There’s this place between input and output called stillness where I never allow my body to go .
It’s a shame because between input and output everything exists.
It’s the space between cause and effect.
Between thought and reaction.
It’s where I can feel.
It’s a space of possibility. Pure potential.
It’s where I give myself fully to ground and gravity.
And its also the place I use input and output to escape, because I’m too afraid to go.
This place called stillness is part of physical mastery. And paradoxically, we have to work to attain mastery stillness.
But its a nuanced kind of work that I don’t know if I can explain well.
Think of it like this: Most people think that mastering something is an act of doing. Or trying. An effort.
Anything we can attain must be through an effort to get it, right?
This is perfectly fine in many areas, like strength training, or improving movement capacity in some regard.
There’s even an inspiring song (and movie) about it:
But with stillness… Not quite the same effort.
Just think to the last time someone told you to relax, which is what we tend think of as stillness.
Someone tells you, “Try to relax”.
What did you just do? You TRIED. You put in EFFORT to attain a state of relaxation. In all likelihood, in your best effort to relax you succeeded only to tighten and compress your body.
The challenge is that in stillness there is no reference to tell you that you’re doing it. When you contract something, you feel it in the spot you’re contracting. When you are doing nothing, however, what do you feel, and where do you feel it?
I actually don’t have an answer to that because I don’t do enough nothing to feel what nothing feels like (if nothing can even have a feeling…)
What is the reference point for non-action? If we are the one being still, what moving thing gives reference to us?
Stillness is when the world is still moving, and we are just there in it. Not moving with it or against it, just there in it.
Stillness it not felt as an effort. Which is supremely unsatisfying.
It’s not felt as something acting, tensing, straining, contracting, or doing something effortful, in a particular location in your body. So what is even telling you that you’re there? How can you tell that you’re still?
Maybe this is one reason why stillness can be so scary: It’s like you’re not even there… We’re so used to being the point of reference based on input and output.
So when you hear “Try to relax”, it’s not your fault if your default is to tighten your body.
I’ve been trying to find better words to describe this state of stillness. It’s a place where no effort is required to be. Nothing coming in. Nothing going out.
I think its so hard to describe stillness because for most of us the brain structures to comprehend it don’t even exist. And we can only understand that which we already have the neural structures to understand…
The Taoist concept of Wu Wei comes to mind: Action through non action. Doing through non doing. Stillness as a state consciously attained through an intention to not act.
The best way I’ve come to understand stillness, as thing for my body, is as a deep surrender to gravity. A act of non-resistance to it. Letting it bear down, pressing me to the Earth without fighting back.
Most of us are fighting back. We don’t want to surrender. We don’t want to feel helpless in our non-action.
In fitness and rehab we are taught exercises to “fight back”- Anti gravity exercises, spine extension, standing with “good posture”. I even teach these exercises. And to do them can bring a sense of power and sovereignty: We will not be pushed down. We are strong. Fuck you gravity.
But oh, if you let yourself go to this place called stillness without fighting you’ll feel the pure power that is there What if you could just be in that power without using it? Just in it.
I tried. It was unsettling.
To lie in raw, unused, undirected power feels dangerous and out of control. So instead of lingering in it, we direct it into a protective action, or “productivity”, or business (aka laziness).
This is why stillness, as a practice, is part of physical mastery. Its how we learn to exists beyond doing. Its where we get to be with our personal power and feeling it’s surge without expending it.
That is, if we don’t escape how chaotic and weird it is.
I was out walking a few days ago and the insight hit me like a ton of bricks: I don’t ever allow myself to be still. There’s always some input I’m taking in, or something I’m doing as an output.
Not that this is bad… But something’s missing, living that way.
Inputs and outputs are like ducks always coming and going on a pond, creating ripples on the surface so there’s never quite enough clarity to see through to the bottom. See there are actually fishes there. Maybe a rare turtle or some other treasure.
When I’m always using an input or output I avoid stillness and so I can never see what’s really there.
And in so doing I’ve learned not to trust my body. I’ve never learned to be with it without having to force something in or do something active with it.
In blocking my stillness, I also block feeling my pain, hunger, emotions, and fatigue. I don’t get accurate sensory information.
Food, information, music, coffee, manual therapy- Inputs I use to alter my state from stillness to analysis or distraction.
And exercise is the main output I use to control what I will allow my body to feel, which is preferable to letting unpredictable and uncomfortable feelings come over me.
And these keep me from experiencing me as I am, as a still pond. With treasure at the bottom I’m missing.
If I’m being honest, I realize I’m just using these inputs and outputs to avoid being still.
For example, I say, I’m going out for a walk to be “still”, or to “be with myself”. But I’m walking, which is a doing. I’m listening to music, which is an analysis and a distraction. I’m not being still, I’m just pretending.
I’m not saying you’re doing this. But I definitely am when I look closely.
I laughed out loud as I realized that all the things I call “stillness” are really just me fooling myself. Escaping stillness with something that looks sort of like it.
Even when I sit down to meditate, I’m actively trying to hold a posture (an output). Or I’m meditating on a concept- An input, an analysis, a distraction from a still state.
Well shit.
And if I’m being really honest, I realized that the number of minutes I spend being truly still in a given day is less than 30. But probably less than 5.
But all life can’t be in stillness. We’d be such easy prey that our biology won’t allow it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a valuable place to visit more frequently, when it’s safe.
So I decided to try (there’s that word “try”, crap) to find real stillness.
I lied on my back, and said to myself, “Be fully with the feeling of ground and gravity”. And just wait…
For what?
That’s the problem… There is no “what”. Just wait.
But then what the fuck is this supposed to accomplish?
After a minute or so I had the urge to get up and write down all the thoughts (pretty thoughts) that were coming in, because it felt really important that I “get” something tangible out of this. But that would be an output.
I had the urge to move because I was restless. I was the literal embodiment of 100 impulses to do something more instantly gratifying. Anything to escape.
Boredom. Feeling useless. Feeling like I’m wasting time that I could be DOING.
There wasn’t anything bad happening. But without reference of something coming in, or something going out, I had no reference for who I even was.
Maybe that’s the point… To dissolve.
Something about it was liberating. Also extremely uncomfortable.
I lasted 10 minutes.
I think we’re always balancing inputs and outputs to try to feel like we exist. To sense we are the reference point of our lives by whats going into it and what’s going out.
Right now, as I type this (output), I’m drinking a coffee (input).
Later, I’m going for a walk (output), and I’ll listen to music (input).
Then I’ll go work on my pull-ups (output), and eat some dinner (input), while I probably watch Downton Abby (input).
But what if there was a less effortful balance that existed in the space between input and output? I think I would truly like to visit that place more…
And so I want to leave you with the question, should you like to reflect on this yourself:
How are you blocking your stillness with inputs?
And how are you blocking your stillness with outputs?
What would it feel like to exist referenceless?
