Movement NEVER Lies

Words Lie, but Movement Never Does

What Martha Graham, my old dance training, and one small morning with my son taught me about telling the truth.

I was a dance major in college, and one of the dancers I came to love was Martha Graham. She performed into her seventies and didn’t retire until she was around seventy-six. But the thing that stayed with me most wasn’t how long she danced. It was something she believed about the body and the truth.

Graham grew up in Pittsburgh, the daughter of a doctor who studied the way people move. When she was young, he told her he would always know if she tried to lie to him, because her body would give her away. Movement, he said, never lies. That idea took hold of her and shaped her whole life as an artist. She came to see the body as its own storyteller, and she spent her career telling the truth through dance.

In my own training, I learned how true that is. When I was carrying something I hadn’t dealt with, a feeling I was pushing down or a thought I didn’t want to face, my movement showed it. I would go tight or stuck on stage, and no amount of technique could cover it. I had to actually work through what I was feeling before my body would move freely again. My dancing couldn’t lie for me.

A morning with my son

That old lesson came back to me one ordinary morning. I had carried some garden containers down to the basement, and a few minutes later they were back upstairs in their old spot. I asked who moved them, and every one of my kids said, “Not me.” But something in me knew it was my oldest. It was such a small thing. I wasn’t even upset about the containers; I just wanted them put away. What bothered me was that he was looking me in the eye and telling me a story we both knew wasn’t true.

I went through all the usual lines. “I know it was you.” “Please don’t lie to me.” He held his ground: “Why don’t you believe me? I didn’t do it.” We were stuck.

So I tried something. I remembered Graham’s words, and I had my son hold his arm out to the side and keep it strong while I pressed down. I asked him to say his name, and his arm held steady. Then I asked him to say he hadn’t moved the containers. This time, as he started to speak, the strength seemed to go out of him. He leaned into me, put his head against my side, and began to cry, and the truth finally came out.

I want to be honest about what I think really happened, because I wouldn’t want you to use a little arm test to decide whether your own child is telling the truth. It isn’t a reliable way to know that, and it would be far too easy to accuse the wrong child. What reached my son that morning wasn’t the test. It was the moment he felt safe enough to stop pretending. I had stayed calm. I wasn’t angry. And when he finally let go of the story, what met him wasn’t punishment. It was his mom, pulling him close.

What that little lie taught me

The strange part is how much harder the lie made everything. All I had wanted was for the containers to go back downstairs. Covering it up turned a two-minute task into a painful standoff. That is usually how it works. The thing we are hiding is almost always smaller than the hiding.

It made me look at myself, too. When I feel stuck in my own life, when I can’t seem to move forward, it’s worth asking what I might be covering up, even from myself. We can carry a quiet untruth for a long time, and it wears on us until we are finally worn down enough to face it.

It hurts to be beautiful

When I was a girl, my mom used to comb through my long hair and say, “It hurts to be beautiful.” She would work out every tangle and rat’s nest, and it did hurt, but even then I understood she was making it right. I think of that now with the tangles inside us. We have to work through them, gently and honestly, even when it hurts, before we can feel any peace.

My dance teacher put it another way: “You give to ballet, and in return it makes you beautiful.” What she meant was, don’t go around the hard work. When you avoid the pain, you skip the very thing that refines you. Strong, graceful muscles come from showing up every day and doing the work, and mental and spiritual strength come the same way. So live the truth, and if it’s painful at first, keep working through it until the movement comes clean.

What this has to do with being celiac

You might wonder what any of this has to do with living gluten-free. Here is the connection I’ve come to. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition, and it takes both gluten and a genetic predisposition to set it in motion. But many of us also notice that our symptoms first appeared around a hard season: an illness, a pregnancy, a loss, a long stretch of stress. Researchers see this too. A stressful event isn’t the cause, but for someone already predisposed, it can be part of what tips the body over into the disease. Stress isn’t the root of it, but it isn’t nothing either.

So here is my gentle encouragement: don’t only tend your diet. Tend the harder things too. If there’s an old pain you have never fully worked through, that deserves your attention as much as any ingredient label. I know I haven’t finished my own working-through. And the same wisdom you use with food, you can use with people. Some relationships nourish you and some don’t. Surround yourself with the ones that do. For the difficult people you can’t simply remove from your life, use wisdom, keep the dose small, look for the good that’s genuinely there, and trust God to make up the difference.

A friend once told me she felt like a hypocrite asking God to bless her pizza. It still makes me smile, the thought of a Father in Heaven who works real miracles, and yes, I believe He can bless even a slice of pizza if he chooses to. Take in what nourishes you, and let the rest pass on through. Be truthful with yourself, and be truthful with the people you love. Words can lie. Movement never does.

My thoughts are with you.

— Steffanie