What is Better Physicality?

Welcome to this long and concept-heavy chapter about how to develop better physicality! After discovering the state of awareness and the doors we can go through in the previous chapters, let's actually look at the movement itself, through the question: how to develop a better physicality?

Most of us, when we go to conscious dance sessions, tend to settle into our comfortable patterns pretty quickly. We find our familiar way of moving - maybe it's always leading with our arms, or staying mostly upright, or favoring one side of our body - and we stay there. We might have beautiful, meaningful experiences within those patterns, but we rarely push beyond them to discover what else might be available.

I think that's a shame. Not because there's anything wrong with having patterns - we all need them, they're part of what makes us recognizable as ourselves. But when I never venture outside my movement comfort zone, I'm limiting my creative range and leaving so much of my body's potential unexplored.

Your body is this incredibly sophisticated instrument with hundreds of joints, thousands of muscle fibers, an intricate nervous system that can coordinate the most complex movements. You have the capacity for infinite subtlety, for movements you've never even imagined. But if you always default to the same 10% of your movement vocabulary, you're never going to discover what the other 90% might offer you.

The more physically available I am, the more authentic my expression becomes. When I have access to a full range of movement qualities - from the most delicate micro-movements to the most explosive full-body expressions - I can let whatever wants to emerge through me find its perfect physical form. I'm not forcing my authentic impulses through a narrow filter of familiar movements. I'm giving them the full spectrum of my body's intelligence to work with.

Developing physicality is really hard to transmit through words on a page. Most of what I want to share with you about movement needs to be felt in your body, not just understood in your head. I can describe what it feels like to let my spine initiate movement, but until you actually experience that wave of articulation traveling through your vertebrae, it remains just an idea.

So I'm going to do my best to bridge this gap between intellectual understanding and embodied knowledge. Throughout this chapter, we'll explore some fundamental principles of anatomy and biomechanics, because understanding how your body works can actually liberate your movement rather than constrain it. We'll dive into practical prompts and exercises that can help you discover new movement territories. And I'll share some general advice about how to approach physicality in a way that serves authentic expression rather than getting in its way.

Before we dive into all of that, let me tell you what I mean by "developing a better physicality". What I've discovered: good physicality comes down to two essential qualities - clarity and embodiment.

What Do I Mean by Clarity?

When I watch someone dance with clarity, I can read their movement. Even if they're doing something I've never seen before, I can sense the intention behind it. There's precision in how they're organizing their body, precision in the forms they're creating.

You know how a tiny shift - maybe just two degrees in how you hold your chin - can completely change what your presence communicates? If I look at you directly with my chin slightly raised, you might feel like I'm looking down on you, like there's pride or even aggression in my gaze. But if I soften my eyes toward your shoulders instead and drop my chin just slightly, suddenly I'm communicating something completely different - maybe uncertainty, maybe humility.

This level of precision exists throughout your entire body when you're dancing. The angle of your spine, the quality of your gaze, how you're distributing weight through your feet - all of these details contribute to what your movement is actually saying.

But you can't manufacture this clarity from the outside. You can't just decide to be more precise and suddenly have it. Clarity comes from awareness. The more conscious I am of what's actually happening in my body as I move, the more refined my movement becomes.

I've noticed I can move incredibly fast, flowing through complex sequences, while maintaining this steady, calm attention that allows me to be fully aware of every form I'm creating. It's not about slowing down - it's about bringing more presence to whatever speed feels alive.

What Do I Mean by Embodiment?

This connects directly to what we explored in the previous chapters about going through doors. When I truly follow an impulse - when I really go through rather than just touching the surface of what wants to emerge - my movement becomes embodied. I'm filling it from the inside with whatever internal landscape I'm experiencing.

And this is what actually touches people when they watch you dance.

My theory about why someone might be moved by watching you move: people can sense when you're connected to your own authentic experience. They can feel whether you're dancing from your surface personality or from something deeper. They can tell the difference between movement that's performed and movement that's lived.

But connecting to your authentic experience is only the first layer of embodiment. The second layer is having the vulnerability to let that connection be seen. This is where most of us hit our edge. We might touch something real inside, but then we unconsciously dim it or hide it because we're afraid of being too much, too raw, too exposed.

The third layer is staying true to what's actually happening. If sadness is moving through you, but you perform happiness because that feels safer, no one will be touched by your movement - not even you. But if you stay present with the sadness, if you let it have its authentic expression through your body, something alive passes between you and anyone witnessing you.

This is why dancing can be so vulnerable. You can't hide behind words or clever ideas or social masks. Your body either expresses what's true or it doesn't. And when it does, when you're really embodying your authentic experience and letting it be witnessed, something interesting happens. The person watching doesn't just see your movement - they feel something of what you're feeling. Your authenticity gives them permission to touch their own.