Stillness is a deep breath. The air comes into my body and fills my chest. The oxygen awakens my senses and quiets my mind, inviting me to pay deeper attention to the physical sensations and let go of the thoughts grasping for airtime. The weight of the day lifts, freeing me from the tension I hold, allowing my body to release the shape it has formed around. Stillness invites me to be firm and flexible, not confined to a single shape but not entirely without form. Stillness invites me to hold it all loosely.
Stillness is a mountain, rising over a forest and reflecting itself in the lake below. Stillness is the air, crisp and clean, open and vast, yet not overwhelming.
Stillness invites thought and the absence of thought. It holds everything together, making space for anything to happen, and also for no thing to happen.
Stillness can be scary - alone with my thoughts, alone with myself. And yet, to sink into stillness is the surest, fastest, and cleanest way we can crack ourselves open.
When my mind and my life and my emotional landscape get too busy, I know that stillness is always there, waiting for me, ready to help bring me back to myself, to my center. Whether I will seek that stillness out, whether I will let it find me… that is the question.
Today my answer was yes. Today stillness found me on a lake, and up a mountain, and in the breath that I let myself notice.