Inner Stillness
Many spiritual cultures agree inner stillness creates an energetic environment for supporting our advancing consciousness that can unleash the transformational power of our love.
HeartMath tools and coherence technologies have been designed to monitor and facilitate easier access to stillness and its connection to the natural inner wisdom and guidance of our heart.
A coherent alignment between our spiritual heart, mind and emotions can lead to a new way of perceiving, thinking and relating. When practicing heart coherence, we experience a distinct quieting of the inner noise generated by the normal stream of unregulated mental and emotional activity. When you’re in a still coherent state, your nervous system is more aligned, your hormonal and immune systems are getting rebalanced, and your mind and emotions are connecting with more of your spirit’s practical guidance.
How to Achieve Inner Stillness
Achieving inner stillness requires a little practice because our mind will try to occupy any available space. Think of inner stillness as something practical and street-worthy. How many times have we told children or others to get still inside and listen up because we have something important to tell them? This is because we instinctively know that stillness plays a part in the quality and depth of most people’s hearing ability. So, why not use stillness in the way it can count the most—to quiet our mental and emotional static so that we can sense the counsel and wisdom from our heart.
When our mind finally relaxes in meditation, inner stillness is where we land. From there, we can reset and upgrade our life experience. As we learn the value of inner stillness, this reduces life’s more challenging ways of nudging us towards listening to our heart’s suggestions.
It’s a highly effective energy-saving choice to schedule times for practicing inner stillness and allow our heart, mind, and emotions to experience a relaxed time-out from competing with each other over which decides the choices and decisions we make. Stillness softens our determined mental and emotional energetics so that our heart-speak can be heard.
Exercise: Stillness
Step 1. As you breathe quietly, imagine your breath calmly slowing down the vibration of your mental and emotional energy. Stay with it, and don’t care if your mind disrupts you. This will improve with patience and practice.
Step 2. As you feel your energy calming, softly radiate love and peace into your inner environment. This connects you with your heart energy.
Step 3. While maintaining your state of calmness, ask your heart for guidance, solutions, or deeper understanding regarding life issues you are experiencing.
Step 4. Imagine stillness as a peaceful place in which you are sitting. If thoughts do come up, don’t push against them. Casually refocus on breathing love and peace into the stillness. Our higher choices become more obvious as we increase our capacity to listen in stillness to our heart’s intelligent directions through day-to-day challenges or creative initiatives.
Practical Applications of Stillness
- Start your day by doing the Stillness Exercise, along with the commitment to breathe an attitude of inner stillness, when convenient, throughout the day. It’s a soft place inside that is sensitive to your intuitive nudges.
- As you proceed through the day, stillness helps to prevent the mind’s impatience and distractions from overriding your choices for the best outcomes.
- Practicing inner stillness helps you to create the straightest line toward the manifestation of your intentions.
- Practicing inner stillness to connect with our heart’s care and guidance can become a most positive step forward for humanity, not as a trend or religious motivation but as a practical street sense, heart-based way of life.
To get benefits out of these stillness practices, you don’t have to totally stop the mind – even reducing thoughts and calming yourself improves your capacity to sense your heart feelings and suggestions. In a short amount of time, the power to quieten your mind will increase. You’ll also find your stress will reduce at a surprising pace with a little practice.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in September 2017 and has been completely revamped and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
We would love to hear about your experiences with inner stillness.
Written by Sara Childre, Pres. of HeartMath Institute and Doc Childre, HeartMath Founder.