Dieter Mittelsten Scheid

About the author

Born in 1942 in Munich, Germany, Dieter Mittelsten Scheid is a medical doctor,

psychotherapist and breath-practitioner.

He trained in psychiatry and humanistic psychotherapy, as well as in breath-therapy

with Herta Richter and in Feldenkrais functional integration with Alon Talmi.

In his spiritual development he was deeply influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurti,

and experienced the practice of Vipassana Meditation with S.N. Goenka.

He was co-founder of the “Coloman Zentrum”, a center for humanistic psychotherapy

east of Munich, where he worked as a therapist from 1972 to 1982.

For the past 30 years he and his wife Batya Schwartz have been leading silence and

consciousness retreats at their center, “POCI-Retreats” in Tuscany.

"Throughout my training as a medical doctor, as a therapist and later as a

practitioner of body- and breath-work, I have always been searching for that

which would bring me into direct contact with life itself. Increasingly touched

by the growing estrangement and insensitivity in our society, I have been

searching for natural ways to re-connect to our essence, to each other and to

the intrinsic beauty of life. Living close to nature on a farm in the wooded

hills of Tuscany, I have been fortunate to spend a considerable amount of

time together with others in silence. These retreats into silence have enriched

and inspired me, filling me with gratitude. They have given me the opportunity

to study our human mind with all its strain, confusion and potential,

and to experience, over and over again, how all problems dissolve when the

brain is touched by the immediacy of the Now – where one is taken in by the

flowing movement of the presence."