Wellbeing and Spirituality: Insights From The World 'S Wisdom Traditions

Wellbeing and Spirituality: Insights from
the World’s Wisdom Traditions
Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
Contents
Incentivizing Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Why Phenomenology? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
What to Expect from Traditional Approaches to Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Inside Wellbeing: The Constitutive Phenomenology of Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Wellbeing and Intersubjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Traditional Practices of Wellbeing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the Letting Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Wellbeing Via Joy: Kundalini Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
“I Am the Only One Remaining”: A Wellbeing Myth of Nonduality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Abstract
Strategies for implementing the agenda of employee wellbeing in workspace need
to avoid manipulation of social behavior that puts pressure on an employee’s
capabilities of agency and freedom of choice. The world wisdom traditions offer
solutions which reassign the locus of control over wellbeing to the individual and
suggest methods of modifying experience directly, not via modifications of one’s
environment. Such intentional self-constitution produces a variety of internal
experiences, all of which are characterized by wellbeing. Phenomenological
analysis of these experiences shows the zones of internal architecture of experi-
ence in which ordinary experience changes into experience of wellbeing. Such
“locations” include the sphere of intersubjectivity and the stratum of the so-called
passive synthesis responsible for the constitution of emotions. Critical analysis of
O. Louchakova-Schwartz (*)
University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA
e-mail: olouchakova@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

S. Dhiman (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Well-Being,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02470-3_57-1
2 O. Louchakova-Schwartz
traditional practices shows that the practice of mindfulness leads to wellbeing via
modifications of intersubjectivity – that is, relationships with others – and that the
embodied practice of Kundalini Yoga transforms emotions and feelings so that
they become more wholesome. These intentional wisdom practices enable one’s
control over the experience of wellbeing beyond the scope of wellbeing’s depen-
dence on the condition of workspace. Not all practices can be compatible with
workspace: for example, practices that produce dissociate experience of
wellbeing (e.g., so-called nonduality) are not compatible with participation in
the workflow. Developing personal strategies to directly accentuate the positive
aspects of subjective experience so that it turns into an experience of wellbeing
has its limits but can greatly enhance wellbeing in the workspace.
Make a powerful memory, the happiest you can remember.

Allow it to fill you up. . .Stay focused.
– Harry Potter teaching the Patronus charm to the Dumbledore Army
In recent literature, wellbeing in the workspace is described as a self-evident

imperative (Ryan 2018) according to which the wellbeing of an individual employee
translates directly into the wellbeing of the corporation (Jimenez-Parra et al. 2018;
Ogula 2012). The incentive for wellbeing in the workspace was linked to corporate
social responsibility. However, the organizational level of understanding of overall
wellbeing does not necessarily translate into what wellbeing means for an individual
who is a subject of wellbeing. Overall, wellbeing is a global parameter consisting of
different scales (Allin and Hand 2014; Kilroy and Schneider 2017a, b; WHO 1948)
that are normally correlated with each other (Kokkoris 2016; Longo et al. 2017).
However, in workspace, the data on different scales may diverge: for example, level
of income is strongly correlated positively with evaluative wellbeing but not with
experienced wellbeing (Kapteyn et al. 2014, 625). Even in high earners, the disso-
nance between evaluative and experienced wellbeing creates a situation of internal
conflict that an employee must negotiate with herself.
Implementing the agenda of employee wellbeing as a part of management strategy
may end up in subtle manipulation of social behavior that puts pressure on the
employee’s capabilities of agency and freedom of choice (Holmqvist 2009). As of
Amartya Sen, these faculties are essential for subjective wellbeing (Muffels and
Headey 2013). Hence, in the corporate environment, subjective experience of
wellbeing becomes eroded by those very means that are intended to strengthen it.
The situation comes full circle: if an individual’s moral responsibility is for the
wellbeing of the other (Roberts 2019), the workspace by default presents serious
obstacles to fulfillment of this imperative.
Such tensions are theoretically predictable: based on Karl Marx and Michel
Henry’s views on life and capital (Canullo 2019), economy-driven workspace and
subjectively experienced wellbeing may be in principle antagonistic. However, since
experience of wellbeing is not just subjective (Varelius 2005) but has an individu-
ated, personal, and even personality-related character (Tessier and Thuilliez 2018), it
Wellbeing and Spirituality: Insights from the World’s Wisdom Traditions 3
may be possible to develop individualized strategies which counteract this general

tendency. Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter is to explore wellbeing in situ of
its subjective manifestations, and to recommend cognitive strategies that directly
enhance such subjective wellbeing by changing experience per se.
Generally, subjective wellbeing depends on how experience is affected or even
shaped by one’s environment, in particular, by the workspace. However, wisdom
traditions offer methods of modifying experience directly, and not via the modifi-
cations of the environment. Reassigning the locus of control over the subjective
experience of wellbeing to the individual creates a powerful addition to manage-
ment strategies that optimize the workspace. Intentional practices free the experi-
ence of wellbeing from dependence on the workspace. Intentional constitution of
experience is possible; for example, ethical leadership includes intentional consti-
tution of self-experience (Ladkin 2018). Of course, the effectiveness of such
practices is not absolute but exists on the spectrum. Thereby, the dialectical
interrelatedness of the intentional wellbeing and the workspace should be consid-
ered not before but after methods of intentional constitution are introduced – latter
being a purpose of this paper.
Section “Incentivizing Wellbeing,” explains how the emancipatory character of
wellbeing relates to the pragmatics of the workspace. It also shows the subjective
character of emancipatory wisdom practices: that is, their direct focus on experience
as opposed to their scientifically proven health benefits, even though such health
benefits also result from such practices and have their pragmatic values and uses.
Section “Why Phenomenology?” introduces the phenomenological methodology
tailored to the study of subjective experience. Section “What to Expect from
Traditional Approaches to Wellbeing,” addresses the relationship between the expe-
rience of wellbeing and spiritual aspects of wisdom practices.
Section “Inside Wellbeing: The Constitutive Phenomenology of Experience,”
shows what aspects of experience can be controlled by traditional practices.
Experience has internal structures; practices modify experience in specific loca-
tions within such structures. Section “Wellbeing and Intersubjectivity,” shows how
experience incorporates others and discusses how intentional constitution of
wellbeing relates to this sphere of experience. Section “Traditional Practices of
Wellbeing” introduces three wisdom practices that cause the subjective experience
of wellbeing. The practice of the mindfulness of meaning (Section “Wellbeing Via
Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the Letting Go”) and the practice of bodily
transformation of emotions in Kundalini Yoga (Section “Wellbeing Via Joy:
Kundalini Yoga”) are recommended for use in the workspace, and the so-called
nondual experience is critically appraised (Section “‘I Am the Only One
Remaining’: A Wellbeing Myth of Nonduality”). Section “Conclusion” summa-
rizes information on direct internal modifications of subjective experience which
effectively lead to wellbeing in the workspace.
Incentivizing Wellbeing
Whether or not intentional wellbeing can be practiced in the workspace is very much a
question of whether such practices can be integrated with a workflow. At first glance,
such compatibility may appear strange: business is utterly pragmatic, whereas wisdom
practices are emancipatory. However, both business and wisdom traditions use a litmus
test of praxis to determine what works and what does not; both of them favor a
dialectical, hermeneutic, flexible kind of thinking over a linear one (Hideg and Ferris
2017); both of them gravitate to explorer cognitive styles (Martinsen et al. 2016), use
affect for creativity and innovation (Hammershøj 2018), use descriptive (situated) as
opposed to normative (theory-laden) decision making; and both of them are non-
technological in the sense of their basic orientation toward the living human subject
(Cf. Introna 2017). Both wisdom and business practices value attentional focus (con-
centration) which can both make a person a fully present other in the workspace and
grant wellbeing benefits in the spiritual practice of absorption (Cf. Bronkhorst 2012). In
many ways, experiential styles of business and of traditional wisdom are compatible.
Because the pragmatic and emancipatory dimensions of meaning fluidly inter-
penetrate (Barber 2019), a transition between a pragmatic workspace and an eman-
cipatory spiritual retreat does not present a problem. Both spaces, the retreat one and
the work one, are governed by the truth of experience. By contrast, measures and
statistics of objective science do not translate into “subjective ‘truth’ of the market-
place” (quoted from Luft 2011, 72). For example, the Amazon reader reviews of
scientifically excellent Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational
Performance (Giacalone and Jurkiewicz 2015) say: “The amount and quality of
research collected here is top-notch. However, I found it quite boring. There was
nothing that really piqued my interest. More of an academic resource rather than an
informational read” (GrawlHal 2019). Or, simply: “Boooring [sic]” (Charles 2019),
in another example of a missing power of convincingness.
A “business imperative” (Comasti 2017; Rogers 2017) of wellbeing needs a
living and engaging “know-how” – which, after millennia of trials, wisdom tradi-
tions exactly deliver. Their focus on the subjective experience of wellbeing stems
from a focus on salvation, enlightenment, liberation, and so on: that is, from the
pursuit of immortality common to all traditions. Of course, the life immortal cannot
be analogous to Stanislaw Lem’s (1983) “painful sex” – that is, be an eternal drag
that one carries on for the sake of the end product. Living long or even forever must
be living well: that is, wellbeing. Buddhist teachings directly link enlightenment to
the cessation of suffering (Heim 2007); Vedanta equates liberation with unalloyed
happiness; in Zoroastrianism, and following it, in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
one strives for Paradise; and so on. Vedanta says that between the ups and downs of
one’s life, one should want liberation as badly as a man whose hair is on fire wants to
jump into a lake.
Traditional practices of subjective wellbeing consist not of theoretical abstrac-
tions but of very concrete, nuanced modifications of experience. Regardless of their
form, all traditions disentangle subjective wellbeing from dependence on circum-
stances and environment: the person gains control over the quality of the internal
sphere of experience. For example, a modern Indian saint, Mata Amritanandamayi

Ma (a.k.a. Amachi), grew up in poverty and suffered psychological and physical
abuse. Connection with traditional wisdom and internal practice not only led her to
her own wellbeing but gave her extraordinary resilience in inducing wellbeing in
others. According to tradition, enduring subjective experience of wellbeing leads to
altruism.
However, the purpose of wellbeing in the workspace is not immortality or
altruism per se but wellbeing itself. Despite massive anecdotal and textual evidence
of a connection between traditional practices and wellbeing, what exactly constitutes
the subjective, circumstances-independent experience of wellbeing has not been
recognized. If one suspends satisfaction derived from the idea that one engages in
psychological or spiritual growth or does the right thing (eudemonic wellbeing), will
the remaining wellbeing be necessarily an experience of pleasure (hedonic
wellbeing)? Wellbeing is frequently equated with positive emotion – for instance,
happiness, joy, mirth, or compassion. Indeed, positive emotion is a constitutive
ingredient of wellbeing, but only in part (Tappolet and Rossi 2015). Since traditional
practices make a claim to the predictability, certainty, and reproducible character of
wellbeing, it remains to approach their insights phenomenologically in order to
identify what exactly their promise is, what state of experience one should expect
as a result of practice, and what kind of practice will be compatible with the
workspace. A methodology for such investigations is known as “scientific
phenomenology.”
Why Phenomenology?
Emphasizing importance of subjective experience, Walden (2017, from the back

cover) states: “[people] are not data – they are people: living, breathing, contradic-
tory, infuriating bundles of cognitive and emotionally-driven responses to stimuli.
Understanding experience helps to explain how people really think, feel, and behave
– that is, what motivates them to act apart from concern for the easily forgettable
parameter of ‘efficiency.’” Understanding experience is a prerogative of phenome-
nology. By means of phenomenology, one can study subjectivity without losing its
living, first person character. In contrast to statistics-based research designs, phe-
nomenology does not include measurements but nevertheless delivers scientifically
rigorous findings. Applied phenomenology, such as is used in the present chapter,
stems from theoretical discoveries of the transcendental phenomenological philoso-
phy that was articulated by Edmund Husserl in The Crisis of European Sciences
(1970). Sometimes, applied phenomenology goes under the name “human science,”
to distinguish it from the natural or social, so-called objective sciences. The main
distinction between phenomenology and such “objective” sciences is that phenom-
enology focuses on how one experiences things, as opposed to more traditional
examinations of material properties and behaviors of things (as does physics,
chemistry, or neurobiology). Thus, phenomenology is essential for studies of
wellbeing not only in terms of the workspace practice but also in terms of generating
scientific knowledge of the experience of wellbeing: when the subject of interest is

not the physical mechanisms of health or economic mechanisms of financial success
but the experience itself, one needs to have a clear picture of what such experience
entails. In the available studies, the experience of wellbeing has to date been treated
not in itself but with regard to its links to values (eudemonic wellbeing) or pleasure
(hedonic wellbeing). But is wellbeing pleasure, or is it “pleasant” but in itself
something else? While “objective” natural sciences and psychology attempt to link
an undetermined, general idea of wellbeing to standard variables of mental or
physical health, phenomenology can give us a much more nuanced and thereby
much more precise picture of what wellbeing is for the person who experiences it,
and not just of what wellbeing is connected to.
Subjective experience of both employees and customers has been shown to
play a leading role in the sustainability (Sarkar and Shaw 2017; Walden 2017),
productivity (Atler 2015), and overall success (Lencioni 2012) of corporations. It
is quite possible that the subjective experience of wellbeing cannot be reduced to
a set of objective parameters without losing important definitions of such expe-
rience (Varelius 2005). Hence, phenomenology of the subjective experience of
wellbeing contributes not only to the pragmatics of the workspace but also to the
theory of wellbeing in general.
Phenomenology should not be mistaken for a simple (naïve), commonsense
description of something given in experience. Such descriptions help to refocus
attention on experience, but they have a very limited capacity to illuminate the nature
of experience. The reason for this limitation is that experience has a complex synthetic
structure, in which a sense of meaningful unity (“this is my experience” or “I [felt/]feel
that...”) comes from one’s ego constantly stitching together separate components of
consciousness. Neither these parts nor the synthesis itself can be noticed in a com-
monsense, natural attitude to experience: one simply lives experience as a whole. But
the living wholes of experience are often ambiguous, and this is exactly why the
experience of wellbeing is obscure. Without an analysis of constitution in particular
cases of experience, it is often not possible to say what’s going on there.
Under phenomenology, one understands a systematic analysis of experience that
produces a description of the essential properties and relationships within experience
itself. Such properties and relationships enable experience to be what it is: that is, a
specific experience for its subject. Phenomenological descriptions reveal essential
structures of experience whereby one can relate to experiences of other persons
through an instant recognition of such essential structures. Such structures have
different degrees of generalizability. The founder of scientific phenomenology, the
mathematician-turned-philosopher Edmund Husserl and his successors proved that
structural patterns of experience (that is, of consciousness-meaning) display robust
predictability, and that the validity in evidence of such patterns is comparable with the
validity of statistical data. In cases when one cannot use measurements and statistics
and has to adhere to description, phenomenology is the method of choice.
Like any science, phenomenology has not only a “what” – that is, the subject
matter of its studies – but also a “how”: of its method. Various adaptations of the
phenomenological method have been incorporated as one of the methods of quali-

tative research, along with grounded theory, hermeneutics, thematic analysis, and
other methods of the social sciences. However, while qualitative methods certainly
expand caring for the human subject, they do not have a capacity for clarifying
obscure forms of experience, or, for that matter, of any experience; they also cannot
predict experience’s temporal development. Clarification of experience remains the
subject matter of phenomenology per se, in its primary incarnation as phenomeno-
logical science in its own right. Accordingly, the method used for the analysis of
wellbeing in this chapter is not a qualitative phenomenological research method, but
the so-called genetic phenomenology.
Genetic phenomenology and the related phenomenological ontology focus not just
on the description of experience but on revealing the above-mentioned hidden dimen-
sions of consciousness. The invisible dimensions of experience are termed in phe-
nomenology “anonymous”: they are de facto present in consciousness but escape
one’s attention in a manner similar to how people in a crowd fade into background
when one runs into a longtime friend. Among these quasi-hidden dimensions are
invisible ethical bonds by which one is tethered to others; the relationships between an
individual and a group of other people; the strata of experience that underlie other
strata; and so on. Genetic phenomenological method(s) also captures temporality,
embodiment, and affect, as opposed to being limited to conscious thought and
observable behaviors and emotions that can be grasped by qualitative methods.
Because the experience of wellbeing is foundational to both biological and experi-
ence-related aspects of one’s life, wisdom traditions modify wellbeing by changing
components of experience within these deep, invisible dimensions.
Below is an example of how the phenomenological understanding of experience
in world wisdom traditions, specifically Tibetan Buddhism, changes “objective”
psychological approaches. One Tibetan visualization practice, Deity Yoga, consists
of maintaining complex internal images; according to His Holiness Dalai Lama’s
claim made in meeting with MIT scientists in 2003, these images remain intact for
many hours without a noticeable degradation of internal experience. But from the
standpoint of theories of visual cognition, that should not have been possible.
Having a phenomenologist on the research team (the present author) allowed
reconfirming Dalai Lama’s claim and finding that in Deity Yoga the brain learns
the new skill of “underwriting” expanded possibilities of experience (Kozhevnikov
et al. 2009; Louchakova-Schwartz 2013). Experience in Deity Yoga begins with
visualizations and progresses toward a sense of expanded, stable wellbeing. Such
wellbeing comes with the recognition of a new form of awareness, called Rigpa.
Other traditional practices also open experience to new possibilities of wellbeing;
phenomenology helps to understand how exactly these practices achieve their
results. Then the “know-how” of traditional practices can be transferred into the
nontraditional environment: for example, the workspace. The focus on practical
“know-how” applicable in one’s life makes a phenomenological approach to the
experience of wellbeing interesting and not “boring,” as when wellbeing is reduced
to the explanatory scope of scientific facts.
What to Expect from Traditional Approaches to Wellbeing
For the most part, subjective wellbeing has been linked to happiness (Mindoljević
Drakulić 2012) and health and has been considered a composite of different compo-
nents of experience and largely a phenomenon of interpretation: wellbeing depends on
how one relates to current circumstances. For example, in Buddhist understanding, the
impermanence of life is linked to suffering, but for an optimist such as e.g. Scarlett
O’Hara in Gone with the Wind tomorrow always brings a new promise. Consequently,
while most traditional wisdom was directed at attaining wellbeing, wellbeing itself was
understood differently depending on the history and cultural status of different tradi-
tions. Despite such differences, wellbeing-related modifications of experience are
commonly of three kinds: through ethical/behavioral observances, by intentional inter-
nal practices (e.g., meditation, various forms of contemplation, internal prayer, or other
forms of internal “doing”), and spontaneous. In fact, spontaneous modifications of
experience are also connected with prayer, observances, or a ritual of some kind, but
they do not result from direct modifications of experience, in a manner the latter takes
place in internal practice. The possibility of modifying experience directly and inten-
tionally is, in fact, a discovery made across many traditions; this discovery (or these
discoveries) can be translated into the context of the contemporary workspace. Con-
sequently, the main focus of this chapter is on the internal practices that are custom-
tailored toward predictable wellbeing.
Such practices begin with various forms of interruption in the flow of everyday
consciousness (Cf. Louchakova-Schwartz 2019a). Just as do disruptions in business,
such well-orchestrated interruptions open novel angles of view and more effective
workspace solutions. In a sense, interruptions have a recreational character: by creating
a break in the everyday, they take the experiencing person into a new world of
exciting, emancipating impressions (cf. Barber 2017). Like traveling, these are healthy
distractions, which reignite one’s interest in life and create new insights regarding the
self and the world. These insights are not just conceptual but embodied and perceptual
in ways analogous to the expansion of perception while hiking a mountain range or the
deepening of perception and perceiving “360 degrees” in diving the ocean (e.g.,
Nestor 2015). Practices always bring with them a rejuvenating afterglow that can
normalize the stressed mind and even optimize it by inducing creativity and flexible
decision making, as if brain and body are rebooted and new “updates” are kicking in.
Internal practice is often thought of as something placid, perhaps uneventful, but
the reality of it is quite the contrary. Finding new possibilities of experiencing can be
quite entertaining or even dramatic, depending on what kind of “internal landscape”
the experiencer navigates. These experiences are not “altered states,” in the sense
that they do not alter consciousness but rather reveal hidden possibilities within the
same consciousness as one has in the everyday. Internal experiences in such practice
always have a certainty of being normal, with an intact, whole sense of self. In fact,
the sense of the unity and integrity of the self, as well as of being at peace with
oneself regardless of the circumstances, increases in spiritual experiencing, in
contrast to feeling normalcy slip away or self-acceptance flag in depression, being
under stress, or other unhealthy states.
Internal experience in traditional practice has been often compared with the
altered states of consciousness that one experiences when using psychedelic drugs.
Psychedelics, or entheogens, are chemical substances of natural, botanical origin that
have been used in indigenous cultures to induce an experience of the sacred. In the
twentieth century, the spectrum of natural mind-altering substances was broadened
by laboratory syntheses of artificial psychedelic drugs. While altered states of
consciousness with psychedelics may be accompanied by a sense of temporary
excitement or positive emotion, the drugs crudely alter the functioning of the brain
and may have a gradual degrading effect on the body. By contrast, modifications of
experience in traditional internal practices are completely normal and healthy. These
practices introduce a new set of impressions and insights gradually and organically,
so that both the body and the brain on one side and the empirical, subjective
consciousness on the other side can properly digest and integrate incoming impres-
sions. Unique benefits of practice may include enhanced clarity of perception, clarity
in important decision making, heightened intuition, or emotional uplift. There can be
a sense of enhanced self-value, a sense of internal beauty, a sense of mystery, or a
sense of natural, harmonious unity with the universe. Once having such an experi-
ence spontaneously in childhood, people may spend the rest of their lives trying to
recreate experience that was so natural then; or, quite to the contrary, they may
remember no such experience, and accordingly the unexpected novelty of new
experience becomes an escape from boredom. Traditional practices are very much
a discipline of cultivating experiences that one falls in love with – a healthy,
nonchemical form of “addiction.” For a believer, such extraordinary experiences
mean that one experiences the presence of God or Reality (which is always “within”
and always positive); but for a rationalistically, skeptically, or scientifically minded
person or for an atheist, these experiences acquire a philosophical or metaphysical
dimension. But when one begins with experience, it is only after, and only if, one
becomes fully “saturated” with experiencing alone that a spiritual or philosophical
making of sense follows. Spiritual experience has been linked to wellbeing
(Kalkstein and Tower 2009) – both in positive ways contribute to the quality of
one’s life.
Inside Wellbeing: The Constitutive Phenomenology of Experience
Attempts to link the meaning that experience obtained as a result of traditional

practice – such as spiritual experiences, internal experiences of self-knowledge,
mystical experience, experiences “beyond the ego,” and the like – to some specific
structure did not produce a classification, because the same structure of experience
can be interpreted differently by different people. For example, the same structure of
experience of internal light may have connotations of the supernatural for an
enthusiastic romantic yet amount to So what? for a rationalist; not feeling experience
as personal and being more on the “receiving” side in experiencing can have a
spiritual sense or can be interpreted as an experience of self-knowledge; and so on.
However, most researchers in phenomenology agree that beneath interpretation,
there is a specific structure of experience that distinguishes religious experience from

the experience of the everyday (Louchakova-Schwartz 2019a). In turn, the experi-
ence of Divine Presence or Ultimate Reality (so-called experiences of ultimacy) is
always associated with a sense of goodness in experience: that is, wellbeing.
Wellbeing is not an aspect that defines religious quality in experience, but rather, it
serves as an invariable companion of the religious sense. Even dramatic religious
experiences are always experiences of wellbeing, while everyday experience may or
may not include wellbeing as its component. Accordingly, it is possible to restore a
component of wellbeing to ordinary experience without any religious connotation.
Phenomenology demonstrated that despite its extreme diversity and apparent
“messiness,” every kind of consciousness has a fundamental organizing principle,
which is called “intentionality.” The presence of this structure distinguishes expe-
rience from all other things. Intentionality entails a relationship of directedness-at,
or aboutness: while all things in the universe show up as themselves, conscious-
ness is what shows them – that is, shows things other than itself. Edmund Husserl,
who dedicated most of his research to clarifying intentionality, and following him
the phenomenologists of life Michel Henry and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka also,
stated that experiencing is a property of life. Since human beings are alive, they are
subjects of experience: that is, experiencers. Intentionality of consciousness gives
human subjects knowledge of things other than themselves. Hence, Husserl
suggested that the framework for the analysis of experience should be experien-
cer–experiencing–the experienced (ego-cogito-cogitatum, Fig. 1). Analysis can be
aimed at any segment within the structure. For example, the phrase “I feel well”
Fig. 1 The general structure of experience-meaning. (Based on Husserl 1970)

points to wellbeing in the self and in the feeling – that is, in the experiencer and in
experiencing, as opposed to what is experienced: wellbeing is not an object, which
one can have an experience of. Experience of wellbeing is not an experience of
something, like tasting ice cream or celebrating successful sales. It is not even an
experience of something within, even though a positive emotion, a sense of
certainty and truth, or clarity of thinking, comes as part of such experiencing.
Phenomenologically, wellbeing must be “located” in the ego and in the cogito –
that is, in the experiencer and in experiencing. Hence, in order to generate
wellbeing, traditional practices attempt to modify the sense of self and the ways
self-relates to the objects of experience.
Living in the flow of experience like fish in water and being identical with the
content of experience, a person does not notice such structures. Often, they are
mistaken for abstractions (which they are not; these are descriptions of empirical,
real elements of consciousness). However, one is always aware of changes in
experience: this is why practices of wisdom traditions never point to static structures
but always work with the change of experience toward everlasting wellbeing, which
would be independent of circumstances. Such changes must engage the deep
structures of experience, because otherwise, the changes would not hold. The
sequence of internal mental moves in such restructuring is always repetitive from
person to person and presents a temporal structure of the process, which can be
replicated in a business setting.
Unfolding in time, the experience of wellbeing has two levels of organization
(Fig. 1): the order of active constitution and the order of passive synthesis. In the
order of active constitution, the ego creates intentionalities, which reach their respec-
tive objects and assemble the whole meaning of experience. In the order of passive
synthesis, intentionality is present less, and experience has more of the input of the
senses; in creating its intentionalities of meaning, the ego works off the datum of
passive syntheses. For example, we perceive not a table but only a side of it. Then, the
constituting ego stitches together multiple snapshots (so-called adumbrations) of the
sides of the table, digs into memories and associations, incorporates information from
others who also perceive the same set of objects and share the same world, verifies the
collected unity of meaning versus the idea of a table (the essence), and . . . voila! one
recognizes a table. This whole process happens momentarily, and so we do not
consciously experience the details – only the outcome.
The constitution of the feeling of wellbeing begins with the stratum of passive
synthesis and builds “upward” while progressing toward a fully developed sense of
wellbeing. Consequently, the practices must penetrate top-down, beyond the stratum
of constituting ego, and engage the processes of passive synthesis – which is not
what one normally undertakes in everyday experience – and then help one make
meaning out of this primordial syntheses of wellbeing. Both orders are important,
because there is no bodily sense of feeling well without meaning, and no meaning of
wellbeing without preintentionally given sense.
The ego, “a jack of all trades,” puts experience together by many different
syntheses. Such syntheses also include the “unknown”: one does not perceive the
back sides of the cube, and neither can one feel the self of others. As Espen Dahl
pointed out (2010, 152), “we are not fully masters of our own home, but already shot
through with strangeness.” When, instead of being constituted around the objects,
experience becomes constituted around these patches of the unknown, the sense of
mystery turns everyday experience into spiritual experience (Louchakova-Schwartz
2019a). However, the absences are not empty but contain a sense of fullness, even
bliss, of the unknown. As the Indian guru Swami Dayananda Saraswati once noted,
when saying “Ignorance is bliss,” one should as well mean it.
Why would the unknown be blissful? In the absence of positive intentional
objects, experience opens into the sphere of passive synthesis, which carries a
primary responsibility for the experience of subjective wellbeing (Fig. 2). In this
sphere, the ego is decentered and passive, and experience consists of feelings,
emotions, moods, alterations in the sense of time and the sense of being, dreams,
and so forth. This area also involves the creation of mental imagery and spiritual
qualities in experience through the use of symbols (Barber 2017).
– Purple: areas of constitution connected with the spiritual character of experience

– Green: areas of constitution specific to subjective wellbeing
Because the processes in the sphere of passive synthesis are unavailable to direct
and conscious control, modifying this area so that there is wellbeing instead of
illbeing cannot be done by a direct effort on behalf of the ego: one cannot just
authentically feel good on demand. However, over millennia of practice, wisdom
Fig. 2 Phenomenological “Locations” of Wellbeing. (Based on Louchakova-Schwartz 2019b)

traditions have worked out ways to bypass the ordinary top-down constitutive
control of the ego and reach deeply into the sphere of passive synthesis. For example,
some meditation practices, such as the meditation of loving kindness in Buddhism,
cause a gradual and continuous transformation of emotions toward more positive
and wholesome ones (Louchakova-Schwartz 2019b); Sufi meditations can refocus
experience toward a sense of harmonious unity with the universe (Louchakova-
Schwartz 2015); and so forth.
Like every component of Figures 1 and 2, the ego is not just an empty construct
but is embodied – that is, one’s sense of self has a felt sense to it as well as a tactile
“enfleshed” component. According to spiritual traditions (e.g., Vedanta or Bud-
dhism), the felt content of ourselves in major ways contributes to wellbeing. Figure
2 demonstrates that the phenomenological “locations” of spiritual quality in
experience and the experiences of wellbeing are the same. Spirituality and
wellbeing overlap not just empirically, and not only in objective scientific findings,
but in terms of their phenomenological structure. In fact, causality here is reversed:
because the phenomenological structures of wellbeing and of spiritual sense
are close, we see empirical sameness and objectively existing scientific connec-
tions between the two.
Both layers in the organization of experience, the sphere of active constitution
and the sphere of passive synthesis, have to come together for an experience to be
recognized as an experience of wellbeing. Wellbeing has an embodied content and a
felt sense to it, and a synthetic unity to such experience, including interpretations.
Within this picture of things, there may be many different forms of the experience of
wellbeing. As long as all such experiences qualify as wellbeing, it is possible to talk
about the outlook in consciousness: that is, a horizon of wellbeing in which many
different such experiences of wellbeing can happen. Horizons are shown schemat-
ically in Fig. 3: Consciousness-experience-meaning can have many such organizing
horizons. In Fig. 3, in order to avoid too much graphic complexity, examples
of horizons are shown, but it is not specified what kind they are Husserl identified
many horizons all of which are absolutely necessary for one to have experiences.
Horizons are similar to folders: consciousness uses them to create files for
experiences of a similar kind. For example, there can be an endless variety of
experiences of the world that take place in the world-horizon created by the presence
of the world. If there were no world-horizon in consciousness, we would have no
experiences of the world. Likewise, the experience of wellbeing can have an infinite
variety of forms, but all such experiences will have a shared quality of wellbeing
within the horizon of wellbeing. The fact that there is a horizon of wellbeing in
consciousness enables such experiences to be of infinite variety while sustaining the
same quality of wellbeing; in other words, this horizon creates conditions of
possibility for people to experience wellbeing. Horizon is a space of possibility for
such experiences to endlessly unfold.
The practices of different wisdom traditions use the horizon of wellbeing differ-
ently. Some traditions, such as Sufism or various forms of shamanism, approach it
psychologically. Other traditions, such as Theravada Buddhism, bracket out the
analysis of psychological meaning and focus mainly on attention and perception.
Fig. 3 Horizons in phenomenological organization of experience
Yoga and Tantra focus on modifications of the embodied dimension of conscious-

ness. Christianity developed practices of the adoration of iconographic images and
bodily asceticism, and so on. However, all such practices and their corresponding
experiences resolve into the horizon of wellbeing.
Wellbeing and Intersubjectivity
Both empirically and from the analysis conducted up to this point, it appears that the
subjective experience of wellbeing has a strictly individual character. However, the
subjective character of wellbeing rubs off on others: people “light up” around a
happy, healthy person, and being around somebody who doesn’t feel well is
demanding if not depleting. When people are involved in transactions with others,
one’s interpersonal emotional practices reflect subjectively lived emotional states
(Shoemaker 2019). Antonov (Antonov and Vaver 1989), a pioneer in the research of
intentional practices of wellbeing, noted that “being in the workspace in a bad mood
is an egotistic behavior,” because one passes his or her emotional state onto others.
When one becomes sufficiently deeply aware of the personal part of experience,
one’s unique, owned, strictly first-person experience is discovered to be co-consti-
tuted by others. Meaning shows up in infinite entanglement with meanings coming
from others – donated, inherited, and borrowed. Emotion that appeared to be one’s
own is induced by others, and so on. A discovery that experience is not merely
constituted by the ego but co-constituted by the presence of others is one of the main
discoveries of phenomenology. If one traces subjective experience back to its

origins, the whole content of awareness will be on many levels coming from
interrelatedness with others. This has to be distinguished from a commonplace of
cultural studies, that the mind is co-constituted by culture; what is meant here is a
massive contribution to experience provided by the presence of other people and a
reciprocal constitutive commitment of the ego to experience others as being equally
as alive and conscious as the subject of experience herself.
The sphere in which the constitution of consciousness involves others received
the name “intersubjectivity.” In the way one ordinarily perceives things, conscious-
ness seems to be “inside” one’s head, whereas others appear to be “outside”; one
connects with others via behaviors, material transactions, and speech. However,
phenomenological research demonstrated not only that intersubjectivity is
completely “inside” consciousness but that the former in major ways constitutes
the personal dimension of experience. The world is “the world for us all” (Husserl
1970, 209) – that is, the world that can be commonly talked about, used, and
understood by all humanity. These insights of phenomenology were confirmed in
developmental psychology: the mind develops in response to the presence of others,
the earliest interactions being the emotional mirroring (Johnson 1987). The consti-
tuting ego (Fig. 1) exists “in the world through the living body,” by virtue of which
human persons are “interwoven with one another and extended into the infinite”
(Husserl 1970, 210). What seems from the surface of experience to be “my
responses” are, in reality, the results of habits shaped through interactions with
others. Thereby, an individual experience of wellbeing or illbeing also engages
intersubjectivity.
Ortega y Gasset famously stated: “I am me and my circumstances.” The “cir-
cumstances” include both the actual presence of others and the objects subject to
shared uses, such as, for example, boats, houses, popular ideas, computers, theatrical
performances, and so on. Experience in the workspace manifests this situation at
maximum strength: one cannot do business with oneself. This is why workspace is
so important for one’s experience of living, and this is also why it is so difficult to get
work out of one’s head or to detach oneself from a bad boss: these influences are not
just “external” but go deeply into the constitution of the self. The interactions in the
workspace are rarely aligned with one’s habits and preferences. As one younger
medical colleague quipped: “All my life, I was carefully choosing my friends – so
how am I now supposed to get along with all these different people?” A conclusion
must be made that in order for experience to settle in the horizon of wellbeing,
the sphere of intersubjectivity must be either harmonized or somehow edited by the
subject of experience in terms of the former’s foundational participation in the
constitution of consciousness.
Even though wisdom traditions did not have the analytic research apparatus of
phenomenology, they did notice that one’s consciousness depends on others. For
example, a visionary metaphor of Hinduism presents the cosmos as the Creator’s net,
in which each person is a jewel node connected with other jewel nodes. Buddhism
came up with images far less benign: the wheel of karma which ad infinitum cycles
the souls between the realms of heaven and hell. The phenomenological actuality of
interconnectedness is not a blissful oneness (as it is often presented in New Age

groups) but a very concrete, direct experience of every facet of one’s individuality,
shaped by memory, and every aspect of one’s consciousness, with its origin in the
collective – except for the residual backdrop of consciousness, which does not carry
any individual features. Diving deeply inward in search of the horizon of wellbeing,
wisdom traditions worked out practical ways of escaping wellbeing’s dependence on
intersubjectivity. Since neither the world nor others can ever go away, these practices
work around this situation by untangling the possible negative input of intersubjec-
tivity and helping one to find the horizon of wellbeing, which, when found, the ego
can cultivate. Consequently, the point is that for a sustained experience of wellbeing,
one has to sustain the practices in workspace.
Traditional Practices of Wellbeing
Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the Letting Go
One relatively uncomplicated practice of mindfulness received the most attention

both in the workspace and in scientific research. Mindfulness is usually associated
with Buddhism. However, Buddhist monks and nuns are not the only ones to
practice mindfulness: Christian contemplatives, Greek Stoics, Islamic Sufis,
shamans, Tantric yogis, followers of Gurdjieff, and others have also begun their
training with different forms of mindfulness. The key in such practices is noticing:
that is, recognizing of the layers of experience that are invisible in the natural state of
consciousness, before the practice. In accordance with the philosophies of different
traditions, different forms of mindfulness aim at highlighting different regions of
experience.
In Buddhism, one of the key notions is karma, a domino-effect-like chain of
mental traces that keeps one bound by suffering. Consequently, Buddhist mindful-
ness aims at breaking the domino effect by removing the mental traces that obscure
wellbeing. Thereby, the purpose of the practice is not just to find a region of
experience free from unwholesome impressions but to recondition one’s responses
and the whole of consciousness so that one does not fall again into the trap of the
wheel of karma.
The compatibility of mindfulness with the workspace has been proven beyond
any doubt (e.g., Forbes Coaches Council 2018). Mindfulness appears easy to
perform: instead of the usual moment-by-moment identification with the flow of
experience, one turns attention toward experience itself and observes how it hap-
pens, including all of its components. When one manages to disidentify not just with
a sensory stratum but with the very meaning of experience, the practice reveals
various horizons in the constitution of experience, including the sphere of intersub-
jectivity. Then one can become aware of the habits that were formed in relationships
with others and let go of mental traces that do not serve one’s wellbeing. Until then,
that is, as long as one’s mindfulness continues showing experience as individual
experience “inside” the meditator, and not as intersubjectively constituted experi-

ence, the improvements in one’s wellbeing will be short-lived.
One begins attentional training with the embodied dimension of experience (e.g.,
in mindfulness according to a popular teacher S. N. Goenka). Because one lives in
the world via the body, intersubjectivity of meaning is constituted via this bodily
participation in the world. Therefore, “unpacking” the embodied dimension of
experience leads one directly into the sphere of intersubjectivity and enables letting
go of the habits that interfere with wellbeing in this sphere.
In the beginning, the meditator sharpens focus and gains volitional control over
attention. Like other faculties of consciousness, attention is governed by environ-
ment; others and the world constantly pull the strings of attention. Accordingly, the
ego needs to appropriate attention as its own. For this, Goenka’s style of training
suggests focusing on breath sensations on the upper lip. These sensations are
distinctly cooling on inhalation, warm on exhalation; the small size of the affected
area helps to train the necessary focus. This beginning stage of the practice reveals an
overwhelming number of random thoughts, images, and associations, quite out of
control. Accordingly, one needs to begin in a comfortable, quiet room where nobody
will disturb one’s meditation for at least an hour (not so necessary at a later stage of
practice). One should attempt not quieting the mind but rather sustaining the focus:
because the origin of a busy mind is external, these disturbances are, in fact,
disorganized memories. Not paying attention to them will stop ego’s activity of
making sense of these passively accumulated impressions, and the mind will quiet
down by itself. Another essential skill gained at this preliminary stage consists in
inhibiting the ego’s proclivities of attraction and repulsion. Sharpened yet relaxed
attention can notice these moves of the mind and stop them. Then the ego can relax
its drive to constantly bestow new meanings, thereby breaking the Buddhist “kar-
mic” chain of events.
The first 15 min in such preliminary practice may be the most successful, but
around the 15 min of the practice, attention begins flickering, and it becomes more
difficult to keep the focus tied to the skin sensations. But this is exactly where the
training really begins: when one notices that attention has slipped away, one should
gently return it to the focus. With an hour of practice every other day or, alternatively,
30 min of practice every day, in approximately a week, one will have the skills
necessary to proceed to the practice itself.
The main practice consists in scanning the bodily sensations in an orderly
manner, covering the whole surface of the body, and repeating these scans. It is
usually possible to run two full-body scans within 30 min of practice. As in the
preliminary training, one should sustain the focus, but this time the focus is dynamic.
Also, again as in the preliminary training, one should inhibit the tendency of the ego
to grasp at the impressions arising. As Goenka used to say: “No attraction, no
repulsion; just observe, just observe.” Another prominent Buddhist teacher from a
different tradition, Sogyal Rinpoche, stated: “Be alert yet relaxed, relaxed yet alert.”
Relaxation amounts to the same “no attraction, no repulsion,” but adds an important
dimension of relaxing the ego without losing alertness.
The many activities of the mind, such as associations, fantasies, memories, a

sense of intensity, feelings, and so forth, that show up in this process are not what one
would call “wellbeing.” Consequently, the ego develops its own protective mecha-
nisms to keep such unwholesome contents under control: one such skill is dissoci-
ation; another is the suppression of unwholesome contents; and so on. But such
tricks on the part of the ego will not produce a lasting sense of wellbeing. Conse-
quently, the objective is to bring the traces to the surface of experience, into
awareness, and “unwork” them. But so long as experience remains to be seen as
individual experience, or internal experience, such unworking of traces will have
only a temporary effect.
Luckily, if one keeps enhancing the letting-go element of the practice (“no
attraction,” etc.), after many sessions of mindfulness, the scans become detached
from the body-schema and penetrate more and more into the space of meaning itself.
Initially perceptual, as if inside the body, this field loses its spatial representation and
is experienced as a purely informational continuum that expands toward the world.
This is the most interesting and rewarding stage of the practice, because it is at this
stage that one begins seeing the co-constitution of meaning between the self and
others, and the weight of intersubjectivity in one’s mental makeup. The sense of
unfreedom that arises at this stage is immense but fleeting, because penetrating into
the horizon of intersubjectivity opens the gate to real change. Using the skills of
focus, “no attraction, no repulsion,” and emotional release, one can let go of
strategies shaped in past relationships and radically change habits of behavior and
thinking on a very foundational level. This not only leads to the surfacing of
wholesome feelings in the internal field of experience but brings in new, wholesome
forms of interaction with others. These new behaviors will harmonize interactions
with others and lead to a new form of intersubjectivity more oriented toward
wellbeing.
Wellbeing Via Joy: Kundalini Yoga
The wisdom practice in this section addresses the attainment of wellbeing via affect
and thereby produces results linked both to subjective health (Antonov and Vaver
1989; Joshanloo and Jovanović 2018; Louchakova and Warner 2003) and to the
wellbeing of a group (Antonov and Vaver 1989). Recent developments in phenom-
enology show that what psychology normally categorizes as the affective sphere
includes more than basic emotions, and that a basic emotion in itself is not a
straightforward concept. First, emotion is a phenomenologically complex entity
composed from feeling and thought (Louchakova-Schwartz 2019b); and second,
the feeling part of emotion includes a whole spectrum of experiences (Ratcliffe
2008, 2013), some of which, for instance, a feeling-sense of “homelike being in the
world” (for the term, see Svenaeus 2001, 2011), underlie the experience of health.
This phenomenological complexity of emotion is correlated with how multiple
emotions are represented in the human brain (Saarimäki et al. 2018).
If mindfulness (Section “Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the

Letting Go” above) creates an experience of wellbeing by harmonizing the bonds
between the self, others, and the world, the practice in the present section draws on
the resources of wellbeing hidden deeply in the sense of embodiment. Such an
approach is characteristic for yoga, Indian and Buddhist Tantra, contemporary
Kundalini Yoga-Tantra, Chinese movement systems such as Tai Chi, Chi Gong, or
Bagua, and contemplative martial arts such as Aikido or WuShu. By contrast with
outgoing attentional modifications in mindfulness, these practices always include
absorption. Absorption in the body can be found in Christian Hesychasm, Islamic
Sufism, or Jewish Kabbalah. Since embodiment is a platform for the constitution of
the whole of experience, different traditions have many options for pursing their own
specific phenomenologies of wellbeing within this vast domain. For example, Tai
Chi and Chi Gong aim to modify movement and the sense of space; Aikido will
modify the sense of self; and Kundalini Yoga and related Tantras will focus on
embodied emotion; and so on. All such practices have shared elements, but at the
same time each has its own experiential style, which is either liked or not by different
people.
But what is “embodiment”? In the discussion above, it was established that
experience is always an experience of meaning. But the analysis of experience-
meaning would not be complete if one were to focus exclusively on the structure of
meaning alone. Meaning happens to living people, and living people always have
bodies. In fact, if one puts aside a mental habit of splitting the mind and the body,
living people do not just have bodies but are bodies: there is no evidence of anybody
being able to have any experience in the absence of the body – for example, after full
bodily death. Research in phenomenology has proved that an experience of meaning
is at the same time an experience of being the body, even if one does not notice that
the former is immersed in the latter and that meaning is always embodied meaning.
This becomes evident when awareness drops from the head and into the body during
massage, exercise, dancing, or sex, or even during the fluctuations of awareness in
ordinary experience in which one becomes aware of a so-called felt sense, gut
feeling, or a sense of emotion being located somewhere in the body. The best
intuitive decision making takes place upon awareness dropping into the body,
exactly because the body exists in correlation with the environment (via movement
and senses), and thereby “reads” a situation closely and directly, as opposed to less
effective decision making when one is caught in a circle of thoughts. This is exactly
why finding the bodily experience of wellbeing increases the sharpness of thinking
and adequacy of responses to the environment and others – for instance, in the
workspace.
Embodiment is put together by several components of consciousness. Each
component can open into a whole spectrum of different experiences: there may be
a limitless number of kinesthetic experiences, of experiences of feeling, of experi-
ences with modification of the body-schema (including so-called out-of-body expe-
riences), and so forth. Consequently, one may say that the sense of embodiment
includes several necessary horizons, such as movement (kinesthesis), spatiality, and
time, and related to all three of these the awareness of the shape of the body. Another
important horizon of embodiment consists of variations in the feeling of the stuff

(material) from which the body is “made,” i.e., the phenomenon of flesh. This
framework helps with understanding how the practices of different traditions
work: for example, the practice of Chi Gong will work predominantly in the horizon
of kinesthesis, or the practice of Kundalini Yoga will have a lot to do with the
horizon of phenomenological materiality (cf. Henry 2008), and so on.
All components of mental life, such as thoughts, desires, decisions, memories,
fantasies, associations, and so forth, on some level of constitution participate in
horizons of embodiment. How each experience is “distributed” between different
horizons varies: for example, feelings are mostly hosted in the horizons of phenom-
enological materiality and hyletics. A large body of anecdotal evidence points to the
fact that emotions and feelings can be associated with specific locations in the body:
for example, one feels “butterflies” in the stomach area, love or loneliness in the
chest, or a sense of awe in the throat. Hence, Kundalini Yoga (Roberts 2014) and
Buddhist Tantra-Yoga (Klein 2018) work predominantly in the horizon of embodied
feeling and thereby produce rapid improvements of wellbeing. However, whereas
mindfulness produces a long-lasting change in relationships with others, the feeling
of wellbeing in Kundalini Yoga exists only so long as one keeps practicing. Also,
these practices are not as straightforward as the always identical process of mind-
fulness: their complicated routines of attention, absorption, and embodied visuali-
zations with light, sound, body movement and posture, and the like evolve together
with changes in subjective experience.
Figure 4 shows the dynamics of interrelationships between subjective experience
and internal practice in Kundalini Yoga. When internal experience changes in terms
of its content and the accompanying feeling, the inner focus of visualization, the use
of internal sound, degree of absorption in the body, and so on – that is, the contents of
practice – also get adjusted.
Whereas mindfulness largely disregards the content of experience while repeating
and perfecting the same set of internal activities, in Kundalini Yoga the practice is
much more flexible. Tantric practices (which have been erroneously associated with
sex) are mobilis in mobile: that is, working off the endless change of experience. At
first, following such a practice may appear complicated – unless one considers an
analogy with the workspace. The flexible decision making in the workspace reflects
Fig. 4 Dynamic interrelationships between internal practice and subjective experience in Kunda-
lini Yoga. (Adapted from Louchakova-Schwartz 2013)
the same dynamism of experience, the dynamism of the market, and ever-changing
relationships with the human other. Embodied practices create an experience of
wellbeing in constant adjustment to new sets of circumstances – a quality definitely
valuable in the ever-changing workspace. Just as the organizational structure holds
steady amid the whirlpool of incoming tasks, Kundalini Yoga has a steady core
structure that one can work with differently under different circumstance.
The stability of structure in the practice of Kundalini Yoga is provided by the
stable presence of the body. Here is an example of practice with the use of such a
stable structure (Antonov and Vaver 1989, translated and adapted by the present
author):
In a standing pose, relax the muscles of the body; keep the tension just enough to sustain the
standing pose. Keep your eyes half-open and relax the eye muscles; keep your gaze slightly
out of focus and concentrate attention inside the head, behind your eyeballs and eyebrows.
Be aware of the “what it’s like” in this focus: of its intensity, density, tactility, or mood. Then
slide the center of your “seeing” – that is, the center of awareness – backwards inside your
head. Focusing in the front of the head often feels heavy, rigid, and unpleasant, whereas
focusing in the back feels soft, expanded, and more subtle.
Now, move the focus of internal “seeing” (that is, the focus of your awareness) from the
base of the head, through the spine, and from the back into the core of your chest. Keep being
aware of the quality of this state, and as if open your eyes inside the chest. This adds visual
awareness of your interior space, as if you are seeing the inner space of your chest. It feels as
if your head has sunk down into your chest and you have opened your eyes inside it.
This inner space, initially dark, with practice will appear more and more luminous. You
may also become aware of feelings – often, the sense of the sacred – and also, of the sense of
subtle tactility inside the chest. Looking at this space from the head instead of being inside it
would not produce such impressions, but absorption in the phenomenological materiality of
the body will.
This exercise of absorption-awareness-focusing in the inner space of the chest

initiates the beginning of work with the emotional sphere through the zones of
emotion known in Kundalini Yoga as chakras. Phenomenologically, chakras are
regions of internal experience associated with the segments of the body-schema (see
Fig. 5). Such experiences include a sense of expansion within a certain region, a
sense of intensity in the internal space, a sense of dynamic power, of internal
luminosity, feelings, and other impressions in this layer of experience. In the
phenomenological analysis of experience (Fig. 1), chakras would be structures
related to the order of passivity. Kundalini Yoga calls some of these impressions
“energy.” This “energy” cannot be converted into other types of energy: it always
appears at a certain level of absorption into the body. Kundalini Yoga names this
internal space of impressions “the subtle body,” in which one can perceive breath,
sexuality, blood circulation, and other biological processes as motions of energy.
Each of the chakras (levels of the body in Fig. 5) is associated with a cluster of
emotions. This means that if one brings awareness into the zone of the chakra, it is
likely to animate the memory of corresponding emotion. The very bottom segment is
associated with early childhood fears, and also with shame; the second segment up is
associated with sexual feelings, the third, with fear, anger, and other feelings of
Fig. 5 The motions of internal attention in Kundalini Tantra-Yoga practices. Horizontal arrows,
primary change of focus. Vertical arrows, direction of the changes of focus in the practice of
transmutation of emotions. (Summarized from Antonov and Vaver 1989; Louchakova and Warner
2003)
protection of one’s boundaries. The space of the chest is associated with existential
feelings (Ratcliffe 2008): with love and joy, but also with sadness, loneliness, and
dark moods described by Ratcliffe (2013). The area of the throat is associated with
awe and the sense of beauty. The head and the top of the head do not harbor emotions
but are associated with different kinds of thinking: the more strategic experienced
when one focuses in the top section of the head, and everyday problem solving and
control of emotions in the center of the head.
Some texts, such as Laya Yoga (Goswami 1999), offer even more detailed
“maps” of emotions and feelings. A “trick” of focusing inside these regions consists
in “entering” them (moving attention into them) from the back, in order to attain a
relaxed stability of absorption (Antonov and Vaver 1989). Traditional practices
include bringing focused attention into the zones of chakras, and visualizing light
vortexes and positive imagery: this transforms emotions from unwholesome to
wholesome and lead to a sense of emotional wellbeing. The transformational
networks of emotion are presented in Fig. 6. Phenomenological analysis shows
Fig. 6 Transformative networks of emotions and feelings in the practice of Kundalini Yoga.
(Reprinted with permission from Louchakova-Schwartz 2019b)
that transformations of emotion in these networks have a certain directedness (from

left to right in Fig. 6).
In fact, chakras are the locations in the body in which one feeling can turn into
another and thereby bring one closer to a feeling of overall wellbeing through the
experience of emotion. Meditation on chakras trains the competencies of emotional
intelligence, as described by Goleman (2016). Phenomenology has been a key
philosophical movement in bringing emotions to the forefront of scientific investi-
gation (Elpidorou and Freeman 2014) and developing an understanding of their
transformation (Louchakova-Schwartz 2019a; Summa 2015); but why emotions are
phenomenologically associated with the body-schema has yet to be researched.
Opinions differ: for example, Schmitz et al. (2011) viewed emotions in conjunction
with a theory of the felt body’s constitutive involvement in human experience;
Gendlin (1973) noted that anger displays repetitive spatial patterns that can be
distinguished from the absence of patterns in the felt sense; and so on. Kriegel
(2015) critiqued the approach of the phenomenology of emotion on the whole,
suggesting that the phenomenology of emotion should not be considered a special
kind of phenomenology. But while research continues, the practice makes it clear
that (a) emotion exercises a powerful interpersonal influence, that (b) emotion is
embodied and comes in clusters associated with certain areas of the body, and that (c)
feelings and emotions can be regulated directly and intentionally by means of
meditative practice.
A form of wellbeing achieved via the practices of Kundalini Yoga involves the
transformation of emotion from negative toward positive, and of feeling from
depression or moodiness to stability of happiness and joy. Kundalini Yoga discrim-
inates three qualities of experience known as sattva, rajas, and tamas (Ramaprasad
2013). Tamas defines the quality of darkness, heaviness, moisture, inactivity, torpor,
sloth, dullness, and inertia; rajas, activity, dynamism, and fire, but also anger and
fear; and sattva, tranquility, peacefulness, joy, purity, lightness, light, and so forth.
Wellbeing would be naturally associated with the sattvic state of experience.
“I Am the Only One Remaining”: A Wellbeing Myth of Nonduality
Last in this discussion comes a group of so-called nondual practices. Nonduality –

that is, “no two” – is an idea that the human self and God’s self are identical, the same
self. “Self” in this case means not the whole of the human being, the body and the
mind, but just the essence of pure awareness in the human body: that is, the so-called
real self. This set of ideas is borrowed by New Age groups from Vedanta and
Buddhism, and misinterpreted in the process, often for commercial purposes,
suggesting that recognizing oneself as such an essence means achieving unalloyed
happiness, limitless joy, and immortality. Consider the following promotional blurb
from a book by one J. Martin (2013), The God Formula: A Simple Scientifically
Proven Blueprint That Has Transformed Millions of Lives (The Path of Freedom
Series):
You may be surprised to learn that over the last decade a revolutionary scientific research
project has been taking place that’s led to major advances in how to produce what seem like
miraculous results in your life, and extraordinary levels of meaning and happiness.
With such promises, the stakes are high, even though research supporting such
claims is either nonexistent or suspect. For most people, when they experience such
a state, it is an experience of temporary dissociation/depersonalization described as
So what? and not one of limitless, never-ending exalted wellbeing. So: Are such
experiences technically possible, and what is their relationship with wellbeing?
As discussed in Section “Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the
Letting Go”, the human mind has the ability to separate the witnessing part of
consciousness from the rest of experience. Further, as discussed in section “Wellbeing
Via Joy: Kundalini Yoga”, the mind can become absorbed in its own embodied content
and focus on experiencing that. Phenomenological analysis has demonstrated that the
ego is quite capable of such self-splitting. With training, the self-splitting capacity of
the ego can be used to examine its own activities in the constitution of experience. In
such examinations, the ego can also temporarily suspend or even blank out its own
parts and examine how experience changes as a result of suspension.
Such mental exercises in phenomenology are called “reductions” and are used as
a research tool in studies of consciousness. In clinical studies, such capacity is
associated with dissociation and has been shown possible both in dreams (Bob and
Louchakova 2015) and in the waking state (Miller 2007). In the wakened state,
because of the unusual character of such experience, it can sometime be termed
“spiritual,” even though the state itself does not carry any specific connotations of
spirituality (cf. Miller 2007).
Reductions to pure subjectivity – that is, suspension of consciousness directed
toward the objects of experience and focusing on the remaining backdrop of the
subject – have been well known both in Western mystical philosophies and in the
Indian spiritual philosophy of Vedanta. However, these traditions did not produce a
uniform conclusion as to what the residue of reduction consists of: that is, what the
nature of it is. In Vedanta, the act of reduction is accompanied by multiple logical
proofs (the so-called prakriyas) that what remains is real, sentient, and beyond time
and space, and accordingly must be God. Of course, God enjoys wellbeing, and so
must the practitioner who is “God-realized.” However, in the same Vedanta, the
same affirmation of Godliness is given twice, in the introductory vision before the
practice begins, and then in the practice, as a matter of coordinating the results of
practice with the aprioristic vision. Consequently, this is not a conclusion derived
from experience but a theology with which experience is coordinated via an inter-
pretation. Ananta ananda, the limitless fullness of such experience, is a theological
definition of the nature of reality and not a description of wellbeing in it.
According to Vedanta, a foundational possibility to realize the self lies in
distinguishing the real from the unreal: the constant presence of awareness is
contrasted with the ever-changing nature of the world and the mind. When such
consideration is introduced, and is systematically practiced in complex with Vedan-
tic theology, experience indeed acquires positive connotations. However, intention-
ally altering one’s sense of reality in the everyday, and especially in relationships
with others in the workspace, toward “I am the only one remaining” (a verse in
Vedantic poetry signifying the realization of the real Self) is not a good idea, for
obvious reasons. Romanticized interpretations of an imagined possibility of break-
ing free from circumstances and at the same time remaining a highly successful and
useful member of the work community do not hold true in actual experience.
Vedantic texts indeed claim that upon realization one is relieved from the great
fear (of death), but in reality there remain many different fears and anxieties, and
they come back in full strength as soon as one stops maintaining the forceful
dissociation essential for such experiences. There is no limitless compassion that
one discovers upon realization that the self, indeed, has a constant presence within.
The conclusion can be arrived at that while experiences of splitting the ego and
reducing it toward pure subjectivity may be useful in reconstituting consciousness
(mindfulness as discussed above), in itself, experience of the pure ego is not
associated with wellbeing in the workspace.
Conclusion
Wellbeing has been a perennial concern of wisdom traditions. This paper adopted a
phenomenological approach to the subjective experience of wellbeing in order to
demonstrate the intentional self-constitution of the subjective experience of
wellbeing in the practices of wisdom traditions. These practices allocate the locus
of control over wellbeing to the individual. Phenomenological analysis reveals that
wellbeing can be attained via intentional modifications in two regions of experience.
The first region, the sphere of intersubjectivity, can be modified by the practice of
mindfulness. The other region is the so-called layer of passive synthesis: the changes
of experience in this layer include the transformation of feelings from unwholesome
to wholesome. The practices allowing such transformation of feelings are adapted
from the tradition of Kundalini Yoga. The experience emerging as a result of popular
practices of nonduality is appraised critically as not leading to the experience of
wellbeing. Developing personal strategies to directly accentuate the positive aspects
of subjective experience so that it turns into an experience of wellbeing can greatly
enhance wellbeing in the workspace.
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Wellbeing and Spirituality: Insights from

the World’s Wisdom Traditions

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

Make a powerful memory, the happiest you can remember.

In recent literature, wellbeing in the workspace is described as a self-evident

may be possible to develop individualized strategies which counteract this general

sphere of experience. For example, a modern Indian saint, Mata Amritanandamayi

Emphasizing importance of subjective experience, Walden (2017, from the back

scientiﬁc knowledge of the experience of wellbeing: when the subject of interest is

phenomenological method have been incorporated as one of the methods of quali-

What to Expect from Traditional Approaches to Wellbeing

Inside Wellbeing: The Constitutive Phenomenology of Experience

Attempts to link the meaning that experience obtained as a result of traditional

there is a speciﬁc structure of experience that distinguishes religious experience from

Fig. 1 The general structure of experience-meaning. (Based on Husserl 1970)

– Purple: areas of constitution connected with the spiritual character of experience

Fig. 2 Phenomenological “Locations” of Wellbeing. (Based on Louchakova-Schwartz 2019b)

Fig. 3 Horizons in phenomenological organization of experience

Yoga and Tantra focus on modiﬁcations of the embodied dimension of conscious-

Wellbeing and Intersubjectivity

discoveries of phenomenology. If one traces subjective experience back to its

interconnectedness is not a blissful oneness (as it is often presented in New Age

Traditional Practices of Wellbeing

Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the Letting Go

One relatively uncomplicated practice of mindfulness received the most attention

experience “inside” the meditator, and not as intersubjectively constituted experi-

The many activities of the mind, such as associations, fantasies, memories, a

Wellbeing Via Joy: Kundalini Yoga

If mindfulness (Section “Wellbeing Via Intersubjectivity: Mindfulness and the

important horizon of embodiment consists of variations in the feeling of the stuff

This exercise of absorption-awareness-focusing in the inner space of the chest

that transformations of emotion in these networks have a certain directedness (from

“I Am the Only One Remaining”: A Wellbeing Myth of Nonduality

Last in this discussion comes a group of so-called nondual practices. Nonduality –

Hammershøj LG (2018) Conceptualizing creativity and innovation as affective processes. Philos

Louchakova-Schwartz O (2013) Cognitive phenomenology in the study of Tibetan meditation. In:

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