Cultivating the foundations

What connects us as human beings

Regardless of origin, culture, and worldview, we share fundamental conditions of human existence.

We have a body that organises itself under the influence of gravity — moving, bearing load, recovering. We experience vitality and exhaustion, tension and release, clarity and confusion.

Thoughts, feelings, and bodily processes influence one another continuously. Our nervous system and hormonal regulation play their part in this, as do our experiences, our habits, and the conditions we live under.

Someone who gets annoyed may notice their jaw tightening. A difficult conversation can change the breath. Exhaustion can make a minor inconvenience suddenly seem larger than it is.

We also know the experience of something settling after a walk. The breath grows calmer, thoughts lose their urgency, and a situation that seemed tangled before appears in a different light.

We distinguish physical, energetic, mental, and emotional dimensions in order to look at them more closely. In our actual experience, they work as one.

Attention as the foundation

Imagine an everyday situation.

In the middle of a conversation, a remark lands and stings. Before we even answer, something changes. The shoulders tense, the breath becomes shallow, thoughts begin to race.

A reply is already on the tip of the tongue.

But in this moment, we notice what is happening.

Perhaps this changes our response. We listen more closely, ask a question, or let a moment pass before we speak.

Outwardly, little has happened. Inwardly, a new possibility has opened.

This is where conscious cultivation begins: with the growing ability to perceive our own physical, mental, and emotional processes and to respond to them appropriately.

This attention can be developed.

How do I stand? How do I move? Where do I create unnecessary tension? How does my breath change? Which habits shape my reactions?

Questions like these lead us directly to the foundations of our existence.

Shaping the conditions consciously

What we do regularly shapes us.

A body develops according to the demands placed on it. Movement patterns become familiar; abilities grow through repeated use. Our attention and our habitual reactions, too, are formed by what we practise every day.

Conscious cultivation means recognising these conditions more and more clearly, and handling them responsibly.

We can learn to develop stability while remaining mobile. We can apply our strength with greater precision, release unnecessary tension, and refine our perception.

In this, effort and recovery belong together, as do activity and rest.

Over time, a finer understanding develops of when decisive action is required and when it is wiser to let go.

In this sense, I understand yoga as a way of consciously bringing the different dimensions of our being into relationship with one another. Body, breath, attention, and action become one coherent field of cultivation.

This development takes attention, patience, and continuity.

Experience is tested in life

Meditation has been a constant part of my life since 1999. In 2000, I began teaching yoga in Hanover and building a school of my own. Thirteen years in Germany were followed by twelve years in Ecuador.

During that time, I lived in very different regions of the country — in the Andean highlands, in Peguche near Otavalo, in the valley of Vilcabamba, and on the Pacific coast in Ayampe.

Journeys into the Amazon region and many encounters with indigenous cultures opened further perspectives on how human beings live together.

Each of these worlds had its own cultural character, its own social structures, and its own understanding of the relationship between person, community, and nature.

Added to this was a way of life that was, in many respects, very elemental. A direct relationship with the natural surroundings, physical demands, family and social obligations, and making do with what was actually available — all of this belonged to daily life.

In the southern highlands, at around 2,350 metres above sea level, terrain, climbs, weather, and physical strain were immediate parts of the everyday.

In the midst of these different realities, my daily practice continued.

The outer conditions changed, and with them the demands on body, attention, and inner orientation.

A stable posture, a calm breath, or a clear thought under favourable conditions is one thing. Whether these qualities are still available in exhaustion, under pressure, in unfamiliar cultural settings, or in an unexpected situation is quite another.

For me, that is an essential measure of practice.

What matters is not what we call a method, but which qualities we cultivate through it — and how these find expression in our lives.

Life as the field of application

We get up, walk, work, meet other people, carry responsibility, and respond to change.

Each of these moments offers an opportunity to refine our perception and to act more consciously.

Developing physical stability, inner clarity, and emotional balance concerns our whole way of living.

Across millennia, people in different cultures have developed their own ways of studying and cultivating these connections.

Their language and their methods differ. The fundamental human experiences they deal with are accessible to us all.

They can be described in plain, everyday language.

That is the standard I want the coming pieces to be held to, as we look more closely at the individual foundations and how they work together.

A person bends down, picks something up, and straightens up again.

Perhaps next time we will notice how we stand, how the body organises itself, and where our attention goes.

Everything begins with attention.