by Dr. Chuck Fisher, Guest Blogger

Ah, to be calm. What a wonderful felt-sense! Think how it feels to be in a place that brings you to a deep soul abiding calm; a still pond or perhaps a person with whom you feel a sense of grace. I suspect your images are deep, tranquil and full of life. Calm is not necessarily relaxation. Calm is “presence:” fully awake and alive, yet non-attached; fully trusting what is, what has been and what will be.

I have been a seeker of calm my whole life. As a six-year-old child growing up in an alcoholic family, I found my calm at the very tip-top of the highest tree. Though, sometimes finding calm required a splitting from the chaos, a dive inward. Climbing trees for solace is surely why in my teens I became a rock-climber, a practice to temper myself further. Technical climbing is a fabulous sport where reaching deeply into one’s inner calm—one’s core stillness—is the only way through the deep overwhelming fear—vertigo—that can grab a hold of even the most experienced climber. Calm was my anchor as a young father anxious to do the right thing and full of reactive anger when I clearly couldn’t meet the needs of my crying baby. There the pendulum demanded that I swing to a deeper place: one where I had to “go first” to drop into my inner stillness so I could provide it to the infant daughter in my arms and help her find sleep.

My seeking has taken me on vast journeys. They may have appeared like outer journeys, but ultimately were inner ones. Striving to reach the summit of tall peaks, whether it was the Grand Teton, being a loving parent, or achieving professionally, it is always my inner journey that has mattered most—and still does.

Calm is the center of the storm. Calm is the whirling dervish. Calm is Gandhi, St. Theresa of Avila, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr. Calm is your natural birthright, your essence, your Being free of misconceptions and illusions. Fear is the opposite of calm; love is its twin sister.

New medicine shows us that calm is a neurological state in which our heart is beating in perfect harmony with itself, our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are in perfect balance and our immune system is functioning optimally.

“Calm” is of Greek origin: “to burn,” as in “heat of the mid-day sun.” In my own life I have had to burn up my old reactive patterns, mistaken beliefs and perceptual illusions. There are surely as many paths to this inner stillness as there are human souls. Perennial wisdom tells us that meditation, the practice of inner stillness and equanimity, is the most reliable path. Today we are blessed to have the guiding wisdom of almost every spiritual tradition, new medicine, and each other to help us along the journey to “calm.”

Dr. Chuck Fisher has been a center of calm as a father, husband, and school counselor for children, parents and teachers for over 30 years. His mission is to bring holistic principles of well being into K-12 education on a systemic level. He is currently consulting with two curriculum projects to do just that. One is the Toolbox Project www.toolboxproject.org for K-3; the other is Seeds of Change through the Institute of Noetic Sciences World Literacy Project for 9-12. Chuck is a trainer for the PassageWorks Institute and for the HeartMath Institute, as well as on the adjunct research faculty member at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He meditates daily and is a student of Aikido, the peaceful martial art.