AYUDH PORTRAITS: NOAH FISCHER
Ingredients
Lots of love and good mood
Smile and sparkles of joy
Open sharing from the heart !
Preparation
How have you known AYUDH ?
My first AYUDH Summit was last year. My friend Leander, comes to the festival every year so he talked to me about the activities that we can find during the Summit : the speeches and workshops that are great fun and also serve. When I was contemplating on coming, I was actually skeptical about the title “Dare to Dream” because it sounded very much sell-optimizing, but I decided to give it a try as my friend was so into it, and I actually began to be excited at the idea of participating too.
What did AYUDH bring to your life ?
When I arrived there was a really nice atmosphere. I felt quite comfortable. The first work I did was to hang the sheet that delineated the Main Hall area. I did it with a woman, and it was actually cool and relaxed, although difficult to hang !
To me, the coolest thing wasn’t the workshops or speeches or bhajans. But the fact that people had a smile on their face. I felt everyone was accepting and treating each other in a very respectful way regardless of their opinions or their relationship. It is like everyone had its own place and was valued for who he or she was. Each one was treated as a very special individual but also as a part of a whole. People were very open and nice regardless of what I did to them. Also so many people from different countries make it a big community full of variety and differences. Although, I felt that people had some values in common.
“To me, the coolest thing [...] was the fact that people had a smile on their face”
What’s your best memory of AYUDH ?
As I said, it is the atmosphere and people more than a particular momentum. But if I really have to pick one moment from the Summit, then it would be Kuany’s speech about his exile from Sudan. It was very touching but also crude and true, without coloring reality. I also really enjoyed Big Swami’s apparition and eloquence on compassion. Also, after the Summit, when winter came (around October), the inspiration from AYUDH was a little gone. But participating in the AYUDH New Year Eve celebration at the French Ashram gave me a little new inspiration.
What’s your biggest dream ?
I don’t really have a dream so to speak, but my goal is to be open to life and open to myself. I want to develop love for other people and for myself, to grow in human relationships towards a better version of myself and towards what I can give to the world.
While being in AYUDH does it help you to achieve this dream ?
I really was amazed by the way people treated each other with the understanding that we all have the same worth, everyone is treated the same way. This is very inspiring. It is a safe place where I can develop love for other people and for myself.
What would you like to share with others ? Something that inspires you.
I actually love Contact Dance that I practice in Germany. Contact dance is like dancing with the other but it emphasizes more on being present, respectfully in contact with the others. It is helping in learning how to be aware of others in the way they express themselves. Contact dancing puts a particular attention to the feelings of others as well as to their states of mind of the moment. It helps to develop the intuition of the body and sensitivity to others to see the limits of what I can do with the person I am dancing with, but it also helps in listening to my own body and see what I want to do with it or on the contrary, what I don’t want to do. It is actually connecting me to my own intuition while developing empathy to get a feeling of their own expression. I can see if people want to dance with me and learn how to express together as the same dancing entity, in the respect of others' boundaries and very unique expressions.
What touches you in contact dance ?
I have the feeling of getting in contact with others through fluent improvisation although we don’t communicate a word.
It is also helping in knowing what I want and to be sensitive to people, while learning NOT to get into the border of each other ! Also, it actually feels good after dancing, it gives a feeling of flowing with the person.
Contact improvisation is a nice way of getting to know other people and work on the intuition level. We have to be open to the dance of the other person and to be interested in the person we are dancing with. Each person reacts differently to another person, so we also have to be alert and respect the other’s expression and boundaries, and accept what they want to share with us.
Ready !
What would you like to tell the youth about their dreams ?
What I would like to say is that I am thankful for life, and that everyone has a very unique worth. No one is more worthy than someone else. In any action that you make, you have the same worth as everybody else. So, lose your fear of being unworthy and lose your fear that you have to do something with your life to feel comfortable with yourself. Of course, it is good to have a nice life but it is not necessary to do things out of fear of being unworthy otherwise. You don’t have to do things to deserve feeling that you are someone worthy. Also, don’t compare and think “Oh I am not good, if I am not as good as this person”
