Desperately Brave | Original Medicines Podcast — Series 2, Episode 2
A new podcast was recorded recently with Simon van der Berg, a classical singer, violin maker and Waldorf schoolteacher who speaks about his journey, and wisdom of psychosis.
The Original Medicines Podcast is entering its second series.
Seven episodes in the first series. One year of conversations about healing beyond labels — trauma, grounded spirituality, consciousness, and the wisdom hidden inside our most challenging experiences. And now we continue.
Simon is episode two of series two. And again, a wonderful, beautiful conversation I had with him.
How I met Simon
Simon van den Berg sent me a message on LinkedIn after seeing a post about Wisdom of Psychosis.
We had some email exchanges. A few phone calls. And then he came to The Hague and we sat down together — in person, for the first time — and recorded this conversation.
I am glad we did.
Simon.
Simon van den Berg (Eutin, 1989) is of German-Dutch descent and grew up in Holland. He came from a warm family where certain things were passed naturally: be open, be curious, be giving. Believe in yourself. Find good teachers. Respect yourself and the natural world.
Simon is a creative one. He loves making things, writing, imagining — and of course, singing.
As the years passed — through travels, universities, love and loss — he kept dreaming. Of a world where people allowed each other to be free. Where you could freely discover the different inner and outer worlds.
In music, he found his calling.
He dreamt of conducting orchestras. But he discovered quickly that the tradition he was entering did not help musicians become free and loving people. After a visit to a Zen monastery, something clarified: he had a mission. To change the tradition from within.
After finishing his political science degree, he made the leap. Not blindly — he went searching. For the right teacher. Because that is what his grandfather had taught him: to find the right teacher, mentor.
He found her in Vienna.
Since 2018 he has been studying there under her the guidance — and after eight years, new transformations and new steps are already in the air. The old capital of music became, in the end, exactly the place it needed to be in those years.
Through deepening the different layers of body, soul and spirit, through writing, violin making, singing, and composing music and poetry, he has been preparing for his most ambitious project: a peace project that aims to resolve the collective hurt which binds Germans, Austrians, Israelis, Jews and Palestinians.
He never forgot his original mission. To transform our musical tradition by rekindling our spiritual connection within ourselves. Because only when we recognize the different layers of identity — in ourselves and in the other — we become humans again. And we are able to fully come back home to our true selves.
Inspired by his German ancestors, his great-grandmother, who stood up against fascism, it is his purpose to stay connected to his ethics, to deepen his ethics. To remain in contact with that boy who keeps dreaming of a world where we as humans are generous with each other, ourselves, our planet, and all the different cultures and identities our world has to offer.
In times of moral decay, our true moral backbone becomes visible.
Simon is one of six protagonists in The Desert of the Real, a documentary by Luuk Bouwman. Six people who have experienced psychosis — articulate, reflective, from different walks of life — speak openly about their episodes. The frightening moments. The beautiful ones. The long road back. A film about psychosis, perception, and what it means to lose — and find again — your grip on reality. And Simon, whose story you you can hear in this latest podcast, is one of them.
In this conversation, we go deep
Simon talks about dissociating at 13. About a grandfather in Berlin who planted seeds that took years to flower. About hitchhiking across Europe and surrendering to the universe. About Plum Village and six hours of meditation a day. About the psychotic episode at 23 — not from drugs or crisis, but from years of hard inner work, ancestral grief, and the courage to follow a calling nobody around him understood. Listen to a little preview here (the whole conversation with video you can find on YouTube, here).
Simon talks about his great-grandmother, who spoke out against the Nazis and never recovered from what she saw. About how her unfinished psychosis became his to complete. About a moment at the Berlin Philharmonic — sitting in the second row during a rehearsal with Dudamel, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony — where he experienced a moment of ‘awakening’.
He talks about a boy named Isiah and a composition that marked the end of the most fragile part of the journey.
This is not a conversation about pathology.
It is a conversation about what psychosis actually is when you stop being afraid of it. About initiation, and about the wisdom that can only be found in the dark.
The story of psychosis is changing.
This conversation is part of that change.
You can find more about Simon and his work at sfavdberg.com and here about The Desert of the Real — Luuk Bouman’s documentary. 🎧 You are invited to subscribe to ‘Original Medicines’ on Spotify and read 📚 Wisdom of Psychosis | The Book here.
The next post in a couple of days, will be about Sarah’s journey, her eighteen months from crisis to integration, explored step by step. Sarah is the person I write about in my book (Wisdom of Psychosis), where many moments of her journey towards post-psychotic growth are described, and here on Substack you will find the parts that didn’t make it into the book.
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