Can you sit with it? Lessons from a Dyson

I moved into a new studio space last month and inherited a Dyson vacuum from Jerid’s office. While it’s seen better days, they tend to be some of the best (and priciest) vacuums on the market so I gladly accepted it.

There were “crumbs” of concrete on my new studio floor, and as I was vacuuming, I thought, “I wonder if it can handle this.”  It seemed fine, so I kept going.  After a minute or two, it started to shut off and back on in spurts.  I continued anyway, annoyed, until finally it shut off completely.  UGH. I thought maybe the bag was full.  It was, and as I emptied it, out tumbled a load of coffee beans and grinds from previous uses.  Clearly I wasn’t the only one to test this Dyson’s capabilities.  “Ok, quick fix, that should do it,” I thought.  I continued to vacuum the studio only to find the same issue until the vacuum completely shut down.  I got really annoyed this time since I was at a loss.  I put the vacuum away, giving in to an unfinished job, and immediately sent Jerid a text saying the vacuum was broken, maybe I should just get a new one.  I was already researching new vacuums when he replied suggesting I clean the actual filter.  Apparently there’s a filter piece that needs to be cleaned regularly.  You take it out, rinse it and squeeze it thoroughly under warm water, and let it sit to dry for 24 hours.   I did that, placed the filter back into the vacuum and, voila! It worked.  I felt humbled and silly.  I couldn’t help but reflect on my behavior, the experience as a whole, and of course, how it relates to movement.

I was remarkably impatient with the vacuum and so quick to assume it was broken. In actuality, it was very smartly designed to stop me from using it when it needed maintenance.  In the very same way, I can confidently say that most of us get impatient with our bodies.  We expect them to work in all the ways we want them to all the time.  At the beginnings of something not going as planned or at the hint of pain, there’s a reaction of impatience.  I’ve found that this impatience tends to morph into one of two behaviors: either someone throws their hands in the air and makes a declaration of deterministic incompetence, “Well I’m clearly getting too old for this,” or “I’m never getting down into a squat again!”   OR, there’s a declaration of will, “Screw you, [insert painful body part here], I’m going to ignore you till you go away because I have a life to live.”  As for me and the vacuum, I exhibited both behaviors.  I ignored the initial bout of on/off stuttering so I could continue with my to-do list for the day.  I was also quick to completely ditch it, declaring that it was broken and a new one was obviously needed.

I read a story once (I wish I could give credit to someone but I have NO idea where I read it) about “taking time” with things.  The writer was reflecting on something similar: our impatience and unwillingness to spend time to solve what we feel is unsolvable.  His idea was that most seemingly unsolvable problems just need some time and attention.  With this mindset in place, he experienced an issue with his car’s breaks one day.  He pulled over and instead of calling a roadside service, decided to fumble around.  According to the story, he knew nothing about cars.  After some time (I don’t know how long) he fumbled enough to find wires and connections and things that made sense so that he was actually able to fix his car on his own (or maybe get it to the shop).  We have busier and busier lives with more and more distractions that keep us from having the time or the attention span to sit with it.  It being an uncomfortable emotion, a musculoskeletal pain, a challenging social encounter, a broken vacuum cleaner, a difficult relationship.  For our bodies, that doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, right? It’s the only thing we each have. Yet when we come upon a physical predicament, we rarely make time for curiosity and discovery, and instead quickly make declarations that box us into a defined experience.

When I was taking movement classes with Kyle Fincham, we played lots of movement games.  He would give us a task to complete and give us time to complete it.  I always found that he gave us more time than I was interested in spending on playing the game.  The tasks were challenging and I rarely was able to actually complete them.  I would mentally give up about half way through the allotted time and mindlessly continue until time was up.  After a few of these classes I clearly understood that accomplishing the task wasn’t the point. The point was the exploration of the task. He was forcing us to sit with it, to be in the game past the point of interest, to test our patience and frustration.  Eventually, I realized that something amazing would happen if I let it.  If I stopped resisting the game, I would eventually get over the hump of frustration. The irony is, the real creativity in my movements, aka my ability to think outside of the box to complete the task, only happened after this point in time, not before. It was only when my frustration was at its peak yet I decided to stay in the game with an open mind, getting curious about what I was doing and staying in the moment that something shifted and I was able to make some successful attempts. That’s where the real learning took place.  Kyle knew this, and deliberately gave us more time than what our attention spans were used to, precisely to experience this journey in learning.

“It’s all about the journey” can sometimes be an irritating adage when we’re in the midst of our frustrations.  But it’s actually a scientific truth. When we make errors while trying to learn something new, there’s an interplay of three main chemicals in the brain (epinephrine, acetylcholine, and dopamine).  Their interplay contributes to our frustration, but will eventually contribute to the re-wiring of neural circuits in our brain (aka learning) if we just hang out in the muck of frustration a little bit longer, long enough to get a few attempts right. When we quit early, we miss an incredibly valuable opportunity to learn and adapt.

Back to the vacuum. Had it not been for the Dyson’s shut down, I would have never cleaned the filter.  The vacuum would have continued to operate in subpar fashion until it actually broke down beyond repair.   The designers of the vacuum knew that they needed a mechanism by which to remind me to maintain my machine.  Our bodies have a similar mechanism, and it’s called pain.  Pain is not an indication of damage but actually an indication that something might need to change sooner than later to actually prevent damage from happening.  It’s an alert for you to pay attention, take care of, maintain, and nurture your body.

When the vacuum started shutting on and off, I didn’t try anything new.  I just kept going.  When it got worse and shut down, I made one attempt to fix it when I dumped out the debris bag.  Once I realized that it didn’t work, I was unwilling to spend the time to figure anything else out.  I was ready to dump the vacuum like I dumped a lot of those movement games early in my classes with Kyle.  Zero tolerance for frustration.  The difference between the vacuum and our bodies, clearly, is that a vacuum is a machine, with a designer, manufacturer, an instruction manual, and a customer service number.  Although for our bodies we have doctors, acupuncturists, and personal trainers, there is no standard manual, and there are very, very few definitive answers.  What would happen if we spent some time with the discomfort in our bodies?  There’s a notion in modern day culture that we’re never supposed to hurt.  I don’t believe that’s accurate.  There will always be something uncomfortable in there whether it’s an emotion or a body part.  If you take the time to trying new approaches, discover what works and what doesn’t, stay frustrated for a little longer than you want to, you might find that oftentimes you come out on the other side having made some valuable progress on your own.

This approach, whether it’s totally on our own or with the guidance of a trusted person, allows the stories of our bodies to shift and adapt, rather than be defined and etched in stone.

Keep moving. (But also, can you sit with it?)