"Standing Still | Still Standing” is a documentary short that tells the astonishing story of Matthew Sanford—a paraplegic yoga instructor – and three of his students.
Angie is a trapeze artist whose recent debilitating accident paralyzed her body and threw her entire identity into question. Bruce is a college dean, musician, and choral director living with the increasingly debilitating stages of ALS. And Britt is a Marine who was hit by an IED in Afghanistan and is struggling with paralysis and PTSD. Each navigates their daily lives with daunting physical and emotional injuries, trying to reclaim some sense of who they were before they were “broken.” Not everyone immediately “drinks the Kool-Aid.” But over weeks of intense sessions, it is soon obvious that something is changing, something blocked is opening, something neglected is gaining strength and flourishing.
Maybe we are most alive when we face our own mortality; maybe we are strongest when we face our inherent weaknesses. Maybe there is more to the body-mind connection than conventional science would allow us to believe. This is a powerful chain of stories about how one man’s determination to live a life against daunting odds is inspiring others to recover what they thought had been lost forever.