Constantin Bjerke
From revolutionising creative media to championing ancient wellness practices, founder of Datu Wellness, Constantin Bjerke’s journey is a testament to profound personal transformation.
Constantin Bjerke is a multi-award-winning media producer and creative brand consultant turned somewhat reluctant ‘wellness entrepreneur’ (“I didn’t see myself as a wellness entrepreneur,” he laughs, “because it reminds me of those Californian wellness bros with long hair and wide-brimmed hats saying, ‘I love your energy’”).
After years in the media industry, working with everyone from BMW to Coca Cola, and creating the first online video magazine with his business Crane.tv, Bjerke’s personal challenges sparked his journey toward wellness, and the ancient healing practices of Ayurveda and Panchakarma.
His deeply transformative experiences in India inspired him to co-found Datu Wellness, a platform dedicated to bringing the benefits of Eastern wisdom to the Western world. Drawing on his expertise in production and his network of therapists, Bjerke aims to offer a holistic approach to wellbeing that integrates mind, body, and spirit through carefully curated retreats in Tuscany, and most recently, South Africa. “Success,” he says, “is living the life you want to live.”
I had an office in Brazil and New York and London, and I was trying to be everywhere, and do everything at once. And then my father suddenly died. And then I got divorced. And then my dog died. So I was without a dog, without a wife, without work, and in a hole.
For the first year, I did what men do really well, which is distract myself, and ran around Africa, doing anything not to have to deal with what I actually had to deal with. And then I hit rock bottom, and the stories I was telling myself didn’t work anymore.
I first heard about Ayurveda from an Indian woman in London, and in my desperation, bought a one-way ticket to India in the summer of 2021. I had a medical visa, which meant I could get into India, which was closed during Covid, and having two passports helped. I flew off to a tiny, little hospital. And after three weeks of Panchakarma, which is the sort of foundational lens of Ayurveda, I had found the path forward.
It was three weeks of suffering, and for the first 10 days, I was completely alone. I was in the middle of the jungle in Southern India, the only white person in the entire country because COVID had shut everything down.
Reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s ‘Search for Meaning’, about his experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, helped me appreciate that humans will actually accommodate themselves to any circumstances they’re in.
Slowly, I surrendered to the care and love of everyone around me, which in three weeks took me a lot further than the previous four years of therapy and evasion. It sparked an enormous curiosity, and with few other responsibilities, it led me to stay another two years, exploring India’s ancient wisdom and healing.
I originally found my practitioners at Six Senses Vana, a wellness and healing retreat in Dehradun. When it changed ownership, they told me, “We don’t want to work for a big American hotel group.” I asked, “Would you trust me to bring you to Europe?” And this group, with infinite skills and kindness but no passports, said yes.
With their trust, I figured out visas, found a place, invited friends, and shared what I’d experienced. And from there, everything took on a life of its own. The practitioners grew in number from three or four to 15. And then I found a place with 25 rooms in Tuscany. And before I knew it, we had our first retreat, with around 20 guests.
I never wrote a business plan, never wrote a strategy. I just said, ‘Well, there’s people who want to book it, so we’ll know how much money we’ll have, and let’s just try and spend less than we get from the guests. And then we’ll be fine.’ And that’s what we’ve done. Success is living the life you want to live.
It’s easier to market Tuscany to a New York audience. It just makes for a better cocktail party chat – which also matters, because people’s holidays are social currency. You can like or dislike it, but let’s accept it and then try to teach those who are with us that that’s not the point of the holiday. And while there are enough boxes you can tick as to why Tuscany makes sense (including the fact the Italians live by Ayurvedic principles, living seasonally with the soil), it doesn’t need to make any sense other than when we’re standing there at sunrise, giving gratitude for a new day, it just feels right.
In 2023, the entire team showed up at our first retreat in Tuscany not knowing whether anyone was going to get paid. Everyone’s attitude was, ‘We have this centuries-old knowledge we’re bringing to people who really need it, and that’s why we’re here.’ We don’t cut corners. It’s not about milking an extra dollar out of our guests. It’s about, how do you get 25 people to leave better than when they arrived?
We say, ‘growth is the enemy of integrity.’ None of our practitioners have million dollar ambitions. In fact, if people we’re interviewing bring up money in the first conversation, we know they’re not right for us.
What surprised me about being a ‘wellness entrepreneur? How creative it can be. It’s such a beautiful canvas, from designing the retreat, to figuring out the bath products, the lighting, the books we put in the library, the talks we put on in the evening, even how we plate the food…
It’s unbelievably satisfying to receive gratitude from guests. When people spend their first night with us, there are things we do that surprise them and give them an immediate sense of warmth and homeliness.
The biggest surprise is how this project has become my life’s biggest teacher. Every single setback turns out to have a silver lining. Previously, the time gap between bad, unpleasant things happening, and learning why they happened, and why that made sense, was extremely long. Now, it’s immediate.
I no longer allow myself to have a judgment on any given situation in my life, good or bad, because I’ve now learned everything that happens enables something else. It’s actually almost blasphemous, to say ‘this is bad.’ Because I have no idea!