AWŪ journal

There is a subtle moment when something new enters your awareness. It might be a scent you have never noticed before. It could be a movement your body has never tried. It might even be a face that feels oddly familiar, even though you have just met. Something shifts inside you. An electric sense of curiosity that draws you toward what has not yet been explored. In psychology, this attraction to the new is called neophilia. In a world that often moves too quickly, reconnecting with this inner spark can feel grounding, or even healing. Neophilia doesn’t reside in constant reinvention, adrenaline, or dramatic change. It’s deeply human: a readiness to be moved by the world around you. An openness to meet the unfamiliar without ignoring your own boundaries. It shows up whenever you take that leap toward the unknown. Even the smallest steps beyond your comfort zone can allow you to transform and challenge any preconceived notions you may have about yourself or the way you see the world. The Biology of Newness Our brains are wired to notice novelty. When you encounter something new, your brain releases dopamine. It can direct your attention and signal that something is worth exploring. This response supports us in several ways. It helps us better understand what speaks to us, what makes our soul come alive. You learn more easily because novelty activates neural pathways that might otherwise remain on autopilot. New experiences foster self-trust and self-discovery: when you have small, positive experiences with change, your nervous system begins to understand that change can feel safe. Your body becomes more responsive, as new movements engage muscles, breath, and balance in fresh combinations. Meeting new people or stepping into a new environment can shift how you see yourself in relation to others, thus expanding your social world. Today, we are surrounded by stimulation that masks itself as novelty. Endless scrolling, fast-moving trends, and constant sensory input can keep the brain busy without truly enriching us. Your brain may register something as new, while your body feels tired and your attention feels scattered. This kind of fast novelty often drains more than it nourishes. It pushes us to seek more input rather than more presence. Healthy neophilia invites a different approach: it asks you to be intentional, encouraging you to let new experiences arrive at a pace your nervous system can manage. Intentional Experimentation There are many ways to explore novelty without overwhelming yourself. Walking down a street you usually ignore and noticing the details, stretching in a way that feels exploratory rather than performative. You might cook with an ingredient you rarely use or try a new breathing practice. Even changing one small ritual in your day can create the feeling of a small beginning. Small shifts invite more presence. City life can be intense, but it can also offer meaningful opportunities for renewal when the setting is right. An urban sanctuary is a space that allows for intentional newness, somewhere you can try something different without pressure. A place where you can stretch, sit, breathe, meet others, or simply exist without having to perform. In environments like this, novelty feels safe. You might explore new movements while feeling supported, discover an atmosphere that helps your mind settle rather than race or even uncover new states of being that remind you who you are beneath the noise of daily life. This kind of newness stays with you: you carry it back into your routine in subtle but meaningful ways. The Art of the First Time It is easy to forget that your life still holds countless first times. Quiet shifts that adjust your direction, reconnect you with your curiosity, and your sense of wonder. Neophilia is the recognition that you are allowed to grow in small, meaningful ways. You are allowed to meet the world, and yourself, with openness that feels steady rather than overwhelming. The next time something new appears in your path, notice it. Pay attention to the small first times, and let them remind you that newness is not an escape from your life. It is one of the ways you come more fully into it.

By Isabelle Naessens, Cultural Writer In the heart of the Atacama Desert lies one of the largest geothermal fields in the world at 4,300 metres above sea level. The earth smoulders, bubbles, and exhales. Geysers gush from the ground like burrowed dragons, spewing water streams. I remember being fascinated by this raw and captivating energy. A reminder that life finds a way, even in the most extreme conditions. This mineral landscape is peppered with bubbling hot springs. You slip into them slowly, as if entering a sacred space, your body gripped by the frigid air of dawn. The heat envelops you as steam rises and bodies fall silent. Every element beckons you to be present. This ritual unfolds naturally, propelled by the force of the magma and the effluence of the earth. The omnipotence of life brings time at a standstill and commands an instinctive respect for the place. For the Andean people, Pachamama—the earth—is alive. In El Tatio (the Indigenous term for “the weeping grandfather”), this belief is tangible: the earth releases her hot water, like an offering. To bathe there is to enter a relationship with her and with the entire cosmos. Our culture shapes our thoughts about well-being In many Asian, African, and South American countries, rituals are part of a long and deep-seated rhythm. The body surrenders to silence and time becomes an ally. There is no other intention than to be there, fully present, and let time work its magic. In India, the abhyanga massage envelops the body with warm oils, applied with slow, continuous strokes to gradually soothe the nervous system. Pranayama regulates the breath to open an inner space of clarity and patience. In Japan, the kobido and the head spa draw to an almost hypnotic surrender: precise movements, the sound of flowing water, dim lighting. Each movement is meditative. In Thailand, traditional massage stretches and mobilizes the body: on a mat on the floor, you let yourself be carried away. These rituals do not aim for intensity and quick fixes. They do not unfold in urgency but rather in surrender—not as a weakness but as an ability—the ability to allow yourself to just be, without performance, without results to achieve. Contrast this with our modern Western society in which well-being is often based on a logic of optimization. We calculate our sleep, we manage our stress, and we maximize our energy and productivity. Even care practices are tailored for performance: release tension quickly, improve concentration, tone the body, and breathe more deeply. Guided meditation, self-awareness books, personal growth podcasts and tracking apps transform well-being into a quantifiable and individualized experience. Even in a group setting, the experience remains centred on personal benefit; it supports individual performance rather than the creation of deep connections or collective transformation. Care is perceived as a service integrated into our busy agenda and thought of as a functional break. The body is a tool to be fixed, regenerated, and improved. The ritual then becomes a technique or a protocol rather than a lived experience or a true return to self. Restoring meaning to rituals The issue is not so much to pit these visions against each other nor wishing for a return to rituals of the past; rather it is restoring meaning to care. For while the movements and techniques have some common elements throughout cultures, it is neither water, breath nor touch that transforms us: it is the meaning we ascribe to them. Ultimately, care is not an action to perform, but an experience to be lived. The body is not to be corrected but listened to. It is often in this slow and silent space of surrender that well-being can finally emerge, brought forth by a fundamental trust in the wisdom of life that knows how to repair itself when we stop interfering. Traditional rituals remain sources of inspiration, a weave of meaning and living practices. Many contemporary care offerings are inspired by this. Rather than viewing them out of context, we should retain their wisdom and intention. Well-being is not an add-on to life: it manifests itself in every breath, every gesture, every moment lived with awareness. Being fully present allows the ritual to exert its power and magic. 

By Franck Laboue, Business Development Director, Voyageurs du MondeExtract of the article published in Volume 22 of Strøm Magazine The spark is ever present. An image that lingers a bit longer than the others. A phrase heard in passing. A smell, a light, a season. A mundane detail that opens a door. I believe I started travelling long before I left home. In my childhood bedroom, reading the names on the paper map pinned to the wall. It was not accurate nor recent. But the words… that was all I needed. I was transported just by the names. Toponymy had become a passion. Cities, capitals, oceans, and remote mountains… it all had an unfamiliar exotic flair. I traced imaginary routes with my index finger. My mind wandered, following the course of rivers, memorizing mysterious and seductive names like Ouagadougou, Balikpapan, Antananarivo, even passing through Borneo or Novosibirsk. I was an armchair traveller. Books did the rest—especially comic strips. Tintin disembarking at Port Said in The Cigars of the Pharaoh… On Bougainville Island, the brooding silhouette of Corto Maltese’s chiaroscuro lines let the jungle and the silence nibble away at the sailor’s silhouette, as if the drawing itself hesitated between dream and departure. The pervasion Eventually, images were no longer enough. Travel pervaded the senses. First, it was the movies. The lighting in film noir that gave me a taste of 1930s hotels, the plush coziness of New York or Parisian bars, and slightly faded cities. There were also rain-drenched neon lights, the slow movements, an anonymous face in the crowd, and the way they filmed the silence, the waiting, the figures drifting in an unknown metropolis… Hong Kong, Tokyo… this is how they appeared to me, well before I travelled there: through Sofia Coppola, Wong Kar-wai, through stories about gangsters, dark nights and loneliness. I was not craving a real city. I was craving an atmosphere. Then there was the music. The Indiana Jones theme. These notes still haunt me, evoking enigma and places where anything could happen. In Petra, they waited to ambush me, buried somewhere, echoing at the end of the Siq, directly into my cortex. The sounds took over. As a teenager, well before my travels, I would play a CD of tropical storm sounds on repeat. The rain would beat down, the rumble of thunder rolled through my room, and I drifted away. It was not a backdrop; it was a passage, an untamed immersion into an ecosystem that, even knowing little about it, fascinated me. The journey then became part of my body. The noise, the discomfort. Being constantly at attention. More than observing, we participate. We do not just see the world—we feel it. The passers-by There are always passers-by. Mentors. Figures who open a door unknowingly. Writers leave us words like breadcrumbs scattered in our hearts. In books, we draw the sap and all the wicks to light the sparks. Reading is a bit like chasing after lines read years ago, pursuing them through the streets of time, winded and heart pounding as if on an endless road. There was the trade. The flight attendant. The stopovers. Pilots who talked about their lives back home, their crazy adventures in Tchad, their dreams of faraway places. A conversation could open a new world. Each story stirred the embers in me, opened the horizon. And the women… A Taiwanese woman, one day. Her way of inhabiting the world, a culture, a smile. Taipei was born this way—not from a map, but from an encounter, a graze that shifts a continent with one outstretched hand. I eventually understood that these sparks were never isolated. They shaped an intimate constellation. They spoke of what I was seeking, of what I was willing to leave behind. A faded Air France poster in the window of a travel agency. A dog-eared photograph on my grandparents’ wall. An old Geo magazine forgotten on a coffee table. One day, without fanfare, travel then becomes reality. Not yet booked, but inevitable. The unrushed departures Some sparks lead nowhere. Or rather, not yet. Others remain suspended, like unspoken promises. They demand nothing. They wait. Perhaps the actual journey would be too precise. Perhaps some destinations are best left inside of us. There is no need to achieve it all. Travel is not about going everywhere. It is about being in a state of readiness to leave. The journey always begins this way. With words, images, sounds, smells, encounters. Travelling with Voyageurs du Monde could mean accepting this: not forcing movement but rather letting ideas slowly germinate. Not going somewhere to check off a box, but to finally respond to what has been beckoning for a long time. And this call does not speak of geography. It speaks of who we are.