Coming Home to Myself
I kneel on the floor. My breath fills the room and returns to me. Sunlight pours through the windows, thick as molten gold, illuminating leaves so alive I cannot tell where they end and I begin. Dust drifts slowly, suspended, moving through skin, through thoughts, through the pulse of my heart. The house holds a silence older than memory, and I fold into it, and it folds into me.
My knees press into the mat. My bare feet rest on cool tile. My palms come together at my chest, warm against each other, as if holding something fragile and alive. Something in me bows. My eyes close without intention. My breath slows. My body softens. This hour belongs entirely to me.
Before the emails. Before the phone lights up with notifications. Before patients arrive and my hands begin guiding someone else back into their body.
I used to say I was thirsty. I was hungry. I longed for a home I could not name. I reached for it in people, in cities, in constant motion. I interlaced myself with those who carried fragments of it, hoping to hold what was never mine. Sometimes it left me empty. Sometimes it broke me. I thought if I moved fast enough, if I reached far enough, I could finally catch up to it.
Once, stillness felt dangerous. If I stopped, everything might fall apart. Now, kneeling here, my nervous system settles like a stone slipping through water. My shoulders melt down my back. My jaw loosens. My belly rises and falls in an easy rhythm. Safety flows through me. Warm. Steady. Real.
The plants stretch above me. Broad leaves reaching toward light, and toward me. Their green insistence mirrors my own. I have tended them for months, whispering encouragement, trimming, singing while I sweep, praying without knowing. They have witnessed every version of me. My grief. My gratitude. My asking. My silence.
I run my fingers along a leaf. Firm. Alive. And for a heartbeat, I feel my fingers extend through its veins. Its abundance mirrors mine. Its persistence becomes mine. I exhale. It exhales. Its growth reminds me that I have always been this expansive. That my life, my breath, my heart, is as wide and alive as these leaves. I am not only human. I am plant. I am room. I am sunlight bending through glass. I am the quiet pulse that moves between all of it.
The edge of my body softens. Less boundary, more doorway. Air thickens around me. The room hums faintly, as if everything breathes together. Sometimes it feels like prayer. Not with words. Just listening.
I notice the presence that watches this unfolding. Older than memory. Neither mine nor apart from me. It gathers the breath, the sunlight, the leaves, the pulse of my heart, and folds it all into itself. Every past rushing thought, every waiting heartbeat, every future intention bends into this moment. My body is the room. The leaves are my arms. The light is my spine. My breath threads through everything. Time loops and folds. Past and present touch each other. Human and world fold into one rhythm of being.
I kneel in communion. Not acquiring. Not chasing. Not earning. Just arriving. Body soft. Breath steady. Heart open. The room alive with witnessing. The presence gathers me and lets me go, folds me back into myself, like breath in and breath out. I am leaf and floor and breath and thought. I am human. I am room. I am awareness.
Home is inside my body, where I am safe to exist exactly as I am. Not somewhere to travel. Not something to hold. Not outside of this moment. Home is the stillness. Home is the communion. Home is the witnessing, the folding of self, world, and awareness into one. Home is alive. Home is present. Home is here.
Every morning I return. I kneel. I breathe. I listen. Sunlight moves across the leaves. Dust drifts. My heart steadies. My breath threads through everything. I am connected. I am held. I am home. May you carry this stillness with you today. Take a moment to kneel, breathe, and arrive home in your own body. Notice what is alive around you and let it remind you that you are alive too.
#ComingHomeToSelf, #EmbodiedMeditation, #MindfulLiving
