Dance — Blog — Michael Sanders

Toronto. 2013. Age 25.

I was taking everything so seriously that I stopped getting boners and considered putting a bullet in my brain.

I was working as the vice president of an advertising agency, the co-founder of a startup in the gaming industry, and was training intensely ten or more times each week.

I wanted to serve my clients, launch a successful company and attain financial freedom. I wanted to achieve a one-arm handstand, a one-arm chin-up and a 400-pound squat. I wanted to be at my peak every moment of my life.

I was going to bed early, so that I could wake up early. I had amazing friends, but it became difficult to share quality time with them. After all, I had to rise at 7 a.m to work on my handstand. And, I had to ensure that I had proper nutrition and sleep to get the most out of my training.

If I was tired, I had to push through and work harder. There’s no such thing as overtraining. There’s only undertraining, I thought. Plus, I don’t deserve more rest. I spend eight to ten hours per day at a standing desk. That’s rest enough, I told myself, ignoring the fact that I was orchestrating client advertising strategies and trying to launch a startup during those hours.

While I ate, I listened to educational and self-development podcasts. When I had openings in my schedule, I read books, or I trained strength and mobility for a third time that day. All so that I could do more, accomplish more, and be more.

Staring at the Sun: Excerpt from the Burning Man Book

This excerpt is from a Burning Man Book that Sidney Smith and I created. Below recounts our Wednesday morning from Burning Man 2013:

A heart glows in the sky and a colourful Robot glows next to it. We pedal towards over a thousand bouncing bodies on a desert in space. We park our bikes amongst the others, lock them up and run into the place we’ve been looking for. The music enters through our ears and slides past the drums, creeps into and envelops our minds, pours down our neck and floods our heart, caressing it in robotic sounds, symbiotic with our biology, we are cyborgs: plugged into these electronic noises to power our legs, our hips, our knees, our feet, all our extremities. The sounds blast and the bass thumps, and every once in a while, we thrust and we jump. We grind and we move, we shift and we slide, and it’s all, ALL about the groove. We fly with capes, steer with driving gloves, bob with top hats, and see with hearts in and on our eyes. Extrapolate the four of us to include the thousands more, and the variety, the creativity, the energy, the expression is a sight to behold, and with everything we do, there is no reason to withhold. . .