Some days, stillness feels like surrender. Some days, it feels like survival. This piece is for anyone who has ever sat inside their own hush, fighting the impulse to run, daring to trust the quiet more than the noise. May it remind you that stillness is sometimes the bravest pose of all.

I’m angry at myself.

Let that be clear before I call any of this sacred.

I am angry because I have everything I need at my fullest disposal to move.

Three homes I could run to if these walls close in too tight.

A car that works fine. Gas in the tank to drive me to any place I desire.

The ocean at my feet, minutes away, free and wide, able to swallow every stale thought I keep dragging back up.

And yet here I am.

Sitting in this same room, scrolling my life away, comparing myself to people I don’t even respect, swallowing highlight reels I know are half-true at best, poison at worst.

I know better. I know the photos aren’t the full story. I know my sister’s smiling road trips and wedding glows are stitched over private silences and separate beds and words unsaid.

I know the women flexing bodies and babies and big diamond rings feel the same hush I do when they turn the screen off.

And yet here I am. Jealous anyway. Bitter anyway. Restless anyway.

Part of me says, Get up. Go to the ocean. Run to one of those other houses. Pack a bag and visit a new place. Be wild. Be free.

But the truth is, I won’t. I won’t move. I’m paralyzed within myself.

Because there is another part of me, older, quieter, that knows for all my hunger for more, I haven’t yet lived anything that shows me out there is better than the hush I’m holding in here.

I keep myself still like this on purpose, though it looks like failure from the outside.

I know what I could do.

I know what I could have.

If I wanted a partner, a marriage, a family to pose beside, I could bend myself into it.

But I won’t.

I’ve watched too many shadows dance behind pretty doors. I won’t braid my light into someone else’s unclaimed darkness just to say I have company. I won’t fix holes in other people’s hearts when they won’t lift a needle for themselves.

I won’t spend precious life force energy on illusions.

So here I am.

Restless in my room. Pissed at my stillness. Annoyed at my scrolling. Angry at my envy.

And beneath the fight there is a harder deeper honesty:

I choose this hush.

I choose this stillness.

I choose this emptiness because even my emptiness has been kinder and safer than the half-promises I’ve lived before.

It costs me closeness. It costs me stories to tell at dinner tables.

It costs me warmth some nights when my bones ache for another body.

But the hush has never lied to me.

The hush does not break what it can’t fix.

This is my pose.

This is my warrior.

I am the prisoner and the jailer.

I am the key and the locked door.

I stretch my anger like a muscle.

I hold my bitterness like breath.

I burn my envy down until it’s just ash on my tongue.

And when I am spent, when the poses are done, I lie down flat in the middle of my own hush.

I see it now for what it is, my Shavasana.

I watch my students fight it every time.

They sweat and shake and open and break but when it is time to rest, they squirm. They peek at the clock. They would rather skip it.

But the medicine is there. In the final pose.

Where the practice seeps into the marrow. Where the body integrates the fire it just survived. Where the mind is forced to face itself, still and naked and whole.

So maybe I am not stuck at all.

Maybe I am in the final pose before the next beginning.

Maybe God is saying, Lie here. Breathe here. Do not move until the blueprint comes.

Maybe I am building a vibration inside myself so true I refuse to stand up for anything less than its match.

Maybe my hush is my discipline. My solitude, my proof that I trust my becoming more than I trust my longing.

So let me envy. Let me scroll. Let me watch the fake sunshine. Let me rage and compare and then come back to this room that holds me like no lover ever has.

This is the final pose.

This is the stillness that says not yet.

This is the cage I built to be free in.

This is my Shavasana.

And then the hush speaks.

You are here because you are not done listening.

You are here because the hush asked for your company and you said yes.

You are here because every attempt to run is only half of you fleeing.

You are here because you are not meant to pack your bags and scatter your power across empty maps.

You are here because I am still feeding you something holy you do not yet see.

You are here because this is the final pose.

You are here because this silence is your training ground.

You are here because if you left now, you would only circle back to find yourself here again.

You are here because I asked you to stay.

You are here because your fight is the fire that tempers your stillness into diamond.

You are here because your longing sharpens your faith.

You are here because your hush is not emptiness but instruction.

Lie here. Breathe here.

When it is time to rise, the hush will speak again.

It will say Now.

It will say Open.

It will say Go.

But not before it finishes its blessing.

Rest now, restless one.

Hold your pose.

The hush is your fiercest promise.

When you rise, the world will rise to meet you.

Until then, let your stillness be enough.

Until then, let your hush be holy.

Until then, let your burning be your devotion.

Until then, lie down inside your becoming.

Until then, trust the hush that holds you.

Until then, trust the hush that births you.

When you stand, it will be because the hush says Yes. And when I stand, I will carry this hush inside my ribs like breath, proof that God and I were never separate, that when I move, it’s because we move together.

If this hush finds you too, stay. Lie here. Breathe here.

The War Before the Hush: God, I Don’t Know Why I’m Still Sitting Here