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Sometimes stillness doesn’t begin in silence.
I have always been drawn to self-development and spirituality. I’ve read many of the books. I feel the energy in rooms, in people, in spaces—that part has always come naturally to me.
But meditation? That’s where I’ve always struggled.
We all know it’s beneficial.
The science is clear, the teachers are wise, and the apps and guided meditations are endless. And yet every time I sat down to meditate, something in me resisted completely—like a child being punished to sit still in class.
My mind didn’t slow down.
It accelerated.
It panicked.
Millions of thoughts, tasks, ideas, conversations—all arriving at once, the very moment I asked them to leave. It felt as if I wasn’t moving toward stillness at all, but straight into panic mode.
How are we supposed to find stillness when our minds are already running at full speed? How do we sit quietly when the quiet itself feels further away with every minute we try?
I managed it sometimes in shavasana (the resting pose at the end of a yoga class), that brief surrender when the body finally gives in. But half an hour of sitting meditation? An hour during the ordinary day?
It felt impossible.
And for a long time I wondered if something was wrong with me.
Then I started asking a different question. What actually is meditation? Is it leaving the body for a moment and connecting to something higher? A feeling of lightness? Or is it simply—stillness? However we arrive there?
Because little did I know, I had been arriving there all along.
Every time I picked up my camera and went outside, something shifted. Not immediately—but within minutes of walking, my mind would begin to quiet. Not because I forced it to. But because I started to notice the beauty around me.
Walking alone is already a kind of meditation—especially when we go out without a task or agenda. Just being outdoors, even in a city, and moving with no destination. The freedom of that is something we rarely give ourselves, and yet it can feel so liberating.
Mindful photography taught me to walk like this. To go outside with no goal except to notice whatever catches my eye. A woman in a colourful outfit on a busy street. A beautiful lush garden hidden between the buildings. The colours of the sea under the morning sunlight. Two best friends meeting for a catch up, smiling and sharing stories.
I remember one evening on a beach in Thailand, standing in front of one of those sunsets that makes everything else go quiet. The sky was not just changing colour—it felt as if the earth was painting for us. Sometimes purple, sometimes orange, sometimes so bright it looked as if the sky was on fire.
I noticed the colour first.
Then the warmth.
Then came that moment when the body stops trying and simply receives what is in front of it, because it is too beautiful to miss.
In that moment of complete presence, I lifted my camera, and for a few minutes there was nothing to solve, nothing to plan, nothing to become better at. My breath slowly returned to me. My body relaxed. I felt filled with joy, with nowhere else to be but inside that moment.
I wasn’t trying to capture the sunset perfectly. I was trying to capture what it felt like to stand there. The warmth. The feeling. The quiet silence of being held by the last light of the day.
My whole body softened while I watched that last half hour of the day unfold. And I remember thinking how beautiful it was that tomorrow there would be another sunset. Another painting. Another invitation. The question was only whether we would pause long enough to receive it.
Looking back, I think that is what mindful photography has always given me. Before I press the shutter, I have to pause. I notice what has called to me. I choose what to frame. And in that small act of seeing and creativity, I come back to myself.
And somewhere in that unhurried looking, I found what I had been searching for on the cushion. Stillness.
Not the kind that comes from sitting still—but the kind that comes from not searching for anything in particular. From letting the world show itself to us, one small detail at a time.
Maybe that is what presence really is. Not the absence of movement or thought, but a moment of genuine attention—when we stop rushing past our own lives and actually see what is right in front of us.
We don’t all find our way to stillness through the same door.
Some of us arrive through breath, through silence, through sitting. Others need movement first—walking, looking, noticing. A camera in a pocket and 15 minutes with no agenda.
If we have ever felt that something was wrong with us because we couldn’t sit still and meditate—maybe nothing is wrong at all. Maybe stillness is simply asking to meet us through another door.
For me, it still begins the same way. I close the laptop. I pick up my camera. I go outside.
And I stop searching.
~
author: Maja Kerin
Image: Author's Own
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Molly Murphy
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