Back to balance For over 20 years, Moritz Schmid was a jet-setting fashion and advertising photographer. As he traveled to nearly 90 countries, partied his “ass off,” and captured some of the world’s most famous faces through his lens, this self-professed city kid found himself desperately seeking a more balanced way of life. Eventually, he quit his longtime career to make the forest his office. His business, Into the Woods, offers retreats and workshops on the outskirts of Berlin, where he shares the gifts of forest bathing, mushroom foraging, art making, and re-embodiment through the practices of swimming, Qi Gong, and yoga. - Vivian Kanchian In his words “It’s really something to see how easy it is to make people happy by just reconnecting them with nature. We live in a society in which everyone has their smartphone and their computer, and we’re constantly bombarded with information all day. Everything is human-made or AI-made… “Although we have these super high-tech lives, and we’re always “connected,” it’s good to unplug every now and then and just get outside, forage for food, and look for the little things in life – like lichen, which is a micro-universe. It’s just so cool to see these tiny things, like mycelium, that, in reality, are so strong and have this immense power to connect everything. You don’t even see it, but it’s everywhere.” Read more.