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Person Sascha

Existential Therapist | Holistic Coach | Philosopher
Sascha Heupel | AMOR FATI

SASCHA HEUPEL: EXISTENTIAL THERAPIST, HOLISTIC COACH, PHILOSOPHER

For several years I have been traveling the world permanently, minimalistically, freely and without a permanent residence. I combine this lifestyle with my work as an existential therapist, holistic coach and philosopher. Powerful books, existential philosophy, deep psychology, the hammering Nietzsche, beautiful nature, unique locations and Ruhrpott humor make my heart shine. But most of all, I am passionate about how to live a free, authentic and fulfilled life with flow and ease in all areas of life.

Therefore, I love, live and teach the holistic and pragmatic AMOR FATI philosophy, which aims to create stable, competent, free and especially authentic personalities to live a fulfilled and happy life.

With my work I want to spread AMOR FATI and make it accessible to other people, in order to help holistically and pragmatically. I want to share some of the fire that burns in me for AMOR FATI and ” an awesome life “. Simple as that!

For more than 15 years I have been working with people in the form of coaching, therapy and mentoring. I help my clients to evolve, to overcome inner blockages, to realize their potential, to do their own thing as well as to become stable, clear, authentic and free. Because:

“Wrong Life Cannot Be Lived Rightly” – Theodor W. Adorno

You can find more details about my coaching and therapeutic work on: Coaching & Therapy with Sascha. Check out the coaching reports and video feedbacks as well. Here clients talk about our mutual work: Coaching reports.
Besides my work as a coach and therapist, I administrate our website, publish articles in the blog as well as organize our community trips and host the AMOR FATI podcast (Currently only available in German language).
After all these years, four areas have emerged that I use to help people. These also work well for describing me as a person in more detail.
The four areas are:

  • Philosophy & Therapy
  • Fitness & Health
  • Vocation & Finances
  • Travel & Freedom

GNOTHI SEAUTON – KNOW THYSELF!

If you take Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Become who you are!” and Seneca’s “Philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak.” together, then we’re pretty close to my own story in the area of philosophy and therapy. Because as my favorite German comedy icon Stromberg would say:

“Life hasn’t thrown anything into my collection bag either.” – Bernd Stromberg

What may seem serene, cheerful, relaxed and clear today was once: pure chaos. The sudden death of my mother in 2009, the following turning away of parts of my family and friends and some other factors, gave me a so-called existential life crisis. Everything was upside down and in question.

Disorientation, powerlessness, meaninglessness and uncertainty dominated my life at that time. I fell into a depression, also had burnout according to the doctors, and thought twice about whether I wanted to continue living at all. In total, I completed three psychotherapies, took psychotropic drugs and anti-anxiety medication. This combination made me somewhat more stable and “fit for everyday life,” but by no means more joyful, happy, relaxed, or fulfilled. On top of that, I had about 50,000 Euros in debt, an unfulfilling job, and relationship problems. If I had known Tyler Durden back then, I would certainly have remembered his world-famous quote:

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.“ – Tyler Durden

Sascha Heupel Person | AMOR FATI
Sascha 1

Because that’s how it felt: lost. But somehow, deep in my being, there was a warrior-like will to live and the drive to get out of it. Today, I am very grateful for this mayhem in me, in my body and in my soul, because it has sent me on my journey – indeed, it has made it possible at all. #thanksprojecmayhem

Or as Fritz the Nietzschmeister says:

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.“ – Friedrich Nietzsche

Additionally, he demands …

“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus, I let go, took courage and worked intensively on myself and my situation. Besides therapies, I tried many different things to become more relaxed, to find myself, to do my thing and just live a happier and more fulfilling life. Some of it worked for me, some of it didn’t. “Patient stable, therapy successful,” the therapists and doctors told me. I said, “Right, but just stable for everyday life!” But who the fuck wants that?

I could have continued living like this until the day I died, making a career and earning good money. I was very grateful that I was feeling better, but something inside me still felt “unfulfilled”: “That’s it?” – “That’s fucking all?” I didn’t know how to interpret that inner voice at that time. Today I know the years of working on myself and listening were supposed to pay off. Because years later when a mutual friend brought Dr. Christian Zippel into my life and with him the AMOR FATI philosophy, it was struck: inner resonance.

Since then I wanted to know everything about this strong and free philosophy from Dr. Z, try it out for myself and, if suitable, adapt it to me and integrate it into my life. I felt like a child playing, just playing for the sake of playing – because it is so beautiful. When was the last time you felt like this? #energeia
So I constantly invested several years and did a lot of coaching and traveling with Christian, lived with him several times, made him my mentor and teacher and thus learned to live, love and teach the AMOR FATI philosophy for myself. Today I would say I have been philosophically and therapeutically trained by Dr. Zippel and applied it in parallel to myself, my life and my clients individually. A wonderful and massively impactful time.

Additionally, I completed a professional training in existential psychotherapy and read the relevant professional literature. This combination of my own life experience, the AMOR FATI training with Dr. Z, the studies of professional content, and over 15 years of working with people allows me to bring the topic of philosophy and therapy into AMOR FATI and to my clients. #imakeyourinsideshiftthatismygift

Sascha Heupel Bodybuilding Transformation | AMOR FATI

LETTING GO & SUICIDE COSTS ONLY A LIFE – AND A LOT OF COURAGE!

Long before I had anything to do with AMOR FATI, my heart was beating for fitness and bodybuilding. I was working out with friends at the private gym around the corner and wanted to gain some muscle and lose fat. Over time, my interest grew and I started reading a lot of books in this field. After a few years of training, I completed various trainer licenses at private academies over the weekend for several years – parallel to my part-time job and full-time university studies. Besides the classic trainer B and A license, I also completed a personal trainer as well as nutrition trainer license and worked with several trainers and coaches from this field.

Although it was never my intention to build a business out of this, over the years the voices from friends and acquaintances for help became louder. So I shared my knowledge and gave my first coaching sessions at the age of 18. I read specialized literature on the subject, lost 20 kg of fat, gained 15 kg of muscle and started my own fitness business during my university studies. Here I built up my own supplement store with a partner and soon I was doing fitness coaching full-time.

In addition, I trained for myself six days a week, gave personal training sessions, took part in bodybuilding competitions and, at the end of my bodybuilding period, I consumed anabolic steroids for three years in a row. I was also my own lab rat, doing extensive hormone and blood work every two months and talking to specialists about it. An intense time.

After ten years, I felt that the game of “Fitness & Bodybuilding” had been completed. It felt like it was now time for me to move on. A good and mutual friend of Dr. Zippel and me is the multiple German Champion and Bodybuilding World Champion, Peter Baers. I was sitting with Peter for a collaborative project and trusted him that I wanted to get out. Get out of the supplement store, get out of my work as a fitness coach and get out of steroids. I told him that I felt like I had to take this leap, even though it felt like “suicide” since I had worked and invested years for this. The accompanying and impending loss of identity and meaning worried me.

Peter and Christian already knew each other very well and personally from joint trips. He advised me that I could discuss the topic with Dr. Z personally. So I went for a coaching to Christian to Rügen island and got to know him personally. We discussed my concern and after two days of philosophical work it was clear to me: “I’m getting out!”. Still on the spot, I notified a lot of my fitness clients, got out of the supplement store and stopped all steroids as no doctor would normally recommend: ice cold, without any supporting drugs. Bodybuilding was dead. Personal trainer and bodybuilder Sascha had died with him, and it was me who had killed him. Philosophically a very influential event and it felt good, very good.
Today I integrate my knowledge of fitness, health, nutrition, physical therapy, fascia, blood and hormone levels, yoga and meditation into my coaching and therapy as a holistic component.

“Many are afraid of the small, the social death and hardly dare to step out of line; even more are afraid of the big, the absolute death – whereas they should be afraid of a dead life alone.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

TO LIVE IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR NATURE, THAT IS THE WAY TO A FULFILLED & HAPPY LIFE!

After completing my apprenticeship as a marketing communications specialist, I wanted to go to university, but my A-level grades weren’t good enough to be accepted directly at university – just as my teachers had predicted: “If anything, then just D minus.” I rearranged my plans and started working at a traditional advertising agency and later at a newspaper publishing house. My position was client / project manager and sales.

After waiting for several years, I took up the idea of studying again and studied business administration for five semesters, with a focus on marketing. I also completed a further training course to become an online marketing manager. I used my skills and knowledge to build up my supplement store and fitness coaching business described above.

Besides coaching, fitness and all other interests, digital marketing always existed in parallel in my life. This is what I turned to with more focus after my professional exit from fitness and bodybuilding described above. I wanted to go deeper into digital marketing and realize exciting projects in an agency environment with great people, as well as learn and grow together. So I organized a job as an online marketing manager at the German sales trainer Dirk Kreuter. I was the fourth employee in the newly founded marketing agency, sat on the floor in the hallway for a few weeks because the office space was being remodeled, and started my job. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

As a team, we realized so-called performance marketing projects with the goal of helping our clients achieve more sales and customer inquiries online. We took care of the strategy, positioning, implementation of websites, graphics, communication, ads on Facebook & Co and everything else that was necessary to make a project successful. At that time in my life I was working sixty to seventy hours a week and loved it, even though I knew I couldn’t do it like that for ages, as workload and pressure tended not to decrease. But by far the most important thing, besides all the hustle from that time was that I gained a very good and close friend. #qualityoverquantity

Together with him and two more partners, I went into self-employment after about a year of kick-starting agency life, and we set up our own online marketing agency. We wanted to do our own thing, be self-determined and free. At the same time, I shared my marketing, sales and psychology know-how with my clients in the form of coaching and training.
Even when I had already given up my permanent residence in Germany and was traveling the world, I was still realizing digital marketing projects at times. Thus, my online marketing manager existence culminated in the fact that, while I was constantly traveling and giving my AMOR FATI coachings, I was simultaneously responsible for twelve online stores in ten different countries and coordinated eight international freelancers / employees for this.

Financial success was achieved and I was able to get out of my 50,000 Euro student loan debts early. But more importantly than the money, I was amazed what could be achived with clarity, focus, digital organization, and fun in my life. #moneycantbuyyouhappiness
Today, I only use my digital work experience and know-how within my AMOR FATI coachings to help my clients to build or grow their own business.

Realizing who you really are means, among other things, asking yourself what you love and would do if you only had a year left to live. Doing more digital marketing and stressing about it, hustling for money, consumption or “success” was not a worthy answer to me. Therefore, external digital marketing had to be overcome and let go. Instead, there was now even more time for the things I would continue to do even considering my last year of life: travel and see the world, organize crazy and deep AMOR FATI trips, help more people with coaching and therapy, fire up the barbecue with my friends, drinking a bottle Dortmunder Kronen beer and laughing about the same stupid jokes as I did back then. Why?
Because that is me and it is in accordance with my nature. This is the way to fulfillment and happiness: A life in accordance and in resonance with your own nature! Then also the question vanishes: “Is this still life or can we throw it away already?

LIFE EASY – DIE HAPPY

As human beings, we are thrown into this life. No, you can’t be everything and you can’t become everything. Alone for reasons of time you have to decide, because – attention spoiler: You will die … And that is good!

Besides the temporal transience, you do not choose your genes, your parents, your early influences and possibly not even your breast or penis size. In some cases, the zip code in which you were born says more about your life prospects than your grade point average and IQ combined. Sad but true. #hesaidpenis

Nevertheless, you have influence: to recognize your own nature and essence, to accept it and to stop desperately trying to make a square out of the circle by only trying to hit it harder and harder. That means: to know thyself, to accept yourself and to live it out authentically. But as long as you try to be someone you are not or you suppress your compensations, traumas and fears, you will always have complicated problems and painful symptoms in your life. Stop crying and do something about it!

“Master the debris perfectly, the best people in the world still thrive in the dirt.” – Liquit Walker, German Song “Trümmerkönig”

Every person has to live with this “thrownness” and the fate it contains, whether they want to or not – life does not ask. On top of that, we must additionally learn to deal with the supposedly “hard sides” of life, which also affect every human being: Death, illness, disappointment, guilt, losses, transience, changes, suffering, meaninglessness, loneliness, freedom, responsibility, existential fears, income tax returns, tomorrow’s gas prices, etc.

The philosophical and therapeutic demand: In spite of this thrownness and your inherent fate in life as well as all the burdens you have to bear, you should say “yes” to life. You should gain clarity, throw off ballast, establish easiness, clarify your personal purpose and of course, why you want to stay alive in the first place – and through this you will learn how to dance.

“And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity – through him all things fall.
Not by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!
I learned to walk; since then have I let myself run. I learned to fly; since then I do not need pushing in order to move from a spot.
Now I am light, now do I fly; now do I see myself under myself. Now there danceth a God in me.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

I also dance freely through the world – and it is wonderful. In November 2019, I deregistered my residence in Germany and have been living without a permanent residence since then. I have sold all my possessions and minimized them to two bags and about twelve kilograms. I feel where it moves me and if I like it, I enjoy staying longer. I have an international travel health insurance and fixed costs of about 200 Euros per month. I also live completely and legally without bureaucracy as well as tax free. While traveling I work remotely with a handful of wonderful clients for not more than 20-25 hours a week. The rest I invest in myself: reading, writing, meditation, sports, yoga, philosophy, walking and just being. Sounds like a show off and too good to be true? Before I thought that too. Today I know: It is possible and an indescribable freedom! When was the last time you arranged to have a cappuccino with yourself for an entire afternoon and were unstressed and happy? #lifeisforlivingnotforstressing

As part of my AMOR FATI work, I also help clients to realize a freer life, to deregister from Germany if desired, to start a foreign company, to be free of bureaucracy and taxes, and to live a life of permanent traveling. I do not only coordinate and help with the organization and implementation, but we also work together on the emotional issues that may arise during the process of becoming free. Being free has to be learned.

“Freedom means: Free space. Free time. Free life. Free death. Or as we say at AMOR FATI: life easy, die happy. Of course, this is not a standard model in such an extreme way. But a philosopher would not be a philosopher if he did not live his ideals.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

”What can you lose that you won't lose anyhow? Nothing - and nothing should stop you from risking everything - for the best possible life.

Dr. Christian Zippel

DARE TO BE YOURSELF!

Dare to become who you are and stop stressing yourself. Take a look into your dark corners, look at your fears, patterns and compensations and don’t forget your fire: Who else should bring light into your life, if not you?
If you have read this far: respect. I only did it because I wanted to know how it ends. Don’t worry, we’re done now. Dr. Z, do you have anything philosophically fancy to add in conclusion?

“What can you lose that you won’t lose anyhow? Nothing – and nothing should stop you from risking everything – for the best possible life.” – Dr. Christian Zippel

AMOR FATI
Become who you are!
Your Sascha