How You Sit Still Reflects How You Live Life

Life doesn’t leave much room to be still.

Between career demands, family obligations, financial worries, and the noise of social media and everything around us, our days often feel overpacked and overstimulated. Stillness, real stillness, becomes a luxury. Not because we don’t need it, but because we convince ourselves we can’t afford it.

A few mornings ago, while out on a run, a thought crossed my mind: the way we sit still might say a lot about how we live our lives.

It’s not just about posture or breath. It’s about whether we can stay with ourselves, without reaching for the next distraction. For many of us, even ten minutes of stillness feels impossible—not because the time doesn’t exist, but because of the deeply ingrained belief that time must always be used productively. We carry around these invisible checklists, ticking them off with urgency, measuring our days by output. And so, sitting still feels indulgent. Unproductive. Even wasteful.

But what if it’s the opposite?

Stillness doesn’t steal time, it creates space. It clears the mental clutter, slows the chaos just enough for our thoughts to settle, and allows us to approach the day with more clarity and less noise. As Chris Bailey briefly notes in his book Hyperfocus, even a few minutes of intentional stillness, whether in meditation, breathwork, or simply doing nothing, can give us the feeling of having more time. Not in a measurable sense, but in the way your attention sharpens and your inner world quiets down enough to hear what really matters.

That insight has stayed with me. Especially as I’ve noticed how rarely we give ourselves the chance to pause and how revealing it is when we do. Some of us fidget. Some avoid it entirely. Some find it deeply uncomfortable to just be.

This led me to reach out to two friends and yoga teachers whose practice and presence I deeply respect — Shyju Varkey from Simplifi Yoga and Aditi Uppal from Go Yoga by Aditi. Both have guided hundreds of students through stillness.

I asked them a few questions, not about poses or flexibility, but about what stillness reveals. About how we each come to the mat, or the cushion, or the chair, and confront the quiet.

Aditi, who runs Go Yoga by Aditi, talked about what happens when someone first begins to sit with stillness.

“One of the first shifts I’ve noticed is how quiet their demeanour becomes. Whether they’re talkative, anxious, or more reserved, there’s a noticeable stillness in their energy after practice. For a few minutes, they don’t want to engage, like they’re in a daydream.”

What struck me most was how she described the ripple effect. That stillness doesn’t just stay on the mat, it starts showing up in the smallest movements. In the way someone makes tea, or packs their bag, or just walks out the door. Everything slows down a little. Everything becomes just a little more intentional.

And over time, the need to constantly improve or perfect their asana fades. They stop chasing benchmarks. They begin to show up to practice not to win the pose, but to listen to the body. And oddly enough, that’s when progress actually happens.

Shyju from Simplifi Yoga sees stillness from another lens, one that’s not always so peaceful.

“The mind is filled with hundreds of thoughts,” he said. “It keeps flitting from one to another in an almost endless loop. You become aware of your helplessness in taming this flow. And this shows up in the body, little pains, twitches, sensations, until getting up and walking away seems like the best option.”

Stillness, in his view, holds up a mirror. And sometimes what it reflects isn’t all that pretty. It’s discomfort. Restlessness. The parts of us we try to drown out with movement or noise.

But it’s also honest. You sit long enough, and what’s inside surfaces — not to overwhelm you, but to show you what you’ve been carrying all along.

I asked Aditi what her stillness practice looks like on days when her mind feels unsettled.

She didn’t pretend it’s always easy. She said she uses movement first, yoga, running, stretching, to burn off the excess energy. Just enough to sit down without fidgeting. Not so much that she’s too tired to focus.

And when the mind won’t quiet down? She uses a simple grounding technique: Look around and name five things you can see. Then four things you can feel. Three things you can hear. Two things you can smell. One thing you can taste. Then sit.

It’s a reminder that stillness isn’t about forcing silence. Sometimes it’s just about returning to your senses, one at a time.

I also asked Shyju how chaotic days affect his ability to sit still. His response was refreshingly matter-of-fact.

“You don’t miss brushing your teeth, irrespective of how packed your morning is, do you? Stillness has to be conscious. I have 5–6 ‘ports of recharge’ during the day, where I sit still and observe my breathing rhythm, watching it slow down. These never take more than two minutes each.”

I loved that line, ports of recharge. There’s no pressure here to turn stillness into a 30-minute production. Just a couple of minutes, built into the flow of your day, like a mini reboot. Nothing fancy. Just you, your breath, and a bit of space.

I asked Shyju and Aditi how they would introduce meditation to someone who’s never tried it.

Aditi’s advice: keep it simple. Start with a few minutes. Count your breaths. Use a candle flame. Try writing the same line over and over. Whatever helps you stay with yourself without running away into your thoughts.

“There are as many ways to concentrate as there are personalities in the world,” she said. “But the goal is the same, to focus without forcing, and eventually let go of the focus to find that quiet space within.”

And when you do find it, it’s not that your thoughts disappear. They just stop being so loud. You stop clinging to them. You start watching them pass.

Shyju would do it slightly differently but offered something beautifully simple.

“A lovely practice is to close one’s eyes and observe sounds around them. In just a couple of minutes, you’ll be surprised at how many different types of sounds exist around us that we’re oblivious to. At an evolved stage of meditation, one might actually be able to trace a sort of cosmic orchestra. It’s beautiful.”

I ended by asking both Shyju and Aditi on what stillness teaches us in a world obsessed with motion.

Aditi said

“At its most basic, it helps us rest. But deeper still, it reconnects us with instinct, that quiet inner knowing we’ve forgotten how to trust. The one that exists beyond our conditioning, our achievements, our opinions.”

She used the metaphor of a clear piece of glass. Over time, we collect smudges, beliefs, comparisons, distractions, and we start seeing the world through them. Stillness, she said, helps clean that glass. It doesn’t erase who we are. It just lets us see more clearly. And maybe even feel a little more free.

Shyju’s answer came with a visual I couldn’t unsee:

“Think of driftwood being tossed around in the ocean. That is the ‘movement’ the world obsesses upon. It’s illusory. The driftwood is now at the mercy of waves and currents. External factors determine its path. What stillness does is drop anchor. It enables internal navigation. It gives direction.”

So yeah. Stillness isn’t just about slowing down.

It’s not easy. It might even be uncomfortable. But maybe that’s the point.

Because how we sit still just might say a lot about how we live our lives.