How I discovered Brother Klaus von Flüe — and why it changed my life

Have you ever had one of those moments where it feels like "by coincidence" you stumble across something that ends up changing your life forever?

I've collected a few of those life-defining moments over the years. In fact, I met my husband that way, but that's for another blogpost (promise!).

First, why am I telling you about Brother Klaus today? I wasn't raised in any religion really, other than music (classical and modern), if you can call that a religion.

Somehow I believe that whatever is important in your family growing up, the common interests that run through generations, could just as well be called a belief system. For us, it was music. My grandparents were all musicians, my mom has a Master's degree in Musicology, my sister is a professional pianist, I'm a professional violinist. You get the picture.

But back to Klaus.

It was Easter 2026. My son was spending Easter with his father (we split in 2012), my husband was drowning in work while building two tech start-ups, and the stressed energy in the house was more than I could take. So I decided to go to Switzerland alone for a few weeks.

The first week was amazing. I stayed in my late grandma's apartment in Chur (still in the family), did lots of creative work, meditated, saw my hypnotherapy and business clients online, went to my fav coffee place now and then.

Peace of mind and equilibrium. Glorious. When you normally deal with a family of five, my two bonus kids, my husband and my son, this was the ultimate body-and-mind restoration (and I did not miss those toilets after teenagers with absent-minded cortexes, hahaha!).

So what does a 15th-century hermit have to do with me and dirty whatever…?

Well. During Easter week itself I learned that my parents and my sister and her husband were also coming to the apartment. I did not feel like sleeping on the kitchen floor, and my nervous system was not quite healed yet after years of high stress for various reasons. So I did something I would never have done before in my life.

I chose ME.

I searched everywhere for a quiet, clean place close to nature. I even booked somewhere in St. Gallen that looked lovely, then found out it would be crowded too, panicked and cancelled immediately. And then I came across Bethanien — a convent run by Dominican sisters in the mountains of Obwalden, right in the centre of Switzerland. Half board, a great view, cute cows nearby, and quiet privacy. Perfect.

I had never heard of the hermit before. But I'm the type of person who believes life unravels exactly as it should, if you stay open-minded with a high dose of curiosity so you don't miss the little nuggets being handed to you along the way.

And then I visited the chapels at the Ranft.

What a beautiful surprise. No wonder pilgrims walk there from all over Europe. It turns out Flüeli-Ranft sits directly on the Swiss stretch of the Way of St. James — the Via Jacobi, which runs from Lake Constance to Geneva as part of the wider European Jakobsweg network, all the way to Santiago de Compostela. Sachseln and Flüeli-Ranft have been important stages on this route since the late medieval period. So people have quite literally been walking toward Brother Klaus's hermitage for over 500 years.

Wow. I felt so lucky, and so close to the moments that shaped the history of Europe.

There's something grounding about standing on the exact spot where a fifty-year-old farmer and family man left everything behind to seek God alone in 1467 — with his family's blessing (his wife in fact supported his awakening deeply!) — and simply… stayed.

Twenty-freaking years in a gorge, living on almost nothing but faith. Legend says he lived those years without food at all. And somehow he became Switzerland's only saint, and a quiet mediator who once talked warring cantons back from the edge of civil war.

You can still feel why people make the pilgrimage. The Melchaa roaring past the two small chapels, the steep green walls of the Ranft closing in around you, the sense that this is a place people come to be undone and rebuilt a little.

And this is where my long rant finally gets to the point.

I sat all by myself in the lower chapel, the one closest to the river. I listened to the sound of the water. I closed my eyes. And my body started twitching all by itself — and FINALLY my nervous system got the deep rest it had been needing to find its way back to balance.

Like farmers in the old days who built their houses where the cattle chose to rest, I believe there are certain places in the world that carry a special healing, transforming frequency. And down by the river in Flüeli-Ranft, I'm quite sure I found one.

That's why I recorded the sound of that river, so I could share it with you too, in The Healing Garden meditation.

I hope my story makes you want to find a quiet place to lie down, put your headphones on, take a deep breath, and let that river flow through you the way it did through me.

With love and peace from Aja

PS. If you're curious, here is my LiveWall.no album with some photos I took on my Easter exploration in the footsteps of the fascinating hermit-peacemaker Brother Klaus in Obwalden.