Today I would like to make a personal attempt to share my experience with New Equations, in the light of my work as a professional coach and consultant. First, I will give you an idea of the personal history that brought me to New Equations by describing some of the areas in which I have seriously engaged and enjoyed.

As a young child, I trained as a gymnast and competed until I was 16, when I began training in the katas of Shotokan Karate. Later on, I lived for a period of time in Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, California, USA. There I was, in the late 70’s, in the midst of all kinds of new exploration in the field of psychology, the body, and human potential. People like Fritz Perls, Michael Murphy, Marilyn Ferguson, Alan Watts, Carl Rogers, Werner Erhard, and the Human Potential Movement were the talk of the town. For a young man from Germany, like me, this was paradise for anyone searching for a new world, a new consciousness . . . plus there was the excitement of Venice Beach and the Santa Monica Pier.

In this environment and atmosphere, I got in touch with different forms of body/mind work. I received Rolfing sessions from one of Ida Rolf’s senior facilitators, and I even had the opportunity to live at his home for a while. I received bodywork from Betty Fuller, cofounder of the Trager Institute, and began training to be a Trager practitioner. And, to top it off, I was part of a group awareness training called The Process. Back in Germany, I was already intensively involved in Transcendental Meditation and OSHO Dynamic Meditation. I used a mind machine, practiced Gurdjieff movements, raced in the Berlin Marathon, and took survival trainings, including one in Canada for bush pilots. (It was during this training that I met my wife, and we began traveling our spiritual journeys together . . .)

In retrospect, I would say that I have a broad background in body and mind development, but New Equations was to take me well beyond all these intense and precious experiences.

About my body, I still somehow held the view: It must function, and for this I need to train it, maintain it, and, if necessary, heal and repair it. That meant also bringing back into flow blocked areas in my body, and releasing fears stuck in muscles by using deep massage, and so on. With this understanding, this point of view, I became involved in New Equations.

Unexpectedly, at my first introduction, I met something that on one hand was familiar to me, but on the other hand surprised me, because a power and clarity revealed itself that I had been unaware of until then. It did not remain on the concept level . . . it was as if a door was pushed open and I had a bodily experience without my mind interfering. I have no doubt—my body was not limited by my thoughts. There was no explanation for it, but in that moment, a new door opened that I had not known existed.

In an unspectacular and simple way, my multilayered experiences came together in my Soultype—in my case, Soultype 5.

Even though there are nine Soultypes, each identified by a number, New Equations cannot be compared with any personality systems, such as Myers-Briggs, DiSC, the Enneagram, and so on, because New Equations deals with my mind in an amazing way that connects me with my inner holistic life force. Unlike other consciousness-raising and self-development methods, it gives access to, integrates, and expands us through the body’s nine Spiritual Portals, so our body-consciousness opens beyond the physicality we already know.

My New Equations journey is not yet a long one, but my personal experience is that it is bringing me into more connection with my authentic self as a Soultype 5. This fills me with deep peace—without psychological explanations or detours.

I can well imagine that this way of authentically discovering oneself, while at the same time in exchange with others, could elegantly solve many misunderstandings that we have in our organizations and in the world today.

I am up for this journey!

Hans-Peter Kraus

Hans-Peter Kraus, Soultype 5, is a student in the NEATO Level 2 – New Equations Expansion program. He enjoys linking bridges that create a balance between different perceptions. Hans-Peter lives on the border triangle of Germany, Switzerland, and France, near Freiburg (Black Forest), Germany.