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Following Varela and Shear (1999, p. 1) first-person events are “lived experience associated with cognitive and mental events” (italics in the original). In their further presentation, they unfold the following three arguments for the benefits of the first-person approach and for the fact that lived experience is irreducible and cannot be derived from the third–person perspective, that is, the objective, scientific and empirically based standpoint:

First, to accept experience as a domain to be explored is to accept the evidence that life and mind include that first-person dimension which is a trademark of our ongoing existence. To deprive our scientific examination of this phenomenal realm amounts to either amputating human life of its most intimate domains, or else denying science explanatory access to it. In both cases the move is unsatisfactory.

Second, subjective experience refers to the level of the user of one’s own cognitions, of intentions and doings, in everyday practices. … The practical dimension is what makes interaction with third-person accounts possible in the first place (and not an abstract armchair description so familiar in philosophy of mind). Third, experience in human practices is the privileged entry point for change meditated by profession interventions of all kind, such as education and learning, sports training and psychotherapy … (Varela & Shear 1999, p. 4).

The first-person perspective can be characterized by the following features:

1. The first-person perspective is an embodied perspective. That means: cognition is situated, concrete and bodily based. This understanding can be connected to the fact that cognitive scientists are gradually changing their ideas about cognition – away from the traditional understanding of the mind as a form of computation towards the notion where sensory-motor coordination plays a central role for cognition and where the “proper units of knowledge are primarily concrete, embodied, lived” (Depraz, Varela, & Vermersch 2003, p. 156; italics in the original). For this new understanding Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) introduced the phrase cognition as enaction. Levin (1985, p. 49) writes: “The body of feeling as we experience it, as we live it, integrates what objective thought would divide” (italics in the original).

2. Via immediate, sensuous experience and perceptually guidedness, the first-person perspective allows the individual to gain access to him/herself and the world, in a way that goes beyond representational and reflective knowledge. The first-person perspective is a comprehensive process based on an analogue mode of information processing; an analogue mode, which in a process of verbal communication has to be transformed into a digital and sequential mode – with all the barriers and hurdles which are involved in this transformation process (Stelter 2000).

3. Primarily, the first-person perspective only gives access to pre-reflective and implicit knowledge. In general, this lack of linguistic explicitness is the challenge regarding the accessibility of the embodied first-person knowledge. Historically, the experimental methods go back to introspection, first introduced into psychology by Wundt (1874) and lately further developed by Vermersch (1999), for example. During the 20th century, a number of other approaches to the study of phenomenal consciousness or of subjective experience arose (see an overview in Stevens 2000).

4. The sensual perspective also implies that first-person access has a direct relation to concrete or imaginative actions in a specific situation. Following the approach of Varela, Thomson and Rosch (1991), first-person access consists of perceptually guided and situated action: My body enacts the situation and constitutes my self as a part of the context long before I am aware and conscious of myself or the situation. The sensual attention is the first step towards creating a personal understanding evolving from the interplay between the self and one’s environment.

5. First-person access generates personal meaning. Meaning is based on the person’s interpretation and understanding of the concrete situation. The person perceives and creates his or her personal reality by having a relation to the world and by giving a specific meaning to the context – a meaning which arises out of previous experiences and personal history, and which evolves as the result of a concrete action of the person in relation to the specific environmental context. Meaning is created through involvement and action in world. In this concept of meaning, the lived body is the central point of reference (Merleau-Ponty 1962). By embodying the world around us or by interiorizing the environment, things become meaningful.

6. The first-person perspective is often oriented towards knowing-how (Ryle 1949). This means: I am involved in the situation; I am perceptually guided by the immediate flow of my action. I relate to the situation via my pre-reflective or practical intentionality. I do not think about rules for the execution of my action; things happen while doing. It is a spontaneous and non-discursive knowing – I just know how to proceed. My actions are part of my sensory-motor habits. I develop a situated and tacit knowledge which helps me through my daily routines, which helps me feel more self-secure in my everyday life, and which finally builds up an expertise in my occupational life, especially when I am working in fields like handicrafts, architecture, music, sports, surgery, or nursing.

7. For the establishment of a method for the investigation of the first-person perspective we have to introduce a mediator or facilitator who is eccentric to the lived and embodied first-person position. A person in this so-called second-person position “gives up explicitly his/her detachments to become identified with the kind of understanding and internal coherence of his source” (Varela & Shear 1999, p. 10). It is a role taken by, for example, a skilful interviewer, who helps the interviewee in the first-person position in the process of transforming lived experiences of the interviewee’s lifeworld into verbal descriptions. A person in the second-person position is a kind of coach or active listener who helps support the partner in the first-person position by helping to sharpen his/her awareness of the interplay between him- or herself and the situation (Stelter 2002, 2004, 2007). Varela and Shear (1999) emphasize that second-person mediation is not a position of scientific journals, but merely a position supporting the developmental and experiential process of a person in a first-person position. In that sense, the second-person position is a position of communicative interaction and practice. Finally, the first and second-person positions can be differentiated from the third-person position, which can be associated with the traditional position of scientific discourse. It is a position where the scientist takes an external standpoint towards an objective and distant observer who is not directly involved in the field of investigation. This third-person position does not exist in fields of practice such as teaching, training, supervision, mentoring, coaching or psychotherapy.

By providing knowledge about the first-person approach and its importance for human understanding, I do not want to emphasize spiritual self-realization through different body techniques. My intention is to integrate the first-person position with the second-person position, thereby opening up for a relational understanding in social contexts. In my understanding, the first-person position opens up for two dimensions: first, as a central starting point for first-hand accounts in the scientific process, and second, as an important communicative entrance to different developmental and learning-oriented processes, for example, in psychotherapy, coaching, training, or education. In that sense, first-person accounts give access to the world of narratives (Crossley 2000; Freeman 1998). Every narrative is based on personal experiences and first-person accounts, which are the basis for the interaction with others in a specific social and cultural setting. First-person accounts focus on situated action and express personal meaningfulness with these actions. In a community of practice (Wenger 1998), individual actions and personal accounts are coordinated and integrated in the actions and speech acts of all participants. In that sense, we can speak about a coordinated management of meaning (Pearce & Cronen 1980). In their book of the same title, Pearce and Cronen describe how people – through language and action – are able to build up their social world and their situated reality. The following quote expresses the fundamental difference between meaning and action: “The locus for meaning in communication is intrapersonal, but the locus of action is interpersonal” (Pearce & Cronen 1980, p. 148; italics in the original). Individuals act on the basis of their personal understanding of the situation and by using specific rules they are in a position to act adequately in relation to the contextual demands. Coordination focuses on ways of integrating our actions and of forming action patterns which are the basis for a fruitful cooperation in a group of originally independent individuals. Coherence can emerge through narratives formed and developed in a process of negotiation of the participants in the community of practice and as the integration of different first-person accounts or intrapersonal meanings in the process of situated actions.