Life in a finer state
Inner Work
Excellence on the outside rests on inner mastery. This page shows the quiet depth behind all of my work: the practice from which coaching, leadership work and organizational development draw their strength.
What it is
Calm that embraces restlessness
Inner work is not self-optimization. It is not about finding or improving yourself, but about living as yourself: complete, whole, essential.
The path there does not lead through harshness, but through an attitude that includes everything: everything may belong, every feeling, every thought, everything “good” and “bad”. What is seen and connected stops working in hiding. In this way calm slowly returns, in the midst of all the restlessness, not against it, but with it. With it, not against it: that is the difference between a ceasefire with yourself and real peace.
From this calm a finer state of living arises: distraction, inner resistance, pressure and stress subside; many problems are no longer problems; creative solutions come by themselves; life becomes lighter, even when it is hard.
Three movements of life
Integration. Unfolding. Transcendence
Three movements that carry each other, and that fulfill themselves almost by themselves when the path is right. Each has its own guiding sentence, which wants to be experienced rather than thought:
Integration
Becoming whole. Perceiving yourself, holding yourself and reconnecting. Self-awareness, self-regulation, self-love. What was separated becomes whole again.
“I am true, healed and whole, one.”
Unfolding
Creativity. From wholeness grows creative power. Self-determination, self-expression, self-trust. What is your own takes shape and works in the world.
“I am calm, clear and strong.”
Transcendence
Peace. Going beyond oneself. Devotion, meaning, stillness, connection. Separateness dissolves, and what remains is relationship with everything that lives.
“I am I, you, we, life.”
“It is not about finding or optimizing yourself, but about living as yourself.”
Where this comes from
A matured system, not a trend
Behind this page lie more than one and a half decades of teaching and a daily practice since 2006: meditation in all its forms, Qi Gong, Tai Chi and the internal martial arts, combined with psychological science and the craft of transformation.
From this grew my own psychologically grounded meditation system, which I taught over five and a half years in more than 700 sessions, 70 workshops, 3 retreats and a two-year teacher training. This substance lives on today in everything I do under my name.
Where you encounter this work
Today, and in the future
In coaching
Inner work is woven into every coaching engagement, as presence, as method and, if you wish, as your own practice to take with you.
In the newsletter “Essentials”
An essay, a tool, a pointer, monthly, written with care (currently in German). Subscribe
In the Academy
Step by step, the Inner Work series is taking shape under “Dr. Christopher Schwake · Academy”: self-study programs and courses from the matured system, to practice at your own pace.
Your first step
30 essential minutes
Free, without obligation, insightful, and perhaps the beginning of a finer state of living.