Finding Stillness: The Most Powerful Thing Yoga Has Taught Me

You know what strikes me as slightly ironic?

I spend my days teaching yoga as a form of movement, but the longer I teach, the more I realize that the most powerful thing I offer isn’t movement at all—it’s stillness.

This insight didn’t come easily to me. My natural tendency is to live two steps ahead of myself, always planning the next thing, rushing to the next moment. My mind races constantly, and my body follows suit. Even when I’m teaching yoga, I sometimes catch myself racing ahead to the next pose, the next sequence, the next class. That racing mind, that future focus – it doesn’t just magically disappear because I teach yoga.

But what yoga has taught me is how to notice when I’m getting ahead of myself, how to catch those moments and choose to come back to now.

It started subtly. A moment of pure presence in a forward fold. The space between movements where everything felt just right. The sweet stillness at the end of practice where, for once, my racing thoughts settled into quiet.

These moments taught me something profound: while movement brings us many gifts, it’s in the pauses—the moments of stillness—where the real magic happens. It’s where we finally hear what our body is trying to tell us. Where we notice the tension we’ve been carrying. Where we reconnect with ourselves.

I know, I know. Stillness isn’t exactly the most exciting thing to talk about. It doesn’t make for flashy social media posts or dramatic before-and-after photos.

But here’s the thing: it might just be the most important skill we can develop in our modern world.

Think about it. When was the last time you truly paused? Not just stopped moving, but really settled into stillness?

Even in our moments of “rest,” we’re usually still doing something – scrolling through social media, watching Netflix, planning tomorrow’s tasks. We’ve forgotten how to simply sit with ourselves, to be present without distraction. In our constantly moving, always-connected world, true stillness has become a rare commodity. Yet it’s exactly what our nervous systems are craving.

This becomes especially apparent during the holiday season, when the world seems to speed up around us. The to-do lists grow longer, the social calendar fills up, and suddenly we’re rushing from one thing to the next, barely taking a breath in between.

But what if we could find little pockets of stillness even in the midst of all this movement? What if we could learn to pause between the doing, to find moments of quiet even on the busiest days?

This is what yoga has taught me: that stillness isn’t just the absence of movement—it’s a practice all its own.

Stillness isn’t just the absence of movement—it’s a practice all its own.

Mikah Horn

It’s in these moments of stillness that we:

• Finally hear our body’s whispers before they become shouts
• Notice where we’re holding tension
• Connect with our breath
• Remember who we are beneath all the doing
• Find our center again

I weave these moments of stillness throughout class intentionally, each pause an invitation to sink deeper into awareness of ourselves. Because this kind of body awareness isn’t just about knowing where our arms and legs are in space – it’s about developing a deeper relationship with ourselves.

Sometimes students tell me they’re “bad at being still.” I see it in class during Savasana – the fidgeting, the restlessness, the struggle to simply lie there and breathe.

But here’s what I always share with my students: if stillness feels uncomfortable, if Savasana feels like the hardest pose of all – that’s exactly why you need it the most. That resistance is telling us something important about our relationship with ourselves.

Through stillness, we learn our body’s language. We begin to notice the subtle signals it sends when something needs attention. We discover the difference between productive effort and unnecessary tension. We tap into the wisdom our body holds about what we truly need. We finally hear those messages we might have been too busy to receive.

The beautiful thing about stillness is that it doesn’t require any special equipment or a huge time commitment. It can be as simple as taking three conscious breaths before starting your car, feeling your feet on the ground while waiting in line, or pausing to really feel the warm water on your hands while washing dishes. Even taking a moment to settle before beginning your yoga practice creates a tiny pocket of stillness in your day.

As we move into this holiday season, I invite you to experiment with finding these moments of stillness. They don’t have to be long. They don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be real.

Because in the end, the most profound changes often come not from adding more movement to our lives, but from learning to be still enough to hear our own wisdom.