Author: werbit

Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Vitruvian Man (1498) is a paradox par excellence:
As one of the most famous works in art history, it is at once a testament to a historical view of humanity that, in our age of self-optimisation and self-quantification, could hardly be more relevant; it is the representation of an apparent deciphering of the sum and substance of humanity whilst simultaneously laying bare its inscrutability; it reciprocally reflects art and mathematics, the concrete with the abstract, the finite with eternity. And although the original is only exhibited every five years or so, it is nonetheless omnipresent in our everyday lives: We continuously encounter the Vitruvian Man on our Instagram-feeds, on health insurance cards, on Italian one-Euro coins – and in our Ashtanga practice.

But first, let’s take a brief look at the composition and concept behind this masterpiece: The double-stanced figure of an athletic man is situated at the centre of the picture. His outstretched limbs touch both a circle and a square, which frame his form. His navel constitutes the centre of both the human and geometric shapes. So far, so good – but: so what? What is the point of this geometric anthropology, which finds its continuation in the meticulous proportions of his body’s parts? Its point is nothing less than to portray man as the embodiment of the eternal geometry of the universe, as the microcosmic corpus of the macrocosmic order.

What might, in theory, sound quite compelling, soon proved to be an impossibility in practice: The Roman architect Vitruvius (c. 80 BC–15 AD), creator and namesake of the Vitruvianus, did not leave behind even a trace of a drawing of his homo bene figuratus, his well-proportioned human. The brilliant minds of the Renaissance – artists, architects, engineers – blunted their quills trying to sketch him, yet their designs never progressed beyond a collection of distorted homunculi. Finally, it was Leonardo – who else? – who succeeded in squaring the circle by deviating in a few details from Vitruvius’ specifications and incorporating his own mathematical, anatomical and aesthetic insights.

Returning to the practice of Ashtanga, we encounter a synthesized Virtruvianus most frequently within or between the standing postures following the Sun Salutations: between the trikoṇāsanas and the pārśva koṇāsanas, between two of the four pādottānāsanas, in the transition of pārśvottānāsana, and between the āsanas and samasthitiḥ. With view to the geometric leitmotif of this standing sequence, but also beyond it, at least two possibilities of practice can be derived from the ‘vitruvian-āsana’:

1. Like Virtuvius’ devoted Renaissance scholars, the practitioner attempts to conform to an abstract and/or external form in order to embody a supposed ideal. A mere glance at the different body sizes, proportions and potentials that we encounter in our shared practice suffices to reveal this to be physiological nonsense. That such an idea can also become politically dangerous was proven by the fascist appropriation of a measurable human ideal – cf. Benito Mussolini’s Leonardo exhibition in Milan in 1939.
2. The practitioner explores the harmonious interplay of forms and proportions within their own body. Here, too, the observation of no more than two practitioners reveals that each āsana takes on a different form in each person, and that even a single āsana inevitably changes over the course of a single person’s practice, both internally and externally. Like Leonardo da Vinci, we would therefore do well to test abstract and/or traditional theories in practice, to question them and, where necessary, to adapt them. Unless we decide to practise Homunculus Yoga, the measure of our practice cannot be compass and ruler, but the experiences and insights of each and every practitioner.

This seems to be a good place to pause – not least because the sun, the birds and the evening air are calling me outside ever more insistently. Yet, as so often happens at this very moment of writing, my inner critic is raising his hand to point out that I cannot possibly intend to conclude that humankind should regard itself as the measure of its own – or, at worst, of all – things. Of course not, I reply: It’s only logical that proportions can never arise solely from within themselves. Naturally, the person who practises yoga, who lives his or her life, must find their grounding within the physical and mental conditions given to them. Yet this person is always embedded within larger contexts: social and political, cultural and religious, abstract and concrete. This is precisely what Leonardo’s Vitruvianus symbolises: It is only through our own relationship with ourselves and with the whole that we will find our perfect posture as human beings. What more can there be to achieve in yoga? My inner critic seems, for the time being, to be appeased. Together we get up from my desk and stroll out into the evening sun.

Da Vinci, Leonardo: Uomo vitruviano. 1498, Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia, Venice.

Once upon a time, a Buddhist monk was alone in a temple. He threw himself to the floor, beat his chest vigorously and muttered: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…”

Soon after, a novice entered the temple. He looked around, spotted the monk and knelt down beside him. Together with the monk, he murmured: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” Suddenly, the caretaker arrived to sweep the temple floor. When he saw the two men kneeling, he, too, knelt down and spoke in unison with the other two: “I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing…” The monk nudged the novice and remarked with indignance: “Well, well, well – look at who fancies himself as a nothing.”

The moral of the story? Nothing protects you – or rather: does not protect you – from the enticements of rank and status!

(Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025, 27.02.2025)

It is said that in yoga (and particularly in Ashtanga), there are those who feel the need to prove something through their practice: to themselves, to their teacher, to the other practitioners. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are those who sometimes eye those who are already a little further along in their practice – doing drop-backs, gliding through their vinyāsas, practising the Third and Fourth Series – with a certain sense of envy. It is also said that in yoga (particularly in Ashtanga) there are people, both practitioners and teachers, who, quite en passant, will not fail to mention to others – practitioners and teachers alike – where they have practised, with whom, for how long, and what levels of qualification, authorisation, certification (also: injuries) they have accumulated over time.

So they say. What do we know about such things…

So far, so human. And yet: Shouldn’t it be precisely those members of our mundane species who devote their lives, in whole or in part, or even just for a few hours at the end of a long week, to a practice – yoga, for example – in which the focus is not on performance, results and comparisons, but on insight, acceptance and authenticity, who should distance themselves from such competitive struggles and posturing? Of course! Is the fact that, at times, this is not always the case an indication that yoga is not effective? Of course not! Quite the contrary: Like a magnifying glass – Richard Freeman would say: like a mirror – the practice of yoga clearly reveals to us the patterns of thought and behaviour that shape our perspective on ourselves and others both consciously and unconsciously – even as we firmly believe that we recognised and moved on from them long ago.

Here’s an anecdote from my own practice:

In the summer of 2025, I had the great fortune of being able to take part in a Teacher Intensive with Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, alongside 50 marvellous practitioners from all over the world. Throughout the four weeks of the course, I did my morning practice next to an exceptionally friendly Norwegian who was diligently working on the Fourth Series of Ashtanga, all the while that I was trying to find my way back into the Second Series. “Perfectly fine!” I told myself, “She’s doing her thing and I’m doing mine, each to their own. I completely appreciate her practice and fully accept where I am with mine. And yet – it you’ll permit a quite aside: Aren’t my āsanas much more integrated? Doesn’t my breath flow much deeper? Am I not, in my modest contentment with the first two series, actually more advanced than those who feel the need to master the Advanced Series?” And thus comparative and competitive thinking had swiftly crept into my practice via the back roads of supposed acceptance and serenity: If I couldn’t keep up in flexibility and strength, then surely I could surpass her in attention, breathing and intention!

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–87), Tibetan Buddhist master and founder of the Shambhala Centres in North America and Europe, addressed the pitfalls and traps of spiritual practices in a number of his talks and discussions during the 1970s, describing them in a book of the same title as ‘spiritual materialism’. In it, he points out that the “ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality” (p. 13). How so? When teachings and practices are regarded as something that exists outside of us – as an ideal that we construct with the help of certain texts, images and/or role models, which we proceed to emulate, to measure ourselves against, and to compare ourselves to others with. Thus, the practice quickly turns into a performance: “If our teacher speaks of renunciation of the ego, we attempt to mimic renunciation of ego” (id.). To what end? To see ourselves confirmed in the belief that we are completely free of ego – and thus superior to our poor, ego-bound fellow human beings. The tragicomic aspect of this is that, whilst we genuinely believe ourselves to be more authentic, empathetic and present, we are actually becoming ever-more entangled in our rather cunning egos.

This, too, is very much a part of human nature – and thus, in a certain sense, very much true to who we are. The crux of the matter is to recognise this aspect of our nature, to acknowledge it, and to approach it with insight and humour. It may then not only become clear who, in the case of our Buddhist sangha from the beginning of this text, is the one merely imagining himself to be nothing; it might also become possible for us to move from arrogance to humility, from illusion to reality and – in the specific context of yoga – from the poses to the āsanas, from a performance to practice.

“Der Mönch und das Nichts.” Der Philosophie-Kalender 2025. 27.02.2025. Harenberg Verlag, 2024.
(Translated by the author)

Trungpa, Chogyam. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Shambhala Publications, 2002.