions, intentions and techniques. Just to give some examples (NOT exhaustive)

• Arts - modern dance, theater

• Sports and entertainment - circus, acrobatics, athletics, partner dance, disco dance

• Martial arts - aikido, karate

• Spiritual traditions - yoga, shamanism, tantra

• Medicine - psychology, psychiatry

• Sexual practices - bdsm, bodywork

• Social setting - forum

They differ in interesting ways

• What really intruiges me is the added layer of connecting these practices in service to system change. Some practices are already set up for it, like theater of the oppressed and SD arts or artistic forum. I feel a lot of these practices would have the potential to do so… but it takes a conscious effort.

Welcome to Spiritual disneyland

This word ‘conscious’ shows up a lot, and I think it matters. Take ‘ecstatic dance’ - a movement that has become enormously popular all over the globe. Its history is deeply spiritual, rooted in shamanistic practises. But At its most bare form that I have experienced it has hedonism to it that makes me feel empty. A release of tension, without a direction. To illustrate this, a random pick from internet search: a DIY guide for ecstatic dance below.

Another example- surf culture. A small anecdote. It is Sunday night and I just stripped naked in a parking lot and stepped into a mobile sauna to meet and greet the host of the evening and several other friends of his. Germans and Dutchies are discussing marriage, open relationships and travellling. Since winter arrived, more and more people I meet are travelling south - surfing in Morocco is a popular destination.

I question travelling to Morocco as a female bodied person. I don't know if I want to be in the energy of a culture where the gender inequality is so pervasive. According to my fellow sauna visitors I have two options. “You can either go “deep local”; people are super friendly, and you as a white woman are never bothered. Or, you can go completely into the surf culture. Everybody is Western, ‘modern’ thinking, you are safe. There is no hint of local culture, I couldn`t even haggle for the price of surfing lessons!”

Tempting of course: just ride the waves, drink your coffee, have your acai bowl, do your online marketing job, have your zoom call and do it all over again. There's something so wonderfully relaxing about it, and you really get to be and what's wrong with that? Don’t we all want to be in the moment, be mindfull?

And yet it is so unconscious at the same time, unconscious of the impact on the surroundings, on the gentrification, on the environmental impact of flying all over the world for these places, or driving our Diesel powered vans, about raising the prices for the locals, disrupting local economies. This place, making lives too expensive to live there, not connecting to local networks and communities, falling into competitive and capitalist systems where prices are everything, and simply because we are on the privilege side, are neglecting the obligation that comes with privilege.

The need for fulfilment, meaning, is evident. Seekers are everywhere. South Portugal has become a spiritual Disneyland (in the words of a Portugese) - it is overwhelmingly filled with events, retreats and centers for breathwork, mindfullness, body work, intimacy, emotional connection, polyamory, open relating, liquid love, soft sex, tantra etc. Without the conscious intention, the spiritual layer, it lacks true fulfilment and comes back to hedonism - feeling good, here and now.

With my head full of all this new world of practices, I wonder which direction to continue. What is the intention? What is under, behind, covered up by these trends and words, how to distinguish the empty from the meaningful, the fake from the real, whatever that even means.

Mañana me voy!

I decided to catch up with a lover in Spain. I get some sketchy directions: a pin in the middle of a deserted beach. ‘Just hitchhike from the nearest town!’ Playa de Alberquillas is wild beach where there is an unofficial tradition of spending the winter. Campervans on the parking lot form a town square, a ‘house’ (a ruin with matrassess on the floor and a campfire) serves a community hall and marketplace, and down the steep cliff people camp right on the beach. Firewood is gathered by the roadside, a small sweet water stream is a shower, the ocean can wash both clothes and dishes. Making coffee takes the whole morning, gathering fire wood, making a fire, cooking water and patiently waiting for it to boil.

It is not community in any traditional sense - there is absolutely no organization, just habits and common sense. But the most obvious to me is the drug use. Having just spend two months is strictly drug free and almost all alcohol free places, the difference in energy is enormous.

There are people here spending days, weeks, months on end being high, enjoying sun and beach. Without going into all the constructive ways certain drugs can be applied - in this context my observation is that it is a way to be less bored, increase pleasure, run away from reality or ‘kill‘ time.

Still. For two days, it is pure paradise, loitering around, lending an electrical chainsaw to go chop wood without the police seeing us, making a huge bonfire on the beach, where magically food and drinks keep appearing- it turns out to be a goodbye party. Bottles of beer and rum go round, as well as joints. Two tajines cook delicious vegetable stew on the fire, which we share using the only two spoons. It is a joyful atmosphere going on deep into the night.

The day after, the guy who was supposed to leave is still there. He missed his plane, semi on purpose. “Mañana me voy!” Another guy wispers to me- “that’s what he said the last three times, but this time I believed him!”. The feeling creeps up to me of getting stranded here on this protoparadise, slowly forgetting my quest…

Before the songs of this alluring sirens can make me forget about home, I resolutely pack my stuff: I want to spend christmas with my family. And so I get on the move once more..

Moving on

After reconnecting with family in Sicily, I get a chance to dive deeper into the embodied sense of connection, as I join a week of contact improvisation workshops at the Jam of Arts, near Rome.

During the workshops, I see how there are people who are simply porous to one another presence. We do simple exercises to be both present with ourself and the group. For example: move in a group and stop when someone stops, move when someone moves. Even when you don’t look directly, we sense when we need to stop. Or move.

From all my professional work in sustainability and from hearing and experiencing life in communities, I only reaffirmed my belief that the challenge of our time is social, emotional, spiritual, philosophical.. everything bút the rational, technical.

And, I leave with more questions: how do we ‘sense’ each others energy, presence? Could be activate this ‘sense’ more precisely and consciously as an avenue to reconnect? How and where are connecting embodied practices being developed in service to healing ourselves, our relations and the systems, reimagining new futures?

An answer I found is to what kind of places I want to continue travelling. To be challenged, where I can learn by doing, by relating, that is built around this social challenge. The other thing I realize is: I crave, need and long for collaboration with other persons. So, I am starting this brand new year with an intentions to this end.

First of all: to ask your collaboration > listen to my request!

Second: I invite you to add and think with me click here.

Third, actively looking to collaborate on this research question with the people I encounter.

Next stop is broadening my knowledge and network in ecovillages by attending the EDE, more on that in the next episode.

For now, very warm wishes for 2026 from a freezing Switzerland,

River