THE REST IS STILL TO BE
“ALL OF HUMANITY'S PROBLEMS STEM FROM MAN'S INABILITY TO SIT QUIETLY IN A ROOM ALONE.”
― Blaise Pascal
It took me a few years to handstand for 60 seconds and longer to stand still for 60 minutes. I still practice the latter. Most often for ten to twenty minutes. It’s the game of Life pause button I found in my control. And with so much out of control, I’m glad it’s within reach.
A couch culture has infiltrated the home and is masquerading as the go-to means of rest. After caffeinating our way through another day of ‘the hustle’, with our legs up, we can sling our minds through the digital multiverse, for hours. But not before working up a sweat, replying to messages, and preparing meals. We ought to squeeze in a few pages of that book too, the podcast, that online course, plans with friends, and in some cases, raise children. Attention and hyperactivity disorders are trending. As are Yoga pants, mindfulness apps, and diazepam. Restlessness is all too often mistaken for boredom. And I wonder if the overworked and underplayed human world has veered so far from feeling rested that stillness is a laughable abstraction, and sedation the norm.
The concept of arriving into the body is common in dance teachings. The notion is to withdraw your attention from elsewhere and bring it to your physical state for practice so as to feel your body or be in your body. It was Tom Weksler, the Israeli dance teacher, who first proposed the idea of becoming aware of my relationship with gravity when arriving into the body. Ever present gravity has been so dependable that most people don’t think about their relationship with it. I know I hadn’t until prompted. Practicing stillness is one of the times I can withdraw and refocus my attention to the question: how am I with gravity, here, now?
It was another dance teacher, Dr.Jozef Frucek, who suggested dancing with gravity. It was Frucek that introduced me to the practice of stillness itself. He told me that if I wanted to learn about inside, to look out, and if I wanted to learn about outside, to look in. He proposes that you view yourself as a channel rather than a vessel. This enchanting proposition draws forth a mystery to play with – a channel of what, and from where?
All movement stems from the imagination. Imaginative influences on movement are central to dance. Playing with a sense of anti-gravity, or allowing yourself to be a channel, are typical ways of expanding your quality of movement in practice. In dance and martial arts, a sure-footing is often described as ‘rooted’ – a perfect image to influence steadfastness. Trees have a symbolic place in the mind of us primates. Reaching simultaneously through, and from the earth, they taught us how to stand up. Imaginatively you can visit the forest of the sea to influence your standing practice. Seaweed imbues the undulating dance with gravity. Subtly seaweeding is to embed a downward cohesion while simultaneously being buoyantly lifted.
“Standing is harder than moving” was how the scientist Moshe Feldenkrais put it. The judoka blackbelt believed that human movement should be effortless, and that elegance was indicative of truly integrated coordination. He argued that the legs should be able to rock to and from each other as you stand from sitting and that their rhythmic oscillation should remain unperturbed going to and from a seat - as if being lifted and lowered by a puppeteer (worth trying to appreciate). Anything else would be energetic wastage as a consequence of what he called parasitic contractions – senseless tension. This senseless tension has roots in self-protection where the nervous system inhibits muscular elongation. The memory of insult, both physical and psychological, takes up residency as apprehension. Practice builds trust, and patience is of the essence. Opening up to the dance practice of effortless standing is a balancing act of sensible tension. Elegance is mastery.
Relearning how to stand is best done outdoors where the natural world can continue its lessons. Taking in the panorama all at once, like a hunter surveying the plains for movement, is how you can begin. Let your gaze and feet spread peripherally with your attention spanning the outer and inner world as you embed and float. Acting as the cartographer of your inner landscape, you will discover dams of senseless tension. These inner grasps, these parasitic contractions, are reflexive apprehensions with their own origin story. Emerging thoughts are to be expected, and permitted to pass.
Getting to know yourself is as close to completely knowing as you’ll ever get, and familiarising takes time. The true shape of your stance may be, as of yet, unknown. Bosoms get hidden by self-conscious shoulders, just as chests are bolted up by artificial confidence. The jolts of life have given character to your frame. And whether you are stuck in an exhale, inhale, or neither, standing still is a practice of permitting openness, not holding yourself up. It is a practice of relinquishing the story, for now. For stories don't exist in a moment of stillness and it is their absence that makes it so. Blessed with the abundance of vital air, the breathing body needs no cue or count. You need only get out of the way. Easier said than done.
I notice my hearing of the natural world improve over the past seven years of paying attention to it. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you” I repeatedly hear. When I see trees and water, I now relate. I remember to root a sure footing, and allow my head to rise. I observe the flow of my breathing and thinking, and gauge the turbulence or stillness of my inner waters. You could say I’m brainwashed, and I think it’s true. A still bathe clears my mind and body. What’s peculiar to me now is how something so obvious as being still became so elusive. We seem aware of our need to slow down, yet if it can’t be done fast we move on. When did the unsettling come, and what are we rushing towards, or from? I wonder when we forgot what to stand for, and if we can remember, with practice.
When I approach still water I can see straight through, and there I am.
MAY 22, 2023