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Welf von Hören
11
Recs
1
Exceptional
6
Chapters
Journey Map
Journey Map
Creative agency
My emotional journey started 10 years ago when I was given this book, 'Think and Grow Rich'. The awakening that came with it was: You can consciously work with your mind to make your life go a certain way. There is a deep recognition of a creative agency over how to live your life.
The journey involved finding my way out of a small town in the German countryside to Berlin and now the San Francisco Bay area, and dealing with a lot of loneliness in the process.
When I was 18, I was smoking a lot of weed and cigarettes. I managed to quit all of that through reading this book: 'What to say when you talk to yourself'. Every time I would light a cigarette, I would say: I'm not a smoker. Then two weeks later, I had a cigarette in my hand and it felt like it didn't make sense. All the craving was gone, and I haven't been addicted to cigarettes since. That was a big win at the time.
Community Living
In my early twenties in Berlin, I went through cycles of intense, manic work sprints and then days when I was depressed, isolated, and had 12 hours of screen time and Youtube.
What really helped me move out of that was living in community. Living in community is really about learning how to enjoy life and enjoy being together, relaxing, and feeling at home with others.
If you get to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every single day, you get to see so much more of the other person. There's a level of depth of how you can relate to each other that is very unlike what you find in the world. Maintaining relationships with friends at that level of depth feels different.
Friends of mine started a community in Berlin called Moos, and for two years I had my base in that community.
I founded a startup years ago called Potential, an app for building better habits. That gave me a frame of phone-based self-improvement, which I now look at as a questionable frame.
Over the years, I've come to appreciate how I was trying to find a technological solution to what is fundamentally an emotional problem.
If you're in a studio apartment doing individual practices, you're going to be in pain in some way – emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. While you're in that frame, using phone-based self-improvement tools can help you cope so that you can get out of that frame. But getting out of that space is the main goal.
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If you're in a studio apartment doing individual practices, you're going to be in pain in some way – emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. While you're in that frame, using phone-based self-improvement tools can help you cope so that you can get out of that frame. But getting out of that space is the main goal.
Embodiment through yoga, ecstatic dance, stretching & lifting
Yoga has been a big part of becoming more embodied. I went to a couple of different yoga studios in Berlin, but the most consistent practice is a 20 minute morning yoga on Soundcloud. Yoga really helped me land in my soft heart core. I randomly found the Soundcloud a few years ago, and I've played it hundreds of times since. It's a simple flow, and it's good enough.
It's been helpful to have one Soundcloud that I can listen to in the morning – knowing that I'll get out of bed, onto my mat, do 20 minutes of that, and it will make a meaningful difference on my presence throughoug the day and my ability to stay intentional.
In San Francisco, there's a studio, Love Story Yoga. I went to it for a few months and had a pretty deep practice.
Ecstatic dance was also really important. It helped me with self-expression and learning how to get comfortable wildly moving your body. Noticing when you dance: How free do I feel right now to move my body in the ways that the music makes me want to move? In early 2021, I remember feeling awkward. At some point, I started getting it. Not caring how other people perceive you.
Ecstatic dance is very uniquely inviting, welcoming, and encouraging space for that. It's a very beautiful and healing experience, and can help with whatever emotions you bring to the dance. It has enough of a container that you can reliably come out on the the other side feeling connected and joyful.
Then from there, there's emotions and psychological things that come up while dancing. You can learn how to move through those dancing for two hours, getting into a deeper connected state.
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Ecstatic dance is a very beautiful and healing experience, and can help with whatever emotions you bring to the dance. It has enough of a container that you can reliably come out on the the other side feeling connected and joyful.
Beyond yoga and ecstatic dance, it's hard to pinpoint what has contributed to my embodiment journey. I had experiences with mushrooms and MDMA, and I think over the last 2-3 years I've given like, 150 or 200 massages to friends. Learning how to touch is a really big component of all of this.
Stretching has felt important too – if you can systematically relax your body, that's really beneficial for your mind as well. Working through all the ways your body is tight is probably going to make your life a bit better. There's an app called Pliability and a Youtube Channel called Foundation Training that I really like.
And bodyworkers too – there's a bodyworker in San Francisco, Warren. I only worked with him once, but he is someone I would work with a lot more if I had infinite budget for these things. He has an incredibly deep structural understanding of the body. You can say "I have this tension here" , and he goes in an entirely different place, makes you feel incredible amounts of pain, and you feel so much better.
Love Story Yoga
Space
1 rec
A Yoga studio in San Francisco.
👍Good
I went to this studio three or four times a week for a few months and had a pretty deep practice.
Personal Experience
Pliability
App
1 rec
An app focused on flexibility.
👍Good
Morning Yoga Soundcloud
Youtube
1 rec
A Hatha Yoga Soundcloud.
👍Good
I randomly found it a few years ago, and I’ve played it hundreds of times since. It’s a simple flow, and it’s good enough.
Personal Experience
It’s been helpful to have one SoundCloud that I can listen to in the morning – knowing that I’ll get out of bed, onto my mat, do 20 minutes of that, and it will make a meaningful difference on my presence throughout the day and my ability to stay intentional.
Benefits Gained
Foundation Training
Youtube
1 rec
A Youtube channel focused on improving posture, alleviating pain, and enhancing overall physical well-being.
👍Good
✨
Warren
Practitioner
1 rec
A bodyworker in San Francisco
⭐Exceptional
I only worked with him once, but he is someone I would work with a lot more if I had infinite budget for these things.
Personal Experience
He has an incredibly deep structural understanding of the body. You can say “I have this tension here” and he goes in an entirely different place, makes you feel incredible amounts of pain, and you feel so much better.
What Resonated
Learning trust through Authentic Relating
I really don't like circling. But I really like check-ins, especially in romantic relationships: Making it a practice to sit down, check in, share for a few minutes, and fully listen to the other person until they've shared everything that's alive for them.
I learned these authentic relating skills from someone I was dating at the time, and from living in community environments – people are versed in it and you just absorb it.
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Authentic check-ins helped me find a trust that it's okay to experience and share anything. And to share the more edgy things. When you practice sharing in a more intimate container, you become more comfortable being vulnerable in other contexts as well.
Meditation
Eight years ago, I first tried Headspace. When the Waking Up app from Sam Harris came out, I tried that. I did the 50 day introductory course – which is basically 10, 15, 20 minute meditations for 50 days. Doing the course two or three times, combined with the daily meditations, gave me a reliable practice. I knew if I sat down that day, I would feel more spacious and be more clear.
My practice then stalled for a few years. I did one Vipassana retreat in 2018.
I was super not prepared for Vipassana. I had never sat in meditation that much. Suddenly sitting in 10 hours of meditation every day was a lot. If you're sitting for 90 minutes and one hour of that is silent and you don't know what you're doing, you can spiral. Maybe some people eventaully settle in, but I didn't get to that place. Not being able to journal and properly exercise didn't help either.
Coming out of the retreat, I felt like "I don't need to go back onto a meditation retreat for the foreseeable future because it's clearly not beneficial for me right now". That allowed me to throw myself into my career and work.
A few months ago I did a Mahamudra retreat. For a long time, I had a stance that meditation would make me more passive and less engaged with my own life and my work in the world. The Mahamudra retreat helped me realize that one of the biggest things that got in the way of my work was an untrained mind. Like, avoiding discomfort, seeking out distraction – social media, binge watching, food, to numb the anxiety. They're all kinds of ways of coping really. I didn't quite have the metacognitive awareness that I was doing that, and I could stop and do something else instead.
There's so many ways in which the modern world is giving us these temptations and habits – just offering so much ice cream and Netflix and porn and Youtube shorts. The untrained mind is very vulnerable against them. Once it falls on them, it gets more untrained, more unhinged.
And it turns out there are very systematic ways for how you can train the mind, how you can awaken it and suffer less.
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There are very systematic ways for how you can train the mind, how you can awaken it and suffer less.
Waking Up
App
2 recs
A meditation app created by Sam Harris.
👍Good
I did the 50 day introductory course – which is basically 10, 15, 20 minute meditations for 50 days
Personal Experience
Doing the course two or three times, combined with the daily meditations, gave me a reliable practice. I knew if I sat down that day, I would feel more spacious and be more clear.
Benefits Gained
Vipassana retreat
Program
2 recs
⚠️Negative
Coming out of the retreat, I felt like: “I don’t need to go back onto a meditation retreat for the foreseeable future because it’s clearly not beneficial for me right now”. That allowed me to throw myself into my career and work.
Benefits Gained
When I did the retreat, I had never sat in meditation that much. Suddenly sitting in 10 hours of meditation every day was a lot. If you’re sitting for 90 minutes and one hour of that is silent and you don’t know what you’re doing, you can spiral. Maybe some people eventually settle in, but I didn’t get to that place. Not being able to journal and properly exercise all didn’t help either.
Why It Might Not Resonate
Headspace
App
2 recs
A mindfulness meditation app
👍Good
Psychedelics
I experienced MDMA with friends and in ceremonial contexts where it felt like there was something to celebrate. It was profoundly heart opening, and really made me feel more at home in my body and the world. I was overflowing with a sense of love I didn't know was possible before.
I did one Ayahuasca retreat that was kind of challenging and not super well held. It's not clear to me that Ayahuasca is a net positive for most people, where as MDMA is much more safe and likely to be a positive experience for people.
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I was overflowing with a sense of love I didn't know was possible before.