I was born in the 70s in Israel and grew up in one of the country’s smallest kibbutz with my family, as a stray child with three older siblings. My father was a psychologist and my mother a dance teacher, and these are two things I have brought with me into my own working life through N.L.P. therapy and Tai Chi. When I was five, I started working in the fruit fields, which meant hard work with long hours in the scorching sun. The ideology of the kibbutz is built on working, and my main pillar is still to do my job properly no matter what. Throughout my childhood, I picked all kinds of fruits, such as apples, oranges, grapefruit, avocados and bananas.
When I was eight years old, I started training Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defense technique with high demands and strict discipline, something that is still in my character and when I teach. As I got older, I spent many, endless meditative hours on the tractor and went on many long walks, listening out among the trees to detect leaking irrigation hoses. I took every opportunity to quietly observe my thoughts, I was so fascinated by human nature. It is still one of my greatest interests.
There were always volunteers on the kibbutz, young people who came from all over the world to work and have fun. I spent a lot of time with them and English eventually became like a second mother language. So instead of traveling around the world, I had the gift of meeting hundreds of people from all over the world at home.
My school days were horrible. I don’t want to do things I don’t believe in, and I had a lot of questions about why you have to learn certain subjects and in a certain way. And why weren’t you taught important things for life, like how to handle conflicts and about human values?
After school, the army waited for three years, as for all young Israelis. It was a hectic and tough period in my life, and during the service I lost faith in a warlike attitude and violence as a solution to conflicts. There was never any time for myself either. After the three years, I had enough and left the army, even though my commander-in-chief tried to force me to continue my service. That’s when Tai Chi came into my life.
I have met many teachers and tried to absorb everything they had to teach me. Every day I spent several hours practicing Tai Chi. The teacher who meant the most to me was the Chinese Haihe Liu. He taught me everything he could and I was able to be an assistant teacher during his lessons in Israel. But Haihe got sick and after a couple of years he died of leukemia. I still miss him a lot and every year we hold a memorial ceremony with Empty Cups students here in Sweden.
I have always had an inner desire to become a monk, and once I went to a Buddhist monastery in Thailand. When I got there to Wat Pananchat it was full, but I was welcome back in a month. So I took my backpack and wandered among the tropical islands on Thailand’s southeast coast with the plan to return in a month. Out on the island of Koh Pha-ngan I came into contact with a beautiful hostel on the beach, where I could teach Tai Chi and meditation to the residents. There I also received my Reiki Master training and began teaching Reiki to others.
When I moved into the hostel, the first person I met was a Swedish girl who welcomed me at the reception. “There’s my future wife,” I thought, and before Camilla, as her name was, knew anything, I had called my family and told them that I had met my future wife. And so it was. The monastery was rejected. The trips were postponed. After a few months together in Thailand, we first moved for a short cold period to Sweden and then to Israel. After a year we got married. It was only then, much later, that Camilla understood that I had actually been on my way to living my life as a monk before we met.
Returning to Israel was not easy. I felt trapped in the kibbutz, and the country’s lifestyle no longer suited me. The bright spots were being close to my Tai Chi teacher Haihe and continuing my education in alternative medicine. Interspersed with work in the kibbutz fields and with the cows, Camilla and I had Reiki courses and gave treatments in crystal healing and Bach flower drops. I also taught Tai Chi in the kibbutz, including for the volunteers. When we were expecting our first child, we decided to move to Sweden. We still live there today.
But… sometimes the longing for the monastic life arises…
Since 1998 I have been training Chinese martial arts with a main focus on Tai Chi Chuan. Today I have an instructor level of 8 in Wudang Tai Chi Chuan. I’ve been representing the Swedish national team for several years and have become, among other things, European champion in Tai Chi Chuan. Today I am a certified European referee- and also the Swedish national coach in Tui Shou. I also hold self-defense and Tai Chi Chuan courses in Europe and Asia aswell as weekly classes in Örebro, Sweden.