How movement sharpens the mind and clears the noise
If you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle through morning traffic with your phone buried in your pocket and your life quite literally balanced between mirrors, you’ll know what I mean when I say that stillness doesn’t always look like stillness. Sometimes it hums at 70 miles an hour.
Stillness, real stillness—the kind that resets you—has very little to do with silence or sitting cross-legged under a tree. It’s not the pause button on life. It’s the kind of clarity that drops in, unexpectedly, when you’re right in the thick of things and suddenly realise you’re not reacting anymore. You’re just… present.
I used to think I had to slow everything down to feel calm. Step off the treadmill. Retreat. Meditate. Escape. But then I started riding. And oddly enough, that’s where I first tasted the kind of stillness I’d been chasing for years.
Not when I stopped—but when I moved.
The Paradox of Motion
There’s often a moment on the road—often somewhere mid-bend, mid-breath—where the internal noise goes quiet. You stop narrating your life. You stop worrying about the meeting you’ve missed or the email you forgot to send. You become the road, the lean, the breath.
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a neurological shift. When the brain enters a state of flow—what athletes call the zone and Buddhists might call no-mind—the Default Mode Network, that internal monologue machine, takes a back seat. You’re no longer thinking about what you’re doing. You’re just doing it. And oddly, that’s when insight and calm tend to appear.
The Stoics didn’t have neuroscience, but they had wisdom. Marcus Aurelius wrote most of his meditations in army tents. He knew the chaos wouldn’t stop. He just chose to meet it differently.
That’s the trick. Stillness isn’t a luxury reserved for monks or people with weekends off. It’s a practice in attention. A way of meeting the world without flinching.
Why Bikes Demand It—and Give It
Motorcycling is presence under pressure. It asks everything of you—awareness of road surfaces, movement, sound, speed, weather, other drivers. You’re immersed. And oddly, that immersion brings peace.
One friend of mine calls his bike his therapist. Another says the engine noise drowns out the nonsense. I call it the only place I can’t check my phone—and thank god for that.
A study out of UCLA confirmed what many of us feel intuitively: motorcycling reduces stress hormones and increases alertness. It’s like meditation, but with more revs and fewer incense sticks.
And here’s the thing: that stillness doesn’t come in the quiet. It comes in motion. Because when your body is focused and your attention is locked in, the unnecessary parts of your mind are quieted. It’s clarity—not because you forced it, but because you finally stopped trying so hard to find it.
The Discipline of Attention
There’s a Stoic practice called prosoche—the discipline of attention. Not mindfulness as it’s sometimes sold to us now (all pastel apps and productivity hacks), but a raw, essential kind of awareness. The kind you practice because your life depends on it. And it does. Maybe not always in literal terms. But in terms of quality? Absolutely.
You live where your attention is. If it’s scattered, so are you.
When I first started riding, I was scared of going fast. I flinched in corners. I braked too often and too late. But somewhere along the line, as I focused on the breath, the bend, the rhythm—I found I could settle. Not slow down, but settle. Ride the storm. Meet the moment.
That’s where the real stillness began.
You Don’t Need a Bike
You don’t need a bike to find this. I get that. Maybe it’s cooking. Or climbing. Or playing piano. Maybe it’s running at 6 a.m. when the world is still grey and not yet shouting. The practice is the same: find the thing that brings you into full awareness. And then keep showing up for it.
Because the world is not going to get quieter. The inbox will ping. The news will roll. The pressure will mount.
Stillness isn’t found in retreat. It’s built within the noise. It’s the eye of the storm.
One More Thought…
I sometimes wonder what we’re really looking for when we scroll. When we flit between screens. When we half-watch, half-read, half-live our days. I think, in some ways, we’re looking for this: a place where we can be all in. Fully engaged. Uninterrupted.
Stillness isn’t about sitting still. It’s about choosing to be here. Now. Even when you’re moving. Especially when you are.
So the next time the world feels like it’s spinning too fast, ask yourself—not how to stop it—but how to centre yourself within it. Because stillness, real stillness, is not the absence of motion.
It’s presence, in motion.
And you don’t need to change your life to find it. Just your attention.
Until next time,
Louisa (The Existential Biker)
Time is short. Don’t waste the ride.
This is part of a 12-part series exploring Stoic wisdom through the lens of two wheels. Read the full series or pre-order the book below:
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