As I Learn to Dance, I Learn to Live

This year, in spirit of increasing time for activities that stimulate me physically and/or mentally, I've incorporated hip hop dance into my weekly routine.

I have no past training or claim to special talent.  Thus, when I entered my first dance studio, I was intimidated by the soft spotlight lobby lighting, the wall stills of taut bodies in motions, and especially, the off-the-shoulder shirt/neon-shoe donning dancers.

But sometimes I get lucky at finding the right thing the first time. And when I stepped into my first class, I realized this was one of those times.

This dance class is taught by one hell of a teacher. She has an uncanny ability to incorporate all types of movements (robotic, fluid, grunge) and make them accessible to dancers of all levels and builds. She is confident yet self-deprecating. She is professional yet democratic with her (appropriately) flirty energy.

But perhaps the most amazing thing is her ability to create a rare gem of a dance community: where people bring their eagerness, not their egos; where people cheer for those next to them, rather than compare; where people smile when they "get" the choreography and giggle when they miss steps.

After a couple months of consistent classes, I've come to notice the parallels between the tenets of dance class and those of life:

1) Harness your mind, but don't live in it:
When you learn choreography, there is a line between using your mind to process your reality vs distract you from it. Our minds have long been trained to translate visual & verbal cues into motor commands (remember first time tying shoelaces, climbing stairs, using chopsticks?). However, when we sense a time limit and are wary of others watching/judging, our minds tend to concoct unnecessary distractions. These often come from a familiar inner voice that taunts, "you can't do this" or "bet you'll mess up".  It triggers our insecurities at the most (in)opportune moments and initiate cycles of self-fulfilling prophecies (distracting us with the anxiety of making mistakes so that we end up making more mistakes). It critiques us for sub-optimal performance but is responsible for creating the internal conditions that discourage optimal performance.

In dance and in life, it is crucial that we learn to dis-identify from this inner voice. One of the most life-changing lessons I learned was that this voice is not me - it is a byproduct of years of internalizing unhealthy social conditionings. The real me is the part that is aware of this voice.

You see, we need not be controlled by these reactive internal voices. We can decide for ourselves - if we practice observing and questioning, we find that these internal messages are rooted not in fact, but in insecurity and mental myopia. Many times, our greatest inhibitors are not our physical builds or learning aptitudes, but rather, anxiety and de-motivation induced by our conditioned inner bullies. While they may continue to resurface and taunt us, if we practice remaining detached, we can re-fuel the drive and passion to "get the choreography". 
 

2) 95% is practice, and "practice" is the test of genuine passion:
Most dancers will agree that every hour of performance requires manifold more hours of practice. Even glorious stages are transient cogs in careers surfeit with sweat, litany, doubt, disappointment, compromise, and more sweat - hardly glorious. Even on a small scale, we practice for over an hour in our dance class to "perform" in groups for several minutes at the end. Being able to find joy, inspiration, and flow during the "process" is critical to long-term motivation and resilience.

Without intrinsic reward, one's well-being depends on extrinsic rewards, which are highly precarious and "never enough" - how you measure against peers, how much praise or critique you're privy to, which institutions grant you access, which renowned names accept you. E.g., if hours of practice could be destabilized by meeting a dancer more skilled than you, how miserable all dancers would be! There would be few constructive relationships, schadenfreude when one others fail, withholding of information and mentoring, and little space for collaborative innovation. Even for those ranked #1, status at the top is short-lived, and there will always be sharp critics. Dependence on external validation creates unstable self-worth and a lifetime of comparing, coveting, judging, belittling, blaming, resenting.

Finally, even if one "makes it big", the initial high from gaining recognition/resources wears off, and what one really gains is a lot more dance - more practice, more process. When we pursue things for the "stage" rather than the process, we forget that success does result in more "stage" but also, tenfold more process. While we can be good, we won't be our best, because the intelligence of the world supports us most when we are driven by raw passion rather than status/validation/resources. Energy allocated to politics or relative comparisons, etc., takes away that needed for innovation, absorption, and adaptation. I can vouch that in every dance class in which I "performed" with the greatest confidence and accuracy were those in which I was too busy learning, making mistakes, having fun, and re-learning to think about the performance. And in retrospect, the same could be said of my life experiences.


3) Celebrate others' flavors but dance to your own:
There are some very skilled dancers in my classes. One in particular, "Lily", moves with such controlled fluidity and precision, it's hard to refrain from wishing, "if only I could move like her". I recently noticed that when I am in the one class we share together, I don't get "in the zone". Why? Maybe I'm not as compatible with that instructor's style. Maybe I tend to be tired on that day of the week. Or maybe, I self-sabotage through my fixation of wanting but failing to dance like Lily. When I become preoccupied with emulating someone else's flavor, it inevitably results in lower engagement, unnatural timing and missed steps.

Luckily, last week, I was reminded of an invaluable lesson. Near the end of class, one of the dancers beside Lily caught my eye. He and she have dichotomous physical builds - they both moved well but moved very differently. He moved in a way that fit his body, and there was such unabashed enthusiasm that his movements inspired awe and joy. And that's when I realized - he doesn't dance like her, but he moves beautifully; I will never dance like her, but I can learn to move beautifully in my own way. We pave the way for our best not by fixating on/imitating another's rhythm but by discovering/aligning with our own cadence. This might involve practices we observe in others, but the incorporation should be thoughtful and malleable, not automatic and intractable. The best dancers I've observed not only display trained skill but also unabashed self-respect and self-expression.


In sum, when we waste energy on bullying, validating, and comparing ourselves, we obstruct ourselves from learning, enjoying, and achieving. But if we learn to detach from our vicious inner voices, live for the process, and work from places of self-awareness/respect, we realize that we are not inadequate but "powerful beyond measure" (Marianne Williamson). Which means that we too can breathe life through limbs - we too can create revolution through movement.

I Want Me: My Good, My Bad, My Ugly

"Why do I get these strong negative feelings? I'm not a jealous or hateful person. Times like these, I get scared of myself"

(Dedicated to my dear friend, "Kira" - sometimes I wonder if we are parts of a shared past soul)

I've come to realize more and more that we cannot be our most resilient, most effective, and most compassionate, when we laud parts of ourselves and reject/shame the rest. When we cherry-pick and appreciate certain characteristics we deem desirable, while condemning and denying others, we are not  appreciating parts of ourselves, but rather, fortifying distorted  ideals.

1) While it's healthy to continually strive to improve how we think, decide, and act, we cannot grow effectively by suppressing our negative sides. Denial does nothing to treat the roots of destructive habits, just as sticking our heads in the sand does nothing to address our not knowing how to swim. In order to control our responses of frustration, anger, resentment, jealousy, hate, etc., we must first accept that we are capable of frustrating, angering, resenting, envying, hating. This realization doesn't suggest that we're incorrigibly "bad" -- it just helps direct our focus and reminds us that we are students in Living Life 201. Berating ourselves for not living up to one-dimensional ideals wastes our energy and forestalls our growth.

Becoming aware of and accepting that we have unhealthy responses is the first step of change. In college, when friends shared excitedly about research roles they landed or travel abroad fellowships, my desired reaction of enthusiasm was tainted with a twinge of envy. If I were to surrender that "I'm just a bad, envious person", a) no motivation to change, since you can't change something you "naturally are" and b) misdirected focus on the emotional response rather than the source. Rather than deny or suppress, I accepted and prodded - after some self-reflection, I realized that my envy stemmed from their good news' triggering the painful reminder that I hadn't found my calling. Energizing the drive and courage to find my own passion was the real issue I had to address -- envy was just a side effect.  

When we admit our triggers and approach them constructively, we can detach and give ourselves space to deconstruct the underlying cause (oftentimes, not the actual incident at hand but the memories or insecurities it evokes). If we can create space between a stimulus and our response, we create freedom - freedom to choose, freedom to change.


2) As human beings, almost all of us have the broad bandwidth for all types of psychosocial desires and emotions. There is no such thing as "good" people only having "good thoughts" and "bad" people having only "bad thoughts". Even the most docile understands the will to retaliate. Even the most violent understands the stress of being afraid. As criminal expert Gavin DeBecker avers, everyone can be aggressive enough to commit violence - what differs is only the justification. E.g., not everyone has physically bullied another, but all of us know what it's like to want to humiliate after we've been humiliated.  

Having fleeting thoughts and emotions of all kinds is okay - it's how we channel these thoughts into (in)actions that they gain the power to help or hurt. In order for law enforcement to prevent, in order for therapists to empathize, in order for people of vastly varied backgrounds to relate, we have to harbor and tap into a broad bandwidth of motivations and fears. It is only through our own aptitudes for all types of impulses, both constructive and destructive,  that we are able to understand, learn from, and predict the behavior of others. 


3) While we often zero in on stifling our vices, it's critical to remember that the very "virtues" that endear us to others can work against us. It is nice when a law student shares her detailed reading outline with her study group. It is nice when her study group acknowledges "Thank you; this [act of sharing] was really helpful". It is problematic when the study group decides "It's in her nature. She always want to help. She will always be willing to help". As my friend "Kira" recognized, a compassionate habit she chose to exercise suddenly became a burdensome expectation. What once provided a sense of fulfillment became a source of resentment.  

What we label "virtues" and "vices" are just points on a spectrum -- affection can turn into possession, drive can turn into narcissism, shame can turn into compassion. Thus, we should be at peace with experiencing all types of thoughts and desires, as long as we do our best to consciously navigate them in constructive ways. Virtues and vices are sides of the same die -- we can't roll with just half the sides.


It's inevitable that we are able to feel a broad spectrum of desires and emotions. The more we shame ourselves for having "bad" thoughts, the more we hinder our abilities to change for the better. As Brene Brown notes, "You cannot shame people into changing" - the same goes for ourselves. When we are able to accept, respect, and value our whole Beings, the "desirable" and "undesirable", opportunities for growth that were once fleeting may suddenly reveal themselves clearer in our purviews.