Without Seeking a Hold

There is a steadiness you reach for, and a steadiness you already have. The first needs something to grip. The second does not.

This exercise belongs to the second. It is short, it needs nothing but a chair, and it works through the breath–more precisely, through the out-breath, which usually goes unnoticed. What it looks for is not beneath you but within you.

In Staying With there is an image for this from the SySt tradition: 'The sea turtle rests in the groundless, centred in itself, and looks.' It needs no ground beneath it–it finds its hold in its own centre. When we cling to solid ground–to methods, techniques, plans–we are too occupied with not falling to look.

Of this centre, Staying With tells.

An Exercise for Everyday

This guide, too, is meant for slow reading–at about half your everyday pace. Each paragraph is one breath. Where the text falls silent, you may too.

Without Seeking a Hold

An exercise for everyday · about six minutes, then all day

Looking In

Sit down. Both feet on the floor.

Close your eyes–for a moment.

Go slowly through yourself. From top to bottom. And up again.

Not examining.–Only noticing where something grips.

You are not looking for a fault. You are getting acquainted.

Letting Go

Breathe out.

And at the start of the out-breath, let go in your shoulders.

Do not press the shoulders down.–Let go in them.

That is a difference. And it is the whole beginning.

Settling

Once more, out.

And at the end of the out-breath, settle into your pelvis.

Letting go above and arriving below are two things.–One does not follow from the other by itself.

Test it once: pull your shoulders up. Let them drop.–Below, nothing has happened.

So once more. And this time all the way down.

Allowing

And with the next out-breath, right at the end:

Allow the lower belly.

Do not let it fall out. Do not push it out.–Allow it, and give a little strength into it.

And if something hesitates–a shyness about going deeper, a gripping further up–

then that is not a fault.–That is the place.

What Remains

And now check what you have found.

Not the ground.–That was only the way.

The chair can go. The room can change. The conversation can turn.

What you are looking for is what is still there then.

Inner stability without outward support.–That is all it is. And no less.

All Day

And now the real thing.

These minutes are not the exercise.–They are the tuning beforehand.

Standing at the till. Waiting. At your desk. Walking.

Always the same single question: where am I right now–up above, or in the centre?

There is nothing more to do.–The noticing is already the exercise.

And what notices grows sharper over time.

The movement of this exercise–letting go in the shoulders, settling into the pelvis, allowing the lower belly–comes from Karlfried Graf Dürckheim's teaching of Hara ('Hara. Die Erdmitte des Menschen'). Dürckheim leads it towards rootedness in the earth; here it leads elsewhere, towards a steadiness that needs no ground. The image for that comes from 'Staying With': Heiko Raue, 'Staying With. A Way of Being Present in Crisis, Pastoral Care, and Accompaniment', 2026.