Practice note · 14 October 2026
Stillness: why not moving is most of the work
From the second day of the course the instruction is blunt: do not move any part of the body while meditating. Keep one hundred per cent stillness. There is one exception, and it is not discomfort.
On Day 2 the discipline for a sitting is set out as a short list, and it does not change for the rest of the course.
- Wake early; the morning sitting belongs to the morning.
- Leave three to four hours after a meal before you sit.
- For a beginner, half-lotus or a chair is fine.
- Keep the back straight throughout.
- Do not move any part of the body. Remain completely still. This is the part that decides whether the practice moves forward.
- In the early stages, set a limit: fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen in the evening.
Only one of those six is about the mind. The rest is the frame the mind is held in, and stillness is the frame's main beam.
In the guided sittings of the later weeks the instruction is repeated with its single exception. When drowsiness or dullness comes, the body begins to slump. That is the one case in which you may move and straighten up — and even then, not too often.
Notice what is not on that list. An itch is not on it. A leg beginning to ache is not on it. Boredom is not on it. Those are precisely the things the sitting is for.
Every small adjustment is an answer to an unpleasant sensation. The knee complains, the hand moves, and the complaint stops. Nothing dramatic has happened, except that the mind has just been taught once more that discomfort is something to be removed at once.
Sit still and the same sensation is simply watched. It rises, it stays for a while, it changes, and often it goes on its own. That is where equanimity is actually trained — not in thinking about equanimity, but in the ten seconds after the urge to shift appears and is not obeyed.
Stillness is not only a matter of the body. In the sittings the breath itself is taken the same way. If the breathing is fast and strong, accept it: the breathing is quick, and you watch to see how long that lasts. If it is slow and quiet, accept that in the same manner. Nothing is corrected.
Practised this way, over weeks, it becomes a kind of unshakeability that does not depend on conditions being pleasant.
Stillness is not built by heroics. My own progression, written down for the later parts of the course, ran in this order, and each step took as long as it took:
- Concentration first, on the breath alone.
- Stillness held for the whole of a short sitting.
- The back kept straight for the whole of it.
- Coarse, painful sensation stayed with rather than escaped.
- An hour in half-lotus with all of the above.
- Longer sittings, once the shorter ones are genuinely steady.
The order matters more than the speed. One hundred per cent stillness for fifteen minutes is worth far more than a restless hour, and it is what makes the hour possible later.
There is a difference between the ache of an unaccustomed posture and pain that is telling you something. Sharp pain, numbness that does not pass, an old injury waking up: change the posture, or use a chair, or stop. The instruction to keep still is about not obeying every small aversion, not about pushing through damage.
The same applies if long sittings bring up strong emotion. Shorten the sitting, keep the twice-daily rhythm, and read the safety page before you extend anything.
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