The body as a living memory
At the beginning of this year I made a quiet commitment to myself, a simple intention to try a little harder to stay present in my actions, and although it sounded almost insignificant at first, that effort opened a door I had been avoiding for years, because the moment I slowed down enough to feel my body I began to notice sensations that had been stored there waiting to be acknowledged, subtle signals that something inside me was not functioning in harmony, and recognizing this became a turning point in my inner landscape.
Modern somatic neuroscience shows that the body does not merely respond to the mind but co-creates our emotional states through a continuous bidirectional loop, where experiences that were never fully processed remain imprinted as automatic physical patterns, and when we begin to pay attention, these memories rise to the surface asking to be sensed, integrated and released. Understanding this allowed me to relate to myself from a softer space, realizing that I was not broken but disconnected from the messages that my own physiology had been trying to send me.
The habit of hurry
I realized I was moving through life in a state of constant urgency, as if I were always trying to reach a place that did not truly exist, rushing from one action to the next, eating quickly, walking quickly, even breathing quickly, my body functioning like a metronome permanently set to a fast tempo.
Research in neuroscience describes this state as a form of low-level alarm, a subtle but persistent activation of the nervous system that tricks us into believing that everything must be done faster, raising cortisol and blurring our ability to inhabit the present moment, and recognizing this helped me understand that the problem was not my incapacity for calm but the speed I had been trained to survive with.
And even though life inevitably imposes responsibilities, schedules and its own relentless rhythm, there is always a small opening where we can introduce a gesture of softness, a moment in which the nervous system remembers how to slow down, and from that small beginning something much larger can unfold.
The ritual of the ordinary as a doorway
For years I ate standing up, absent-minded, treating nourishment like a task to complete rather than an experience to inhabit, but one day I chose to do it differently, preparing my meal with intention, sitting down, breathing and bringing my attention into the simple act of eating. My mind reacted with agitation at first, unable to tolerate the stillness; thoughts from the future and remnants of the past arrived with force, but I answered them gently: “Not now, thank you.”
It was not easy. My habitual state was acceleration, the result of a lifetime of moving quickly, and like a river that has been turbulent for too long, I needed time to remember how to flow more quietly. Yet slowly, small intervals of clarity began to appear, moments illuminated by a light that felt different, the subtle brightness of presence, a place where I was no longer bound to the past or the future, and from there I understood that we can rewrite ourselves without erasing anything, simply by choosing to inhabit this moment fully.
This is where true transformation unfolds: not in dramatic shifts but in the accumulation of small, intentional gestures that teach the body it no longer needs to run, that life is not reached through speed but through the attentive awareness that softens everything it touches.
Rumi
“When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’
doesn’t make any sense.
There is a quiet knowing beneath all things,
a presence that asks nothing
and gives everything.”