Which city. Which neighborhood. Which life.
Your location Sherpa in France — I scout and score French cities through a Zen lens, eliminating the wrong ones in advance, so you visit three cities, not thirty.
THE ZEN LENS I USE TO EVALUATE LIFE IN FRANCE
Restore · Move · Nourish · Sacred · Nature · Eco · Community
What The Zen Guy offers
Is France the right country for you at all?
The free Zen to Live France Test takes 15 minutes and shows you the honest gap between your life now and life in France.
No email course. No pitch. Just the gap.
01 START HERE
SCORECARDS tell you whether a French city can hold the life you want — 62 yes/no questions, trade-offs named directly.
When a city scores well enough, its Zen to Live GUIDE shows you what living there actually looks like. Not every city earns a Guide.
02 FIND YOUR CITY
Video consultations on your shortlist, your situation, your questions — with the one who's walked the cities.
I'm not a visa lawyer or tax advisor. I'm your location scout.
Start with a free 15-minute call.
03 TALK IT THROUGH
04 PLAN THE SCOUTING TRIP
Once you have your shortlist: trip planning built around what you need to verify in person.
Plus accommodation search — Airbnb short-term rental options identified for your stay.
“Home is something you cultivate, not just a place you land.”
After 35 years as a corporate internal auditor — the last chapter at Nintendo — a cardiologist told me my job was killing me. I traded the 1,100 SF (~102m²) Seattle condo for a 161 SF (~15m²) apartment in Paris and never looked back.
That's what I bring to scouting French cities: audit precision applied to where you'll actually live. Not brochure copy. A structured, honest evaluation of whether a place can hold the life you want.
The Zen-to-Live Framework
Seven pillars — the lens behind everything here.
The free France Test, the City Scorecards, and the Zen to Live Guides all run on the same seven, so what you score is what you’ll find.
Two of the three — the Test and the Scorecards — also check a Practical Foundation first: visa, tax, housing, the basics that have to work before the seven pillars matter.
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Spaces to reset your nervous system and reconnect to your body. Hammams, saunas, float therapy, massage, reflexology, osteopathy, thalassothérapie — because rest is not a reward, it's a practice.
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Movement restores clarity. Walking paths, bike routes, outdoor yoga, chlorine-free swims, and the quiet rhythm of a city explored on foot — the calmest, most beautiful ways to move through a place.
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The most grounding way to start any Zen journey is through taste. Third-wave cafés, artisan chocolate, farmers' markets, plant-forward kitchens, and natural wine — food as a daily act of intention.
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Places that invite reflection, presence, and inner quiet. Temples, meditation spaces, sound baths, pilgrimage routes, and the kind of museum bench you sit on and lose track of time.
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Nature is the universal Zen teacher. Old-growth parks, botanical gardens, forest bathing, rivers, Miyawaki micro-forests, and sunset points — where to find stillness wherever you land.
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Zen living leaves a light footprint. The 20-minute city, mass transit, home exchange, green-certified stays, natural building, and the radical simplicity of owning less and moving more freely.
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Belonging is part of wellness too. Yoga classes, coworking cafés, LGBT-welcoming spaces, Airbnb Experiences, meetups, and the local hubs where strangers become neighbors.
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The ground the seven pillars stand on. Visa, tax treaty, healthcare access, affordability, property, safety. Not a Zen pillar — the practical layer the France Test and every City Scorecard check before anything else. The Zen to Live Guides pick it up in their Need to Know pages.
Whether you're still googling French cities at midnight or you've already set a date, the first step is the free Zen to Live France Test — 15 minutes to see exactly where the gap is between your life now and life in France.
Ready to find your city?
