(This is part 3 of a series on equanimity. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here.)

We started this series by mapping out the relationship between qualities like dignity, humility and presence.

To do so, we borrowed a framework from Authentic Relating (as taught by ART International), and embarked on an ongoing. exploration of how we can use this map to navigate the way we relate

…but what exactly are these qualities we’ve been talking about?

When we speak of things like dignity, humility, equanimity, posture or collapse, what are we referring to, as a category?

They are not feelings. Because you can feel any feeling while embodying these qualities.

You can be angry and dignified, angry and humble or angry and collapsed.

They are not “attitudes” either. Because you can hold yourself with dignity or humility regardless of your external

behavior. It’s perfectly possible to be polite and assertive while in a state of posture or collapse.

So what are they then?

I think the closest way to describe this category of qualities is “inner stances”.

…what’s a stance and why does it even matter what they are? I’m glad you asked 😉

​

What Is a Stance?

In martial arts, stances refer to the way we are positioning our body (the way we “stand”) in the ring at various times:

• Low or high?
• Open or closed?
• Wide or narrow?
• Grounded or light?
• Where’s our bodyweight leaning?
• Long distance or short distance (between back foot and front foot, for example)?

​

Every stance has its pros and cons. For example, if your stance is narrow and both feet close to each other, you are very agile, you are more likely to evade unexpected punches. But one that its you might floor you right away, because you topple over. To be more stable, you’d need a wider footing.

All this to say, your stance in any given moment will have consequences in terms of how the opponent’s actions affect you and which actions you are able to take (for example, in Judo, if you want to grab the opponent’s collar, you better have a stance in which your hand is already fairly close to it, or they’d have time to see you coming and neutralize the threat).

Equanimity, humility, dignity, posture, collapse,… All of these are stances, not feelings, attitudes or traits.

This may sound strange, but most of us intuitively already know this!

We tell people to “chin up” when we want them to access their dignity. We may see gymbro walk into the bar with his whole body tightened up to look stronger (maybe even raising his elbows so you’d think they’re his shoulders), and we know this person is insecure (it’s posture, not dignity).

Here is what each of the 5 stances we’ve been focusing on looks like, archetypally:

Exploriment #1:

Hold each of these stances for 5-10 minutes and observe how you feel.

​

Holding the stance does correspond to the psychosomatic qualities associated with them. (I exaggerated the stance of collapse in this illustration. Because in my experience, so many people are used to a chronic state of mild collapse that we wouldn’t notice any change from holding a more subtle form of the stance.)

The cool thing about visualizing these stances is that you can really see their relationship and how connected they are:

• Dignity is indeed just equanimity with less humility.
• Humility is indeed equanimity with less dignity.
• Posture is very similar to dignity, it’s just forced and exaggerated (because posture contains collapse, as seen in the first post of this series).

While none of these are martial arts stances, one can actually imagine how they would play out in a fight.

And that is eerily similar to how conversational interactions play out when you are embodying these qualities:

• A stance of collapse is self-protection, letting things happen while minimizing harm. (You actually see this in MMA often: 1 fighter goes into collapse and waits for the bell to ring while the other keeps hitting them.)
• A stance of posture is empowered but rigid, they won’t be able to absorb much impact, but they are primed and energized for aggression.
• A stance of humility is easy to topple over. But there’s also a quiet, disarming power to it.
• A stance of dignity is ready for the interaction, but doesn’t acknowledge the opponent’s power. The arms are held tight and chest propped open as if the person can’t hurt them.
• A stance of equanimity is balanced and versatile. The arms are able to move into defense or attack as needed, but are held in a way that signals they neither fear the opponent nor mean harm to them. The torso can rotate easily. Weight is grounded and evenly distributed. Feet are wide enough to kick or move into a more stable, wide stance, but also close enough to be agile.

Now, I used these illustrations of physical stances to make it clear what a stance is—and what each one of the inner stances look like—but there’s an important distinction to be made:

While the mind and body are indeed connected—and most of the time you can get an accurate read of yourself and others through their embodiment—outer physical stance is not the same as inner stance.

For example, it’s possible to hold a physical stance of posture, but be so collapsed internally that your awareness is barely in the room.

But here’s what is really interesting:

The way you experience of your body will match the inner stance, not the outer one.

This is huge. Have you ever felt like your body went “numb” while outwardly nothing changed? A sudden loss of energy?

That’s because you experienced your external stance as your internal stance (collapse).

Similarly, one may sit down in a humble meditation posture but feel a great sense of equanimity and inner strength.

​

Exploriment #2:

1) Make a list of various social situations you find yourself in (e.g. at work, on a date, with friends, in a new group)

2) While you are in those situations, slow down and feel your body.

3) Don’t analyze it, don’t look at it. Feel your body. Which stance does this feel like?

4) Observe how you are reacting/responding/initiating in the conversation

​

​

Responsive Stances vs. Default Stances

In daily life, like in a fight or dance, we fluidly move between various of these stances as we relate to others.

(And there are some we’re better at accessing than others…because we practiced the more!)

Sometimes, our stance is a specific response to something external (e.g. a person or situation we don’t trust).

Other times, our stance is a default. It’s a stance towards life in general (e.g. a mistrusting way of being).

If the same problem shows up in all relationships, your default stance might not be serving you.

This means identifying and shifting the stance can change everything.

In particular, nearly anyone can benefit from practicing holding themselves with a stance of equanimity.

The best way to do this, by far, is through connection practices like Authentic Relating, T-Group or Circling (all three of these are practiced inside The Connection Dojo. If you want to learn them, just reach out via dm or email and I’ll send you the info on how to join).

This is because no matter how strong our stance is when we’re by ourselves, the moment we’re in relationship, everything changes.

That said, there are ways you can start accessing equanimity at home, by yourself, and this will still improve your default stance.

Time to nerd out about stances and give you a tool to practice them!

​

​

What Makes a Stance Harder to Access?

If you’ve ever taken a yoga classes, you may have noticed that after a particularly good session, you sometimes walk away feeling like an entirely different person.

What’s happening there?

It’s the feeling of equanimity. The yoga stretched and strengthened your body in ways that made you carry yourself differently. Suddenly, after an hour of practice, you naturally find yourself in that stance.

While I rarely do it myself, yoga is a great tool for accessing stances that don’t come naturally to you:

• If you often find yourself posturing, try yin yoga to access humility
• If you often find yourself in collapse, try pralaya (or weightlifting) to access dignity
• If you find dignity & humility easy, but struggle holding them at the same time, try hatha yoga

While the inner stance and outer stance aren’t always connected, you can bet your glutes that engaging in sports which help you access the outer stances will help you access the inner ones.

Especially if the sport is mindful (like yoga) or relational (like BJJ or partnered dance). Because these help you connect to your body, too. (In a moment, we’ll see why that’s so important).

That said, if you’ve ever taken yoga classes, you may have also noticed something else:

That there are certain poses you struggle getting into even after years of practice (“my hammies are just too tight”).

Why is this? Why are some muscles chronically tight, even if you practice yoga every week?

​

Shedding Your Scar Tissue

Back in the 2000s, I used to follow a strength training channel on YouTube (“Strength Camp”), where the trainer would regularly reference our “Suit of Scar Tissue”:

The chronic muscular holding patterns that we keep returning to, no matter how much we stretch, because they literally keep our neuroses intact.

He mentioned that, if we lift weights without breaking up these patterns, we only reinforce them (we literally strengthen the patterns).

So basically: If you are a person who spends a lot of time in posture, every time you increase your deadlift, you make that stance slightly stronger, and humility harder to access.

He mentioned a therapeutic modality called “Bioenergetics”, and I went down the rabbit hole, practicing and studying it for many years.

There is a whole world to be discovered here, and I might write more about it some other day. But here’s the main gist:

• Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, both psychoanalysts of the generations after Freud, started mapping the relationship between people’s personality structures and the flow of energy in their body
• By looking at where the body is constricted or deflated, they could accurately assess patient’s neuroses
• They then offered targeted physical exercises that helped liberate people from these patterns

In general, limiting patterns will show up in 2 ways:

1) Holding patterns. (E.g. If you are emotionally unavailable, your shoulders might be rolled inward and chest chronically tense.)

2) Dead zones (E.g. If you have a lot of repressed trauma, you might have no feeling in your back at all. What’s behind you literally can’t be felt.)

Now, if we rewind a little and go back to those yoga poses that are hard to access:

They are stances too.

When a stance is hard to access for you, this is can be for various reasons:

• The muscles which need to relax are too tight (holding patterns)
• The muscles which hold you up are too weak (you never use them, because the holding patterns do all the work)
• You are unable to connect to the muscles which you need to activate or relax (dead zones)

So for example, a stance of equanimity might be hard for you to access if:

• Your shoulders are chronically tense (from posturing or collapsing)
• Your hips are slightly cocked back (excessive humility)
• Your spine is weak (from collapse -> this will force you to tighten your core and posture instead)

What’s really interesting, is that Alexander Lowen would teach nearly all his patients the following 2 exercises:

What do you notice?

The Arch pose is “leaning into more dignity dignity” while the Bow pose is “leaning into more humility”.

That’s right! The 2 most commonly recommended exercises in bioenergetic therapy, whether Lowen knew it or not, are practices that help a person balance out their inner and outer stance so they can access equanimity.

Here’s a quick guide on how to do these exercises—and why they work:

For each pose:

1) Hold the stretch

2) Keep your weight on the balls of your feet, not heels.

2) Feel as much of the body as possible. Whenever you go into thought, focus back on the body.

3) Keep your mouth stretched open.

4) Breathe in deeply through your mouth, all the way to your pelvic floor, then exhale loudly through the mouth

5) Keep leaning deeper into the stretch, trying to always stay at a point that’s uncomfortable but not painful.

Bow pointers:

1) Keep feet fairly wide

2) Press hips forward

3) Stretch arms as far overhead as possible

4) Chest out

5) Neck neutral

6) Mouth as wide as possible

7) Lean back

Arch pointers:

1) Start standing up, let your head fall forward and slowly lower, vertebrae by vertebrae.

2) Don’t lock the knees, keep a slight bounce.

3) Don’t allow your hands to touch the floor.

Timing:

1) Always alternate between bow and arch, and finish with arch.

2) Start with 3 rounds of 1 minute each, slowly build your way up to 5+ minutes.

3) Commit to the time, ignore your resistance, but do get out if you feel any pain or signs it’s unhealthy.

4) Finish off by just lying down and feeling your body, or shaking everything loose for a few minutes. Don’t go straight to a mental activity.

Some things that might happen

1) At some point, your whole body may start shaking and trembling. This is normal, it’s a trauma release, and it’s what makes the tight areas loosen up.

2) Do not try to actively force any shaking. If no shaking happens, all good.

3) In some cases, you may get emotional. (This could be any emotion, joy, sadness, fear.) If the emotion moves you into an expression like laughter or crying, don’t hold back, let it happen. But once again, don’t force the expression.

4) If you’re doing it right, you will walk away from these exercises feeling very different, most likely more energized.

How does this process work?

1) The stretches temporarily loosen the holding patterns (e.g. If you have sexual shame, you will be given exercises that target the hips and psoas. In the example above, we target nearly every muscle group involved in posture and collapse)

2) Feeling the body in a meditative way helps us re-connect to our body and any dead zones we have

3) The intense breathing fills the body with energy and eventually triggers the shaking

4) When the shaking is triggered, it shakes loose our holding patterns

5) Any emotional releases happen when the holding patterns originated from repressing those feelings

6) Because these exercises, when done right, can feel very challenging, we also build ego strength (collapse and posture are both stances we take on when we lack ego strength)

​

If you struggle accessing equanimity, try doing these exercises daily for a week and see how you feel / relate to things differently.

If you’d like to make sure you’re doing it right, you can also book a session with me where I guide you through the exercises, or give you a more personalized bioenergetics routine based on your personality structure.

(I don’t offer this publicly anywhere. Just reach out to me if you want help with it).

​

This piece focused mainly on physical stances and shapes. So I want to leave you with this final thing to explore:

All of this applies to conversation or relationship.

The way a person words a phrase embodies one of these stances.

The way a person responds to you embodies one of these stances.

The way your eyes respond to eye contact embodies one of them.

Consider these physical stances a useful metaphor, that you can energetically observe whenever 2 people interact.

Some conversations are dances, some are battles, some are a secret third thing I’m not allowed to mention. But all of them do resemble physical interactions in an abstract sense.

…and if you pay close attention, they also feel like them!

​

I hope you enjoyed this slightly different take on the usual topics.

In the next post, we’ll explore how dignity and humility show up in your connection to yourself, or life as a whole—and how relationships constantly reveal our inner stance to us.