THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / Geneva
In Geneva, Erkin Bek's ALL HERE pairs guided practice with immersive headsets and live brainwave readings, a meditation centre that treats technology as a door rather than a distraction.
BEAUTY & WELLBEING · MEDITATION
Geneva is a city that hums in a low voice. Between the lake, the immaculate parks and the Swiss precision that orders daily life, it is a natural home for a place devoted to the one thing contemporary wellbeing keeps circling back to: presence. ALL HERE, the meditation centre founded by Erkin Bek, approaches it with an unusual mix of simplicity, depth and invention.
The shift is immediate on entering. The space is minimal and softly lit, and every detail seems arranged to ease the return to the centre. When WAYFARER’s European correspondent, Luiza Rodas, sat for a session, it began with discreet guidance, the kind that opens space rather than setting a pace. The breath took on texture, the body loosened, and the mind found a quiet of its own.
What sets ALL HERE apart is the way tradition and technology share the room without friction. An immersive headset carries the meditator into a silent, expansive landscape that deepens the inward turn. The technology does not entertain; it narrows the world, and the practice settles more easily for it.
Then comes measurement. EEG sensors read brainwaves in real time, so that the depth of a meditative state appears as data while the breath continues. It is an almost futuristic sight: the interior made visible, without the mystery being lost. For practitioners who have spent long stretches in silent retreats, the meeting of science and contemplation is the real novelty.
This is where Erkin Bek’s thinking shows. A Geneva entrepreneur and meditation researcher, he founded ALL HERE in 2021 on three pillars, meditation, science and technology, and has since added the World Meditation League. His aim is to make meditation accessible, human and woven into ordinary life. Bek argues that wellbeing is not an escape but a way of living in one’s own body with awareness, and his work draws on long practice, the study of human behaviour and research partnerships with institutions including EPFL and the University of Geneva.
The centre gives that philosophy form. The design is clear and minimal but never cold; the technology is present but never intrusive; the spirituality is serious but never remote. Few places hold depth, beauty and invention in such even balance.
The calm it leaves behind is lucid rather than sleepy, the kind that wakes a person up. Back on the streets of Geneva, the city seems to move at a different speed, its quiet hum suddenly audible. ALL HERE is a glimpse of where wellbeing may be heading, a place where silence, science and beauty agree on one instruction: be here.
Details: ALL HERE, Clos Belmont 12, 1208 Geneva, Switzerland. Sessions at the All Here Meditation Lounge can be booked online. allhere.org
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER. REPORTING BY LUIZA RODAS.
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