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What Is True Stillness?
And How Do You Live It?
Khalisa
November 14, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
She’s Your Fitrah Series Recap:
Week 1 — We asked big duas, determined where our starting point is, and where we truly want to be. Week 5 — We looked at how Allah ﷻ defines success Week 6 — We talked about living in the end and embodying the woman you’re praying to become before your duas arrive. |
Remember to stay in order and continue to apply the lessons from the previous weeks. |
This week we’re talking about stillness. What it is and how to live it.
﷽
Lately I’ve been asking myself: what is stillness, really?
This came after realizing that Allah ﷻ has been calling me to rest more. To relax. To honor my body in ways I didn’t know I was neglecting. That what I’m working for doesn’t have to be hard.
I thought I was living in stillness, but what I was practicing was a mental kind of stillness. Quiet, but still subtly controlling.
My body, it turned out, hadn’t yet learned to trust Allah ﷻ.
Mental Stillness vs. True Stillness
Mental stillness closes the world out.
Like when you meditate and focus only on your breath.
Or in salah when you try to block out the world and keep your mind only on Allah ﷻ.
These practices narrow your attention. They are essential, but true stillness in its fullest sense includes.
It includes your body.
Your breath.
Your emotions.
Your senses.
Your environment.
And your awareness of Allah ﷻ in all of it.
Stillness is not escaping your life. It is being fully present inside it.
It invites your life in to be experienced fully, bringing you into awareness of where you are, who you are, what you feel, and Who is holding you in every moment.
Stillness is the ability to listen to your life with your entire being. To be quiet enough that your life can speak to you, showing you what it needs more or less of. To be unoccupied enough to finally hear the signs Allah ﷻ placed within you, not just around you.
“We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth.”
Attention as Devotion
Your attention is a form of devotion.
Whatever occupies your attention shapes your reality and identity.
“Whoever makes the Hereafter his main concern, Allah will place richness in his heart, organize his affairs, and the world will come to him though he dislikes it.”
Stillness is giving your attention back to the One who deserves it.
And to do that, you need space.
And in that space there is sometimes boredom.
But boredom is a portal.
A doorway for the inner and outer world to connect.
The mind cannot connect dots when it is too busy collecting them.
People often consume endlessly yet rarely from their own lives.
Creativity, insight, and clarity come to those who are spacious enough to receive them.
True stillness is relaxing into life and loving today as it is, instead of obsessing over what it should be.
Not every day will be perfect or run smoothly. Stillness meets these days with patience and most importantly, acceptance. Acceptance of what is. Of what Allah ﷻ has chosen in any given moment.
It is gratitude, presence, abundance, and alignment.
It is detaching from outcomes and hardship.
It is attaching your heart only to Allah ﷻ and what He loves.
Stillness is enjoying the journey because the eternal reward is so perfect that it compensates for any hardship now.
It is letting yourself be surprised by what Al-Wakeel ﷻ is preparing for you.
It is believing in the unseen good.
It is stepping into this moment without needing to micromanage it.
“And whoever relies upon Allah, then He is sufficient for him.”
So… How Do You Get Stillness?
You cannot command your body to “be still” if it has never felt safe.
You cannot think your body into calmness.
The body must be retrained.
Shown, not told.
This is the essence of embodied tawakkul:
Behaving as someone who feels safe with Allah ﷻ even before you fully feel it.
Even if your environment is stressful.
Even if life feels unstable.
Even if your heart is still catching up.
Your nervous system also makes du’a.
Through the way you breathe, walk, eat, rest, and move.
Teach your body that it is safe to slow down by slowing down:
Walk slower
Eat slower
Chew fully
Sip water instead of gulping
Let your shoulders drop
Breathe deeper
Ease into the moment
Talk less
Eat well and take supplements for any deficiencies
Move your body and take walks without using your phone
Feel the emotions
Handwrite your notes and thoughts
Curate and declutter your space for comfort and peace in whatever ways you can
Rest
Schedule space in your schedule
Sleep well and take power naps
Get outside around trees
Each gentle action tells your body:
“We are not in danger. Allah ﷻ is taking care of us.”
This is how the body learns to trust what the heart and mind already know.
Slowness is not laziness. It does not mean a lack of ambition.
Slowness is safety.
It is steady, meaningful steps instead of frantic, inconsistent spurts.
True stillness teaches you how to truly rest. It is intentionality.
“Man was created of haste.”
Listening to the Body
Your body communicates in sensations:
Tight chest
Shaky hands
Knots in your stomach
Restlessness
Pressure
Do not dismiss them.
Do not suppress them.
These are ayat within you.
Signs from Allah ﷻ showing you what needs attention, softening, rectifying, and surrender.
Meet the sensation with curiosity, not force.
Your body has endured trauma too. It just needs help knowing it is safe despite what it has known or what it is currently experiencing.
Your body is not a shell you transcend on the path to Allah ﷻ.
Your body is part of your worship, your submission, your knowing.
It is through the body that you:
Fast in Ramadan
Cry in sujood
Raise your hands in du’a
Perform hajj and hijrah
Stillness honors the body as an active witness of Allah ﷻ.
Keeping Stillness Once You Have It
Stillness must be maintained. Some ways include:
1. Keeping the promises you make to yourself
Self-trust creates internal safety.
Internal safety supports embodied tawakkul.
2. Keeping Allah’s commands
Obedience is alignment.
Alignment leads directly to tranquility.
His commands are not restrictions.
They are protection for your heart and a lightening of your burdens.
“Allah intends to lighten your burden, for humankind was created weak.”
Protecting Your Stillness from Distractions
Distraction is anything that pulls your mind, body, or soul away from its priority.
When you intend everything to be worship, you stay in remembrance of Allah ﷻ even in seemingly unrelated things.
Happiness is not adding more pleasure; it is removing what drains you.
Stillness is preserved by subtracting what is unserving.
Time and death are the deepest teachers.
“When will the human being finally be still?
He will never be still until he knows that the only moment he truly has is the one he is in.”
“Time is like a sword. If you do not cut with it, it will cut you.”
Stillness is using time consciously rather than being consumed by it.
Remembering death doesn’t have to be morbid.
It is a mercy.
It reorients the heart to what matters.
It softens your grip on dunya.
It reminds you that life is short and the moment you’re in is all you have.
Stillness is remembering that this world is temporary and your soul is returning to Allah ﷻ whether you like it or not. Whether you’re ready or not.
True stillness is active listening to what most people consider silence.
It is presence.
It is knowing Allah ﷻ in the quiet details of your day.
It is the mind, body, and heart living in the same moment and trusting the same Lord.
May Allah ﷻ make us women of presence, of awareness, women who live in the now with hearts anchored in the Next.
Ameen.
Next week, in sha Allah ﷻ, we’ll close this series with practical tips on how to remain steadfast and support the changes we’re making within ourselves so we can stay consistent and anchored in them.
Assalamu alaikum, enjoy your week,
With love and dua,
—Khalisa
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