Noticing the Pauses

I’ve been thinking a lot about something Brooke told us in Super Bass class about a month ago.

The Super Bass combo, in Brooke’s own words, was “super fast and I didn’t really do anything to help, sorry.” The entire class broke out into loud laughter the first time we attempted to do the choreography to full speed music. None of us got it.

Sometime in the middle of running it, after we had the idea of what the choreo was supposed to be like and were mostly working on getting our bodies to cooperate, Brooke advised us to pay attention to the pauses in the combo.

Lol what pauses? We probably all thought.

But sure enough they were there when she pointed them out — parts of the combo in between the “fast parts” where the moves weren’t necessarily on every single syllable of the song, and were actually pretty straightforward moves we could definitely get down.

In fact, as Brooke pointed out, there was an intentional rhythm she had choreographed to the whole combo. It’s not actually super fast the same speed the whole way through. It cycles between “slower” phrases and faster phrases, kind of in waves.

If we paid attention to those slower parts and calmed ourselves down in them, she said, if we used those phrases to breathe, re-center ourselves, and prepare ourselves mentally for the next fast, stressful part, instead of panicking the whole way through, it would make those stressful parts much easier and also make the whole combo flow much better.

I’ve been thinking about Brooke’s advice a lot in terms of the rhythm of my own daily life. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in my week and feel like I’m crazy busy and running around like a maniac 24/7 all the time always every single day, with no time to rest.

But it’s not really true. Sure, I’m always in movement, but just as in the Super Bass combo, there’s a rhythm to that movement. And there are many moments in a day and a week where I can take a pause, take a breath, regroup, and prepare myself for the next wave of very fast and stressful things to execute — if only I bother to stop panicking about how stressful it all is and take the time to notice and pay attention to those slower pockets of time that I have.

Slowly and surely in that class, the moves began to settle in our bodies, feeling a bit more comfortable there each time we practiced. And we killed it.