Stillness In The Fire The Art of Mindful Focus in a Noisy World - Stillness in the Fire

In a world addicted to urgency and noise, Stillness in the Fire offers a quiet revolution.

Part memoir, part meditation, and part psychological guide, this book is a deeply human invitation to slow down, listen inward, and return to what matters. Drawing from neuroscience, mindfulness, somatic healing, and personal experience, Tyler Simmonds weaves a poetic and powerful exploration of anxiety, focus, identity, and inner peace.

Each chapter is both a mirror and a practice-rooted in the realness of living as a Black man navigating mental health, silence, and resilience. With the heart of a poet and the insight of a healer, Simmonds offers readers a rare kind of wisdom: the permission to pause.

This isn't a manual for escaping the fire.
It's a guide for finding your stillness inside it.

You will drift. Everyone does.

We leave the moment, the breath, the body-chasing validation, avoiding pain, or simply trying to keep up. But presence is not about staying there all the time. It's about noticing when you've left-and choosing to return.

This is the practice.

Mindfulness teaches that every moment offers a return ticket. Back to the inhale. Back to the ground. Back to now. And in that return, we rebuild trust with ourselves.

Neuroscience tells us that this act of returning-again and again-literally strengthens neural pathways associated with awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience.

You don't need to be perfect. You only need to remember.

Try this: Choose one anchor-your breath, your hands, your heartbeat. Throughout your day, come back to it. No judgment. No guilt. Just return.

The return is the ritual. And the ritual is the healing.