Stillness · “Stillness Reveals”
The Prayer of the Body
To still the chattering mind and enter contemplative silence by anchoring attention in bare bodily sensation — feeling, not thinking about, the body and breath.
In 5 lines: Sit still, eyes closed. Slowly move attention through the body — touch of clothes, press of the chair, hands, feet — feeling each sensation, not thinking about it. Then watch the air at your nostrils without controlling the breath: this is awareness, not breathing. When the mind wanders, return gently. Ten to fifteen minutes of bare sensation stills the mind and opens contemplative silence.
What it is
This is the opening practice of de Mello’s Sadhana (1978) — the foundation on which the rest of his exercises are built. Anthony de Mello (1931–1987), an Indian Jesuit priest and retreat director, found that most people cannot pray contemplatively because their heads are full of words and thoughts.
His solution, borrowed openly from vipassana and Hindu sadhana and re-rooted in Christian prayer, is to drop beneath thought into bare bodily sensation. You feel the touch of clothes, the press of the chair, the air at the nostrils — not as ideas but as raw, present feeling.
The mind, given something concrete and present to rest on, quiets, and you become still and aware. For de Mello this stillness is itself prayer — “the prayer of the body” — the doorway to silence where God is met without words.
It operationalizes attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), present-moment presence (Everything Happens in the Now), and witnessing awareness (Life Is a Dream).
The Method
A faithful rendering of de Mello’s first exercises in Sadhana:
- Take a comfortable, restful posture and close your eyes. De Mello insists the posture be one you can hold still in for the whole period — stillness of body invites stillness of mind.
- Find sensations you are feeling but not noticing. “Become aware of certain sensations in your body that you are feeling at this present moment, but of which you are not explicitly aware.” The sensations are already there; you are only turning the light of attention onto them.
- Move through the body, touching each sensation in turn. Be aware, one at a time, of: the touch of your clothes on your shoulders; your back touching the back of the chair; your hands resting on your lap or touching each other; your thighs or buttocks pressing against the seat; your feet inside your shoes. Feel each one as plainly as you can.
- Feel — do not think or visualize. This is the crucial instruction. You are not to imagine or picture the body part, and not to think about the sensation. You are to feel the sensation itself. If you catch yourself thinking, gently return to bare feeling.
- Keep moving slowly from sensation to sensation. De Mello has you go round the body repeatedly, dwelling a moment on each spot, so attention stays occupied with the concrete and present and cannot drift into thought.
- Then move to the breath — as awareness, not control. Bring attention to the air “as it comes in and goes out through your nose.” Limit awareness to the air passing the nostrils. “Do not control your breathing. Do not attempt to deepen it. This is not an exercise in breathing but in awareness.” Simply watch the breath as it already is.
- Continue for ten or fifteen minutes, returning to sensation or breath each time the mind wanders, without irritation. The wandering and returning is the practice. (Sourcing note: “this is not an exercise in breathing but in awareness,” the body-sensation sequence, and the “feel, don’t think” instruction are de Mello’s documented method in Sadhana, attributed; the steps are faithfully paraphrased, not reproduced.)
Source & Lineage
Sadhana: A Way to God (1978) grew out of the retreats de Mello gave at the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counselling he founded in Poona (Pune), India. He deliberately fused Ignatian spirituality, his Jesuit training, with Eastern contemplative method — vipassana body-and-breath awareness, Hindu japa and sadhana, and Zen.
The body-awareness opening is essentially vipassana noting / the body scan placed at the service of Christian contemplative prayer. → (Anthony de Mello).
Related: his everyday-life version is (watching reactions); his breath-as-Spirit practice is.
The Traditions' versions
Vipassana body scan — sweeping attention through bodily sensation; de Mello’s direct source. → (vipassana/body scan entries)
- Mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati) — watching the breath at the nostrils without controlling it; near-identical to step 6.
- Ignatian “composition of place” / application of the senses — Jesuit sensory prayer, which de Mello extends inward to bodily sensation.
- Yoga/pratyahara — withdrawing attention from thought into the body.
- Modern body-scan MBSR — the clinical descendant of the same sensation-sweeping method.
Common refinements
Thinking about the body instead of feeling it. The single most common error. Don’t picture your hand or label “tingling” — feel the raw sensation. De Mello stresses this repeatedly.
- Controlling or deepening the breath. It is an exercise in awareness, not breathing. Let the breath be exactly as it is.
- Fighting distraction. The mind will wander; returning gently is the practice, not a failure. Irritation only adds more thought.
- Rushing the body sweep. Move slowly enough to actually feel each spot.
- Refinement: if the mind is very busy, name sensations softly (“touch… pressure… air”) to keep it occupied, then drop the words once it settles.