When the Views Are Perfect but the Mind Is All Over the Place.
Words and Image by David Glover
I’ve just come back from a holiday in Stresa—a quiet town on the banks of Lake Maggiore, about 50 km from Milan. It’s the kind of place that draws you in slowly, like the best holidays do.
It’s also the kind of place that’s drawn in people like Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck, Claude Debussy, and Arturo Toscanini. Artists and thinkers who’ve wandered its cobbled streets, soaked up its stillness, and created magic.
But I have a problem with holidays. It’s not the sun, or the travel, or my dodgy Italian. It’s the disconnection—from my daily rhythm, from my yoga practice, and from a quiet space to simply sit and breathe.
I don’t mean fancy yoga studios or incense-laced rituals. I mean the basic need to start my day with 20–30 minutes of stillness. And it turns out, that’s surprisingly hard to find when you’re away. No quiet corner, no room that doesn’t echo with footsteps or blaring music, no shady spot without people walking past every two minutes.
I love holidays. But I also end up feeling a bit… scattered. Inspired, yes. But also slightly depleted. It reminds me of something I read by Swami Gyan Dharma in his book Centred in the Now. He asks a simple but unsettling question:
How would you feel if you had no home to return to—not physically, not spiritually? No place to go to. No place to return to.
That struck a chord. Because it’s not just about having a quiet room or a yoga mat. It’s about having a home base—somewhere inside yourself that you return to, no matter where you are in the world. A place not made of bricks, but of breath, mantra, body-awareness. Or whatever works for you.
And when we don’t have that—when we haven’t cultivated that inner home—the mind tends to scatter. It grabs at the next plan, the next destination, the next distraction. Even in paradise.
So yes, it’s important to find a physical space where you can sit undisturbed. But even more important is building that inner anchor. And holidays are actually the perfect test: if you can stay steady there, you can stay steady anywhere.
If you’re travelling soon—or even if you’re not—this is your invitation to reclaim a few minutes each day just for that. To build your internal home, so that no matter where you are, you can come back to yourself.
To help with that, here’s a short 10-minute guided meditation designed to anchor you in stillness. Take it with you on holiday. Or use it right now, at home. You don’t need much. Just a seat, a bit of quiet space, and the intention to stop for a moment.
👉 [Click here to listen to the meditation]
Happy holidays—and happy coming home.