Emina Halimovic 12/13/25 Emina Halimovic 12/13/25

A Conversation With Being

I really enjoy solitude. Not as a retreat from life, but as a return to myself.

I enjoy being with my thoughts, noticing the kinds of thoughts that arrive, and sensing the vibrational frequencies they carry. I can feel where I am operating from, or receiving from, without needing to analyze it. There is something deeply fascinating about that awareness. And there is a quiet happiness that comes with it.

Because of this, I often make it my intention to remove myself from noise. And when I cannot remove myself physically, I find my center anyway. In chaotic environments, I release the need for anything external to validate a good feeling. I stop looking outward for an experience to witness joy, and instead allow the feeling to arise from within me. This has taught me that my center is always accessible.

I look forward to moments when I can spend time with myself. Moments where I am learning myself rather than improving myself. Moments where connection is vibrational rather than verbal. It is an amazing place to be, inside yourself.

Being outside deepens this experience for me. Especially on days when the temperature feels just right. Not overbearingly hot, not piercingly cold. It feels like the beginning of fall, with a gentle coolness in the air, even though it is technically winter in Pensacola.

I am sitting outside as I write this. I can feel the sun on my skin, gentle but present. I love daylight. I love what it awakens in me.

In front of me are trees dressed in yellow, brown, and amber, with hints of red woven through softer creams and greens. Palm trees stand among them, grounding the scene in contrast. It feels layered and alive.

There are birds gathered in one of the trees. A whole flock, taking up space together. They are singing. I do not know exactly what they are communicating to one another, but I know that they are. Their sound reaches me, and I receive it.

I love the idea that I am being influenced by their being in my experience. Energetically, vibrationally. Not because I am trying to interpret them, but because I am allowing myself to be affected by their presence.

As I watch them, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Gratitude that they are here. Gratitude that they are so beautiful. Gratitude that they are untouchable by my human hands, free in their expression, and generous in their existence. I feel joy simply witnessing them.

Every so often, they rise together and fly over me. As they move through the sky, they create patterns, images, and fleeting tapestries that exist only for that moment. I find myself making wishes as they pass. Sending them outward, into the birds, into the universe, without attachment.

There is a knowing in me that this experience was given to me. That witnessing them is already part of the gift. And in that knowing, I feel a quiet trust that whatever I wish for, with awareness and sincerity, is already on its way.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Not only for seeing this with my eyes, but for being part of an energetic exchange I do not need to fully understand. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I am in communion with what is around me.

Inside myself, I begin to pray. Not in words, but in feeling. Please let this continue. Please let the sky stay light a little longer. Let me keep admiring this vibrancy of aliveness before darkness returns.

There is something exhilarating about this awareness. Something sacred in noticing how alive everything is, and how briefly it appears in this exact form. It makes me think about the universe, about timing, about grace, about how little is required to feel deeply fulfilled.

Perhaps you have known a moment like this too. A pause where nothing needed to be fixed or understood. Where you did not need to arrive anywhere else to feel complete.

If so, maybe this is simply a reminder. That this place still exists. That you can return to it. That it has been within you longer than you remember.

In moments like this, I remember that joy does not need to be loud. Connection does not need to be complicated. And meaning does not need to be imposed.

Sometimes, it simply arrives. And we are here to witness it.

#MindfulPresence, #Solitude, #NatureMeditation

Emina Halimovic 7/25/25 Emina Halimovic 7/25/25

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

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.