What Is Calm — and How the Mind Works in Yoga and Ayurveda
photo taken by Koen Emmers@andreasemmers
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🌿 TL;DR
Calm isn’t something we find only when everything is finally done — it’s something we grow into.
In Yoga and Ayurveda, calm develops through rhythm, nourishment, and awareness. When the body is steady and the mind learns to pause between thought and action, we move from reacting to responding — and discover a deeper calm that stays with us even when life feels full.
What does Calm Look Like for You?
Is it when the house is clean, the shopping is done, the meals are cooked, and everyone finally seems settled?
Or is it that rare moment when you pause, breathe, and feel that everything — at least for now — is okay?
The Oxford Dictionary defines calm as “not showing or feeling nervousness, anger, or other strong emotions,” and, when describing the weather, “pleasantly free from wind.”
It’s a beautiful image — still water, blue sky, no gusts or ripples.
But what does calm really mean in daily life — and how does it grow? Because calm looks different for everyone. It depends on our nature, our resilience to stress, and even our constitution. Some people seem naturally steady; others feel easily swept up in life’s movement.
Those quiet pauses — when everything is done — are precious and well-deserved. They’re pit stops that nourish us physically and mentally. Yet, the deeper calm that yoga speaks of doesn’t depend on outer order. It’s cultivated through rhythm, awareness, and how we meet life’s inevitable changes.
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The Restless Nature of Thought
My experience is that not all unchecked mental activity is bad — this isn’t to be confused with daydreaming, which is a nourishing and positive mental activity. It can be deeply restorative and creative, often leaving us naturally calm and inspired.
But when our thoughts start to circle around what’s missing — what we haven’t done, what we should have said, or whether we’re enough — we move away from that place of inspiration and ease. The mind becomes restless, leaning toward scarcity and self-criticism instead of openness and trust.
My teacher, Shriguruji Balaji, used to say, “We see an actor or a public person we find attractive — and in the next moment, we’re married to them.” That’s what the mind does, naturally and all the time. It takes a single impression and spins an entire story from it.
A simple example: my daughter recently told me she had a nightmare about a frightening figure from a film she’d never actually seen. She’d only come across a single picture, yet her mind wove an entire story from it. Our minds do this too — creating whole scenarios from fragments of memory, fear, or comparison.
Ayurveda explains that every impression we consume — not just through food, but through the senses — feeds the mind. The more stimulation we take in, the more thoughts arise. Too many impressions, especially disturbing ones, can agitate the mind and make calm feel unreachable.
Have you noticed how your thoughts shape your sense of calm — how some leave you lighter and others more unsettled?
The Dualistic Mind
Yoga describes the mind (manas) as dualistic: it constantly sorts experiences into likes and dislikes, comfort and discomfort, gain and loss. This back-and-forth movement uses up enormous mental energy.
The Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita both teach that this constant attraction and aversion keep us stuck in restlessness. The practice isn’t to suppress our thoughts or feelings but to notice the movement without being pulled by it.
Through steady practice (abhyasa) and gentle discipline (vairagya), we begin to train the mind to stay present, no matter how it feels. Some days we show up with energy; other days, we simply lie down and breathe. Over time, these small acts of showing up begin to neutralise the inner swings — softening the extremes of “I like / I don’t like.”
Calm as Contentment
In yoga, calm is not the absence of thought or emotion. It’s santosha — contentment. Not complacency, but a quiet acceptance of life as it is in this moment.
Santosha grows when we stop fighting what “should be” and rest in what is. It’s the quiet strength that allows us to meet life’s weather — the wins and losses, the smooth days and rough edges — without being blown off course.
As the Bhagavad Gita reminds us, calm doesn’t mean stepping away from responsibility. It means acting with clarity, without being driven by expectation. Life will always ask us to do, to care, to work, to participate — but the calm mind does so from a grounded place, not from the rush of immediate gratification.
Rhythm and Resilience
A regular rhythm — waking and sleeping at similar times, eating nourishing meals, and maintaining a steady practice — teaches both body and mind to settle. Each repeated rhythm sends a quiet message inward: you can relax; life is predictable enough to rest into.
When we live in rhythm, unexpected events don’t knock us off balance so easily. The body is fed, the system rested, and the mind has something to draw on when life gets noisy.
But when we skip breakfast, rush through the morning, or push through lunch, the body becomes an empty vessel. Then, when a challenge arrives, we’re already depleted — the stress of the situation piles onto the stress of exhaustion.
Life won’t ever run perfectly. But each time we return to rhythm — to a meal eaten in peace, to a good night’s rest, to a few steady breaths — we refill the vessel. Slowly, the system becomes happier, more content, and more resilient.
This is how calm develops at the deepest level: not as a single still moment, but as the natural byproduct of a well-nourished, well-rested, well-rhythmed life.
Have you noticed how different life feels when you keep a steady rhythm — how the small things that used to unsettle you begin to pass more easily, almost like gentle ripples on the surface?
If you want to begin today, choose just one anchor of rhythm for the week ahead.
It could be eating your lunch at the same time each day, going to bed ten minutes earlier, or taking three slow breaths before switching tasks. Small, consistent choices like these send a message to the body: you are safe, you can rest.
That’s how calm begins — quietly, one rhythm at a time.
Final Thoughts: Calm as a Way of Being
Calm isn’t a prize we earn once everything is done — though when everything is done, it’s a well-deserved pit stop, a moment of rest and satisfaction that nourishes us both physically and mentally.
But deeper calm is more than that. It’s a quality that grows quietly inside us, shaped by what we eat, how we rest, what we focus on, and how we respond when life doesn’t go to plan.
The Yoga Sutras remind us that the mind naturally moves toward what it likes and away from what it dislikes. Through practice, we begin to see this movement without being pulled by it. We pause. We notice. We choose.
That pause — that space between thought and action — is where calm begins to take root.
Ayurveda teaches that resilience grows from rhythm: each small act of care fills the vessel so that when challenges come, we can meet them with more ease.
Over time, calm becomes less about quiet surroundings and more about a quiet strength within — a calm that walks with us into the noise, the change, and the fullness of life itself.
How does calm look like for you now? Has anything in this post resonated with you? Are you going to look for a different calm now?
FAQs
1. Is calm the same as being relaxed?
Not quite. Relaxation is a temporary state — a pause after effort. Calm, in the yogic sense, is steadiness and contentment. It’s a quiet strength that remains even when life is busy or uncertain.
2. How can I cultivate more calm in my daily life?
Start with rhythm. Eat at regular times, go to bed and wake up consistently, and give yourself space to breathe between tasks. These simple habits help the body feel supported, which naturally steadies the mind.
3. Can I still let my mind wander or daydream?
Absolutely. Daydreaming is a nourishing, creative process that often leaves us feeling calm and inspired. What yoga teaches is to notice how we think — and to recognise when thoughts shift from openness to restlessness, so we can gently bring the mind back to balance.
