A few months after I started filming my performances for the filler-word audit I described in earlier posts, I noticed something else on the footage that bothered me. Something I had not been looking for.
I was pacing.
Not dramatically. Not the frantic back-and-forth of someone having a breakdown. But a persistent, low-level migration across the performance space that served no purpose. I would drift two steps to the left during a sentence, then two steps to the right during the next sentence. A constant, gentle rocking motion punctuated by occasional larger movements that were equally purposeless. A step backward during a pause. A step forward during a setup. A slight turn that went nowhere and did nothing.
From the audience’s perspective in the moment, this was probably imperceptible. Most people do not consciously track a performer’s footwork. But accumulated over a thirty-minute show, the constant movement created a restless energy that I could feel even through the recording. The overall impression was of a performer who was slightly unsettled. Not panicked. Not visibly nervous. But not still. Not grounded. Not fully in command of the physical space.
I went back and watched recordings of performers I admire — world-class magicians, great keynote speakers, experienced comedians. The contrast was immediate and stark. The best performers moved with purpose. Every step they took meant something. They walked to a new position because that position served the next beat of the performance. They stood still because stillness served the current moment. Their bodies were communicating intention, not anxiety.
My body was communicating something else entirely.
The Nervous Energy Leak
Dariel Fitzkee writes about what he calls “delays and fumblings” — the small physical inefficiencies that drain entertainment value from a performance. His language is from a different era, but the principle is timeless: unnecessary movement is not neutral. It is negative. It actively subtracts from the audience’s experience because it introduces noise into the signal.
The signal a performer sends is composed of words, facial expressions, vocal tone, and physical movement. When all of these are aligned — when the words are deliberate, the face is expressive, the voice is controlled, and the body is purposeful — the signal is clean and the audience receives it clearly. When one channel is sending conflicting information — when the words say “I am confident” but the body says “I am nervous” — the audience registers the conflict, and the conflicting channel wins. Because the body does not lie.
This is a principle I knew from my consulting work. I have spent years coaching junior consultants on presentation skills, and one of the most common problems is the physical manifestation of nervousness: the weight shift, the pocket jingle, the pen click, the constant adjustment of glasses or hair. These are comfort behaviors — physical actions that discharge nervous energy, the way a pressure valve releases steam. They feel good to the person doing them. They feel terrible to the person watching.
I knew this. I had coached it. I had told dozens of junior consultants: “Stand still. Plant your feet. Let your hands rest. The movement is telling the client you’re uncertain.” And yet, on stage, performing magic, I was doing every single thing I had told them not to do.
The explanation is simple: performing is harder than presenting. The cognitive load is higher. The stakes feel higher. The exposure is more complete — no lectern to hide behind, no slides to deflect attention, no seated position to constrain your body. On stage, performing, every inch of you is visible, and every nervous impulse that would be hidden behind a conference table is broadcast to the room.
The Stillness Experiment
My approach to fixing the pacing problem was the same approach I had used for filler words: substitution. Instead of trying not to move, I practiced standing still.
This sounds absurd. How does a person need to practice standing still? But the answer is the same as it was for filler words: stillness under pressure is a different skill than stillness in comfort. Standing still in my hotel room, alone, relaxed, is trivially easy. Standing still on stage, with fifty people watching, adrenaline flowing, and the next effect queued up in my mind, is genuinely difficult.
I started with a drill. I would stand in the center of my hotel room and run through my material verbally — no props, just the words and the gestures. And every time I felt the impulse to move my feet, I would freeze. Not tense — that creates a different problem. Just… still. I would notice the impulse, acknowledge it, and not act on it.
The first thing I discovered was how frequent the impulses were. Every few seconds, my body wanted to shift. A foot wanted to adjust. A knee wanted to unlock. A hip wanted to rotate. The impulses were constant, a background hum of restless energy that I had never noticed because I had always been acting on them.
The second thing I discovered was that when I did not act on them, they passed. The impulse to shift lasted about two seconds, and then it dissolved. The body adjusted. The nervous energy found somewhere else to go — usually into my hands, which I then had to manage separately. But the feet stayed planted, and the overall impression shifted immediately.
Even in the mirror of a hotel room in Graz, with no audience, I could see the difference. Standing still while speaking looked more authoritative. More grounded. More like someone who knew exactly where they were supposed to be.
The Three Physical Leaks
Through the filming and drill process, I identified three categories of physical nervous habits that I needed to address.
The first was pacing — the purposeless movement I have already described. The fix was learning to stand still by default and move only with intention. Every step needed a reason. Walk to the table because the next prop is on the table. Move closer to the audience because the next beat requires intimacy. Step to the side because the sight lines need adjusting. But never move just because standing still felt uncomfortable.
The second was fidgeting hands. When I was not holding a prop, my hands became autonomous agents of chaos. They went to my pockets. They adjusted my jacket. They clasped together, unclasped, clasped again. They made small pointing gestures that accompanied my speech but added nothing to it.
The fix was a default hand position. I experimented with several. Hands at my sides — too stiff, too military. Hands clasped in front — too formal, too corporate. What worked for me was a relaxed default where my hands hang naturally, fingers slightly curved, available for gesture but not actively gesturing. From this default, I could gesture with purpose — point to something, extend a hand for a prop, make an illustrative movement — and then return to the default.
The third was facial micro-expressions — the small, involuntary expressions that leak internal state. The tight jaw when something goes wrong. The quick eye-dart to the props when I am mentally checking the setup. The slightly forced smile that appears when I am nervous and trying to hide it. These are the subtlest and hardest to fix, because they operate below the level of conscious control.
For the facial leaks, I used a technique from Derren Brown’s writing on performance development. Brown describes the performer’s progression through stages of controlling their performance space, starting with basic awareness and moving toward full integration. For me, the practical application was simple: I practiced performing in front of a mirror. Not to check my props or my angles. To watch my face. To see what the audience sees when I am thinking backstage thoughts, and to train myself to maintain a consistent, engaged expression regardless of what is happening internally.
This was humbling. The face in the mirror told me stories I did not want to hear. The concentration furrow when I was mentally counting. The micro-wince when a sleight felt less clean than I wanted. The vacant half-second when my attention shifted from the audience to my hands. All of these were visible. All of them were broadcasting information that I did not want broadcast.
Stillness as Communication
Here is what I did not understand about stillness until I started practicing it: stillness is not the absence of communication. Stillness is one of the most powerful forms of communication available to a performer.
A performer who stands absolutely still, making eye contact with the audience, saying nothing, doing nothing — that performer is communicating enormous things. Confidence. Authority. Patience. The willingness to let a moment exist without rushing to fill it. The security of knowing that the silence is not empty but charged.
Derren Brown writes about this principle in terms of withholding — the idea that holding something back communicates more powerfully than expressing it. The performer who does not move communicates more authority than the performer who moves constantly. The performer who does not speak communicates more gravity than the performer who fills every silence. The withholding creates space for the audience to project, to anticipate, to feel.
I experienced this directly at a show in Salzburg. There was a moment in my set — the beat just before a major reveal — where I normally would have been shuffling slightly, adjusting my position, maybe saying something to build the moment. Instead, practicing my new stillness discipline, I just stopped. Stood perfectly still. Held eye contact with the audience. Let two full seconds pass in total silence and total stillness.
The room went electric. I could feel the tension ratchet up in a way that my words and movements had never achieved. The audience was leaning forward. Holding their breath. And when the reveal came, the reaction was noticeably stronger than it had been in previous performances of the same effect.
Two seconds of stillness accomplished what thirty seconds of buildup patter had never accomplished. Because the stillness communicated something that words could not: this moment matters.
The Physical Discipline
I want to be clear about something: physical stillness on stage is genuinely uncomfortable, and it remains uncomfortable even after months of practice. The body does not want to be still under stress. Every biological system is screaming: move, fidget, discharge the energy, do something. Standing still requires overriding those systems through conscious choice, and the override requires effort every single time.
The difference between now and a year ago is not that stillness has become comfortable. It is that the effort required has decreased. The neural pathways have been reinforced through repetition. The default response to nervous energy has shifted from “move” to “stay.” But the energy itself is still there, and the choice to hold still is still a choice that requires discipline.
What has changed is the reward loop. Early in the stillness practice, the reward was abstract — I knew, intellectually, that stillness looked better, but I did not feel the payoff in the moment. Now, the payoff is tangible. I can feel the audience’s attention tighten when I go still. I can feel the room become more focused, more attentive, more engaged. The stillness works, and feeling it work creates a positive feedback loop that makes the discipline easier to maintain.
The Practical Checklist
For anyone working on physical control, here is the practical approach that worked for me.
Film yourself. This is non-negotiable. You cannot fix what you cannot see, and you cannot see your own physical habits from inside your own body.
Identify the three categories: feet, hands, face. Watch the footage and note where each category is leaking nervousness. Count the purposeless steps. Count the fidgets. Note the facial expressions that do not match the intended tone.
Develop defaults. A default standing position. A default hand position. A default facial expression. These are not frozen poses — they are home bases. You gesture from the default, and you return to the default. You move from the default position, and you return to the default position. The defaults are your stillness anchors.
Practice the defaults under pressure. Not in a relaxed state — anyone can stand still when they are calm. Practice while running through material verbally. Practice while managing the cognitive load of a performance. Practice until the defaults hold under stress.
Film again. Compare. Measure the improvement. Repeat.
The Synthesis
Across the last several posts, we have covered filler words, apologies, and now physical nervous habits. These are all manifestations of the same underlying principle: the audience reads everything. Not just your words. Not just your effects. Everything. The way you stand, the way you move, the way you fill silence, the things you say that have nothing to do with the performance — the audience reads all of it, and all of it contributes to their assessment of whether you are in control.
Control is the theme of Pillar Four, and control is not just about what happens with the props and the effects. Control is about the total impression. The complete picture. The integrated signal that your entire being sends to the room.
When that signal says “this person is in complete command,” the audience relaxes into the experience. They trust the performer. They grant attention freely. They allow themselves to be led.
When that signal leaks uncertainty — through filler words, through apologies, through fidgeting and pacing and nervous micro-expressions — the audience tenses. They become watchful instead of absorbed. They start evaluating instead of experiencing.
The work of Pillar Four is the work of cleaning up the signal. Making every channel — verbal, physical, facial — transmit the same message: I am here. I am in control. Everything you are about to see is intentional.
Stillness is not the opposite of energy. Stillness is the container that gives energy its shape. And a performer who has mastered stillness can do more with a single deliberate movement than a fidgeting performer can do with a hundred.