Mariela’s Sunday Thoughts: Stillness
I was once taking a yoga class in Singapore. It was a humid, heavy, hot evening. I had been walking all day, exploring the city and getting lost in its Botanical Gardens (literally lost - a tour of two hours had taken me six) and I was planning on finally seeing the water lights show at Marina Bay Sands after my class. It was an activity-packed day, full of new sights, sounds, flavors, and interactions.
I am the kind of traveler that wants to experience as much as possible. I can’t think of a time that I traveled somewhere just to rest and relax.
Back then, I was a brand new yoga teacher, and I thought I needed to keep experiencing asanas (poses) in order to gain experience and get “better” at it. So, naturally, I booked an advanced Ashtanga series class, and I thought that it was a good idea to go and take it after I had been walking for a solid ten hours in 90% humidity and over 100 degrees.
Singapore, at first glance, feels like a giant jungle that happens to have a city within. It’s impeccably clean, stunning, architecturally avant-garde, incredibly well designed and easy to navigate by foot or public transportation. It invites you to walk it, feel it, breath it, taste it, see it. Cosmopolitan meets nature in beautiful coexistence, and the deep green of the lush vegetation mitigates the exhausting heat. It was easy for me to get distracted by its beauty and not realize I hadn’t allowed time in my day to pause.
I arrived at the yoga studio. I wish I could remember the name, but all I can see when I try to picture it is its glass and wood doors, surrounded by thick plants and trees, a stone waterfall in its atrium, and the smily, friendly, welcoming front desk guy.
I walked in and was warmly greeted and offered a cool towel and a glass of mint water. I immediately felt it: this is it. This is my moment to pause.
He walked me to the changing rooms and showed me a locker I could use for my backpack. He closed the door behind him and I was left there, along with two other people speaking Malay. I waved, they said “hi”. I asked them if they were taking the Ashtanga class, they said they were sitting for the meditation that was about to start.
I asked them to tell me more about it.
I’ve never been a massive planner when it comes to traveling. I like leaning into the unexpected. I’m the type of person that arrives somewhere new and immediately goes out and starts walking around, without following a particular route. There are pros and cons to this: adventure, excitement, problem solving, surprises, friendships are usually a natural consequence to the unplanned trip. On the other hand, missing key sights, time frames, or activities that needed to be booked in advance is the price to pay. That’s how, for example, I managed to spend six months in India without seeing the Taj Mahal - but that’s a story for another time.
I had already paid for my Ashtanga class - it was in fact, the only thing I had booked in advance (aka that morning) for the day. But I ended up moving all day and I was craving stillness.
So I went back to the front desk and asked if I could take the meditation class instead.
They showed me where they kept the meditation cushions (perfect size, round, seed-stuffed, just like the ones I would end up selling at my own yoga studio eleven years later). I grabbed one, and headed to the meditation room.
And there it was: stillness, ready to be resisted, embraced, embodied, enjoyed.
I chose a spot near the back, by a window facing a gorgeous courtyard dressed in giant plants. The sunset light was filtering through. The only music was the sound of the water fountain. My changing room friends sat next to me and gave me a smile. The room quickly filled up with all the ones looking forward to pause, be still, and observe.
I don’t remember what kind of meditation we were guided through. It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that at that moment, I let go of expectations and embraced intuition-driven curiosity. I noticed I needed to pause, and I acted accordingly.
The class gave me the opportunity to be still, after a full day of movement. It gave my body and mind the break they needed in order to keep being present in this new environment.
Renewed and recentered, I headed to Marina Bay Sands just in time for its nightly light and water show. Thanks to the rest and stillness I decided to gift myself, I can still to this day replay the entire show in my head.
Our natural drive is to move. Our days are scheduled around movement: we commute, we run errands, we tidy up our spaces - we “do things” as part of our daily routines, usually leaving “rest” for when the “sleep” part of the day comes around. Being still is not the same as being sedentary. Stillness has purpose, it implies full awareness, it often results in observance. Stillness, when presented in the form of meditation (observance) can result in rest.
Stillness is the pause we all need, at any point in our days, to notice how we feel, what we need, and who we are. Stillness is that north star that recenters us amidst any level of what could be interpreted as “chaos”.
Stillness does not mean motionless. It implies a state of presence, a natural state of being. It is a path towards atman (our supreme self). It holds all the answers and, more importantly, it allows us to ask all the questions.
Who would have told me at that meditation class that eleven years later I would still choose stillness (versus reaction), and Grounded would materialize as a consequence?
On my way back to the hostel I, once again, got lost.
A simple journaling (or thought/meditation) prompt to connect with atman:
Morning: sit or stand in a quite space. Exhale through the mouth and practice three rounds of full yogic breath (in through nose, expand belly, ribs, and chest in that order. Hold for a few seconds. Out through nose flattening chest, rib, and belly in that order). Take note of three sensations, feelings, thoughts, or words that pop up in your mind or body.
Evening: in a quite space, grab the note you made in the morning, read it and mentally recapitulate your day, noticing if any of your actions were influenced by those thoughts.