Stillness and movement are relative. For example, in sitting meditation, we keep the body relatively still. This means we don’t intentionally move the limbs or adjust our posture once we’re settled. However, inside this stillness, there are many layers of movement. The diaphragm is moving up and down. The breath is moving in and out. The heart is pumping. The blood is moving through the vessels. The idea is to allow the inborn rhythms of movement to happen naturally by releasing tension and softening within. Through the structure of relative stillness, we become more aware of elements of movement that we might not otherwise experience.
There are ever-deepening layers of subtlety to this process; all the way down to our ability to feel the pulsation of Universal Life vibrating within, animating our bodymind.
On the other hand, during exercises that involve movement of the limbs, we can notice a sense of stillness inside motion. It is through the open quality of pure awareness that we have this sense. In walking, for example, we can have the feeling of stillness behind motion. The body moves, but there is something still about the whole dynamic, as if the Center remains unmoving and the four limbs coordinate around this stillness.
There are ever-deepening layers of subtlety to this process as well. As our practice of somatic presence evolves, we may begin to sense that the entire motion of the bodymind happens inside an open field of stillness. We conventionally say that the mind is inside the body. Yet, at a certain point, we come to experience that, in fact, the body is inside the mind.
This mind is not the rational thinking apparatus inside the cranium. It is the borderless spaciousness containing everything that appears. As we come to recognize this location-less "I" we feel "everything moves in me."
This is what I call the Clearbright; the undivided boundless ground of Being.
Through our practices of movement and stillness, we cultivate the sensitivity needed to become familiar with this original clear bright nature of our own being which is Universal Nature itself.
Stillness in Motion