Stillness

I've been thinking about stillness lately. I have a hard time being still. When I took my first-ever yoga class recently, I had an enormously difficult time being that still for that long. I wanted to do some gigantic, explosive movement. For the whole class I was aware that people around me were deriving peace from being calm and still, while the same stillness and calmness was making me more and more anxious and antsy. I could feel it building inside me. By the end of class, I needed to run three miles to get out what had built up during the stillness.

And that got me thinking about this dance. Though I posted the rest of it on Instagram, I never posted this part of it because I thought it had too much stillness and quiet movement. Rewatching it, I realized I used what was building inside me and being held back during the stillness to make what happens on the release more explosive. For me, stillness always has to be followed by big movement. Stillness can't be an end goal in and of itself. It can only be a pause, a means by which to achieve more powerful movement—which also translates beyond just physical movement to how I live my life.

Does stillness make you calm or anxious? Do you derive peace from contentment or does contentment unnerve you and fill you with the need for exertion and movement?

The line in this song “the furthest thing from perfect” speaks so strongly to me. Perhaps my inability to hold still is one of my great flaws, but I have a feeling I’ll always find more peace in jumping as hard as I can as high as I can than I will in holding still in any position, physical or otherwise.

Music: Furthest Thing (Drake song covered by Dermot Kennedy)