How to Be the Best Dancer You Can Be

Article Source: http://www.compassionate-medicine.com/how-to-be-the-best-dancer-you-can-be/

photo of dancer Samantha Emanuel

“Do you know why I dance the way I do?
Because I have suffered.
I have gone through divorce,
death, a lot of heartache…
That’s the art.
You can show anyone a step
But not a soul.
Never forget why you dance.
It will always
give you strength.”
…Nadia Gamal…


We are all capable of dancing. You see that truth when a baby first begins to move their body to the rhythm of their soul. Watching a baby dance always reminds me that there is a higher power.

Some of us dance as a path of devotion – the ones that consider themselves “dancers” to their core. If you are a dancer like myself, I’m sure you hope to dance till the day you die. As a holistic healer, I know that in order to live long, healthy, happy lives that include dancing, we need to treat our mind, body and spirit. All three are necessary to heal in order to be our most joyous selves.

Know Talent Is Not Born, It Is Made –

In the book ”The Little Book Of Talent” by Daniel Coyle, he talks about how talent is not innate, it is created. “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery,” Michelangelo later said, “it would not seem so wonderful at all.” Rachel Brice, who is considered one of the best Tribal Fusion belly dancers in the world,  uses this book as one of the educational tools for her 8 Elements dance program. I first read the book in her 8 Elements course Initiation that I took with her recently. I have found this book immensely useful for advancing my dance practice.

Some of the key ways that talent is created, as discussed in “The Little Book Of Talent”, are by building strong neural pathways in the brain, not from how long you practice, but by how you practice. You need deep practice, which requires hard work, mental struggle, and extreme attention to detail. Struggle is not optional, it is neurological required if you want to create strong “talent” neural pathways in the brain. You must also make mistakes in order to build talent. I know it is the tendency of myself and many others to want to ignore mistakes or avoid making them at all. But, you have an opportunity to build a strong neural pathway by making mistakes, paying attention to them, and fixing them right away.

Beware Of Reliance On Drugs To Connect With Your Dance -

The dance world is full of drug use. Many artists are drawn to having altered states.  I believe positive, life altering changes and profound healing can occur from the use of psychedelic plants and other mind altering substances, including alcohol. I have had them.  I am not anti-drugs by any means. The danger is when the relationship with a substance becomes unbalanced, and one of my specialties in my healing practice is trying to help people find balance in their mind, body and soul.

Unbalanced meaning the bad effects are outweighing the good. I believe experiences with mind altering substances are meant to be used very, very moderately. Relying on drugs to connect to our dance, whether it be to feel free, less anxious and afraid, is not sustainable. With over use of a drug, the very gift that it gave us in the beginning of using will be the very thing that we lose. For example, drugs and alcohol can definitely reduce anxiety, fear and depression. But drugs actually will destroy the very neurotransmitters in our bodies that create happy states if they are abused. If you find you are “chasing” a high that you had once, and it’s not happening any more with your use, you may have a problem with substance abuse.

Sometimes people are completely reliant, absolutely powerless over a substance. Addiction is very real, and probably has touched the lives of most people. I was in four rehabs by the age of 20 years old. I aso got a degree in chemical dependency counseling, worked in inpatient rehab as a counselor and worked for many years for an incredible local program here in Boulder, Colorado called Natural Highs created by Avani Dilger. I am very familiar with addictions! I know the power of them.Natural Highs is a class for teenagers to learn how to have altered states without mind altering substances through herbs, body work, mate tea ritual, acupuncture and intimate sharing.

It is important to be aware that most addicts or alcoholics have had trauma in their history. In order to heal the addition, trauma specific helping work is necessary. One of my specialties in my private practice is treating trauma or PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). My favorite therapy for trauma and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is Brainspotting or EMDR therapy. Make sure you find a reputable and certified therapist who uses this type of therapy tool in their practice. In my experience, it is essential that the environment and the therapist be completely safe or else the trauma will not be worked through.

The other healing tools I have seen work very well for healing trauma are ear acupuncture, ceremonial botanical body work, plant medicine, aromatherapy, flower essences and abdominal massage. I utilize all of these tools to treat myself and patients.  I have had a lot of success treating self harm addicts with these tools as well.

Other very effective tools are sweat lodges, ceremonies, rituals, cleansing, journaling, cleansing, meditation and yoga.  (*Editor's Note: "The Smudging and Blessings Book" is a beautiful resource for helping one to create sacred space for home and spiritual practice purposes.)

I think every one craves altered states, whether an addict or not. I am interested in ways to have altered states without hurting our biochemistry. There are ways to have altered states through things that actually support our minds and bodies, and do not create imbalance in the body at all. Dance is one of the ways we can get a natural high. Some other examples are meditation, sweat lodges, ceremony and cleansing. If you are creating a habit of needing a substance to dance, you could be harming your dance in the long run. Dance has saved me many times by inspiring me to stop destructive behavior because I was afraid to lose my connection to dance.

Healing Body Work Is Essential -

We must do self care to thrive as a person and to dance forever. One of the number one symptoms I treat my patients for is stress. Stress is so destructive to human beings. Healing body work, massage, chiropractic, energy work, facials, to name a few, can be life changing. I have had deeply moving, radically transforming and healing experiences receiving healing body work. This inspired me to become a healer myself. I have been apprenticing under a teacher named Naomi Boggs who has been teaching me Lomi Lomi bodywork, plant medicine, flower essences, deep abdominal massage and ceremonial botanical body work. I now do these in my private practice and I find them to be radically healing.

Now that I have taken my dance to the next level by treating it as a full time job, I find i cannot get away with not receiving regular body work. It absolutely helps me be a better dancer. Luckily, I can trade my services with other practitioners. If money is an issue, look into massage and acupuncture schools in your area. These schools usually have a clinic where students treat for a very discounted rate. Community healing clinics are becoming very popular in most cities. This is where you get treated in a group setting for a very discounted rate.

Seek Help Of Practitioners Who Are Holistic Healers, But Don’t Rule Out Western Doctors -

 I chose to become a holistic healer because treating my own mind, body and soul helped save my life from suicidal depression. I believe treating the mind, body and spirit is going to evolve medicine. I believe in both Eastern AND Western medicine – a marriage of the two. There are some amazing things that western medicine can do – hello, surgery and pain killers! Let us honor Western medicine. I love how Eastern medicine does not separate the mind, body and soul when diagnosing and treating a patient. The body holds stories that need to be expressed and words won’t get the job done.

Don’t Worry About How Old You Are –

I was 38 when I discovered tribal fusion belly dance and fell deeply in love with it. This was shortly after I birthed my second child. I knew that after searching for years for a path of devotion, after living in an ashram, after taking yoga classes for years, after struggling with meditation, I found what I was looking for in belly dance. When I am in a negative mind set, the voices in my head will say, “You are ridiculous! Trying to be a serious dancer at the age of 40! Who do you think you are? You look like a fool! It isn’t even possible! Why didn’t I find it sooner? You can’t be an old, beautiful dancer!” In a positive mindset, I declare, “I am so grateful that I found belly dance this YOUNG!

I am so grateful I found it at all!” Beauty is in the movement, in the soul that shines through the body during the dance. I try to remember and embody this, but it can be a challenge sometimes. I think we are culturally programmed to think that there is an expiration date on us when it comes to being a dancer.  In my own personal journey, I realized that the enemy is not our culture as much as my own fearful ideas about aging and beauty. I am responsible to heal and change those old ideas that no longer serve me. I so appreciate the belly dance community because of the huge age range of women doing it. I will continue to look to the examples of women dancing till the day they die!

Start Your Dance With Reverence Or A Prayer –

Those of us that have access to dance classes and community around dance are very lucky. Be grateful for that! I have met many women who told me when they were a kid, their family could not afford classes. Dance classes were not readily available on the internet, because there was no internet. Which brings me to another thing we should be grateful for – the internet. Now, with the technology of the internet, we can take classes from the touch of a button, from all the best teachers in and around the world.

I love and honor Carolena Nerrico, the mother and creator of American Tribal Style dance (ATS), for always opening her ATS dances with a movement prayer acknowledging the space that we dance in, the dance teachers, the music we hear and our fellow dancers. It’s beautiful to watch. She teachers her students who are teachers to teach the same.

Create An Altar – 

In the book, “The Little Book Of Talent”,  it talks about the importance of “staring” at what you want to become. Not just thoughtless staring, but conscious and deliberate observing. Truly seeing what it is that inspires you and what it is you hope to become. Create a sacred space for yourself with things that inspire you. Hang pictures of dancers that make your heart soar and your light your soul on fire. Surround yourself with beauty. This helps dreams takes flight.

Practice Yoga –

Rachel Brice says, “Yoga is as important to my dancing as drills or any form of practice. Without flexibility in the spine, upper back and side ribs, hips, etc., the movement would not be as “snake-y”. I’m constantly encouraging students to take more yoga classes.” Not only has yoga helped my dance, it helps me calm my mind and find peace in my soul. It helps me get in touch with my body, to know when I need rest, how far to push myself and when to slow down. When I first started taking yoga as a young teen at Kripalu, then a ashram with Amrit Desai as the guru, I was frustrated with how painful it felt.

I would get cramps in my body and limbs were constantly falling asleep. I was not aware at first that my competitive nature, my looking at everyone else and comparing myself to them, was the biggest culprit of my physical discomfort. I had a surrender one day when I decided to practice with my eyes close for all classes. What happened was incredible. I suddenly was able to tune in to what my body’s needs were. I did not push myself. I listened and I grew because of it. I crossed over into a place of physical and spiritual peace. My body stopped hurting and yoga was no longer so frustrating. I have been hooked on yoga ever since.

Warm Up And Cool Down –

Always. Period. It prevents injury and injuries can take a long time to heal and often prevent us from dancing.

Develop Your Taste In Music And Build A BITCHIN’ Music Collection -

Music is a HUGE part of a dancer’s world. It is the soul of dance. The two go hand in hand. My musicality has grown as I have grown as a dancer. As my musicality grows, so does my dance. They are mutually engendering. What’s most important is that YOU dance to music that moves your soul. I met a lovely teacher who said, “If I listen to the song 3 times in a row, that’s a song for me to pay attention to. It is probably the song to perform to. ” – I build my collection by perusing the free online music site, Soundcloud. On Soundcloud, you can create and store music playlists of the music you find on it. I also find musicians on Instagram by searching hash tags of the type of music I like, ex: #hiphop #techhouse.

Be Humble –

Even if you are the most sought after teacher in the world, be humble. We are grateful we get to dance every time we do. Do not take that for granted. I learned from the lovely and amazing teachers Collena Shakti  and Joanna Ashleigh that emoting gratitude in your dance is a powerful way to move yourself and your audience. I also have had the privilege to study with two amazing dancers and teachers, Zoe Jakes and Rachel Brice. I was so moved by both of them – not just by their amazing teaching skills, but by what humble, kind, down to earth and gracious people they both were, despite having become very famous. My experience is that gurus do not exist and that we are all equally human. All teachers and dancers that I respect, have these qualities.

If You Get Injured, Be Patient With Recovery – 
The number one reason I see my patients get re-injured is because they rushed back into an activity before they were fully healed. I get it- being injured can be challenging. You are unable to do the thing you love the most – dance. Fear, anxiety and stress can rush you back into the activity. See injuries or illness as an opportunity to go deeper inside yourself, listen to what your body is trying to tell you, learn the lesson in the healing process. Maybe you need to slow down, take more time for self care, re- evaluate your path. It is a rich opportunity for growth if you have the right attitude.

Support And Be Kind To Your Fellow Dancers –

I have been so impressed with the belly dance community that I am a part of. We are kindreds, and I am grateful to have found a supportive tribe of like minded people pursuing their love of dance. That doesn’t mean I haven’t encountered jealously, competitiveness, and unkindness. I know that I have felt my own jealousy, insecurity and competitiveness. I am human. But I really do not indulge these feelings. I make a conscious effort to spread love, support and kindness. I go out of my way to thank dancers that have inspired me, support dancers that need it, and be humble. I also make a conscious effort to spread love and kindness on the internet by telling someone when I admire their work. I am always trying to reach out a virtual hand to support and be kind. The internet is another world that most of us in this day and age inhabit. I have been horrified by the hatred I see on the internet in comments. Let’s try to spread love.

I love this quote by Gilda Gray, which Rachel Brice has taped in her journal: “I know part of me is competitive, but I will focus my energy and attention on the part of me that wants us all to celebrate our differences and similarities in a big network of friends that push themselves and inspire each other to do the best work possible, while crediting each other and our influences.”

Dancing Our Way to Wholeness

 

http://www.next-culture.net/dancing-way-wholeness/

 

“Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive.” (Arnaud Desjardins)

Close your eyes and feel your breath. What do you notice? Sense your feet on the ground. 

What are you aware of? Check in with the vertical line of your spine. How is your skull situated on top of your vertebrae? How is your pelvis carrying the weight of your torso? What are you sensing through the pores of your skin? How does it feel to be inside your body right now?

We live our lives in and through our bodies. Alexander Lowen describes the body as our basic reality. We are in a constant and unavoidable relationship with the experience of embodiment. The body does not lie and our tissues reflect with unfiltered honesty the state of how we are. Our bones, muscles and organs carry our dreams, wounds and memories within the substance we are made out of. Our bodies provide us with a wealth of sensory information, a constant stream of feedback on how it feels to be where we are, do what we do and be who we are.

Structures of body originally evolved in response to the demands of the environment. Lisbeth Marcher suggests that many of our bodily patterns are leftovers from childhood, imprinted in the system as functional adaptations. Surviving in a particular context has consequences that come with a cost of compromise. 

We carry chronic tension and contraction so locked up in the body that it can no longer be felt. When areas of holding become habitual and automatic enough it no longer takes any conscious effort to keep them in place. The muscles involved in the pattern are so focused on their task of defending that they are no longer available for sensory experiences. Where we lose sensation we lose vital aspects of our experience and presence of being.

Movement is a powerful catalyst for change and transformation. Mary Starks Whitehouse thinks of movement as the great law of life. The living organism that it is, everything in the universe is always moving. It’s impossible to move the body without moving the whole being of the person. The movement of bones, muscles and nerves activates life experience and animates personal history. One body is the microcosm of the universal body. When I dance, the whole universe dances.

Letting the body move according to an inner impulse gives it the opportunity to reflect, research and release in a container of mindful attention. The body already knows how to shake off stagnation, make new choices and create new resources. You don’t have to push, force or try to make anything happen – just allow movement to unfold from within. Close your eyes in the beginning. Stay still until you feel the urge to move. Start slowly and see what happens.

I am often eager to begin and hungry to dance, yielding into the beat of the music inside my body. I go with this initial craving for action until I find a way to pause and drop everything that I am doing. I go quiet and look for a deeper initiative, seeking a more conscious and connected expression. 

I begin again, this time with more breath and patience. I allow the formless to reveal itself through the form with no hurry and no expectation. I let the flow of feeling and frequency move my body as it will. I am often surprised by the gestures, emotions and images that come up. I am often moved by the bridges of connection and the relevance they have to the unfolding events of my life.

Dancing opens the gate to a wealth of symbolic materials that show up to animate the shape of the body in motion. Not impeding upon the body’s spontaneous impulse to move utilizes the creativity of the moment to attend to the vital themes that emerge on their own. 

Dancing is inherently medicinal in a directly accessible, tangible and practical way. Dancing cleans the house of the body and reorganizes the furniture of the soul in the interest of good feng shui for the whole property. Dancing has a healing effect even when therapy is not the primary reason for moving our feet and shaking our hips.

The body already knows the way to wholeness. The universe is in a process of constant change and dancing helps us align with this current of life-forwarding motion. As Ron Kurtz points out, the body is intelligent beyond measure and its natural inclination is towards health, wellbeing and actualization of potential. 

Provide a safe container for creative motion and have faith in your body’s ability to dance its way to freedom and integrity. Trust your body to have its say, have its way, stand up for its needs and resolve what gets in the way. Form inevitably follows feeling and the shape of your body yields to the shape of your soul. See you on the dance floor.

“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.” (Samuel Beckett)

References:

Kurtz, R. (1990). Body-centered psychotherapy: The Hakomi method : the integrated use of mindfulness, nonviolence, and the body. Mendocino, CA: LifeRhythm.

Lowen, A. (1995). Joy: The surrender to the body and to life. New York: Arkana.

Macnaughton, I. (2004). Body, breath & consciousness: A somatics anthology : a collection of articles on family systems, self-psychology, the bodynamics model of somatic developmental psychology, shock trauma, and breathwork. Berkeley, Calif: North Atlantic Books.

Whitehouse, M. S., Adler, J., Chodorow, J., & Pallaro, P. (1999). Authentic movement. London: Philadelphia.

Posted by Anna Seva

Benefits of Early Morning Dancing

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https://websitelaura.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/10-benefits-of-early-morning-dancing/

10 Benefits of Early Morning Dancing

Posted by aclauravanderzee

 

Last week I’ve come up with this light bulb plan to start teaching dance classes early in the morning, very early actually. And then I remembered something a clearvoyant person once told me: you know you are too old to be a ballerina but you can still dance every day. She is so right and I bet this goes for many people out there. Dancing is such a blessing, we human beings just love it. There is no reason not to dance and if you think there is, start dancing on it right now!

So, I called it The Moves, starting with The Morning Moves. Forget steps or routines in front of a mirror, instead we will go on a journey of the body, mind and soul, opening up to oneness and awareness, loving the fact that we are here, alive, in our bodies. Yes, let’s hear it for the body. She is left out too often, exposed to toxins, stress and other signs of neglectance.

Moving the body around, creating inner and outer space, eyes closed or wide open, swaying like a tree, moving the earth with a single breath: most people become instant wall flowers when they encounter free dancers. O dear Lord, you hear them think while backing away, God gave us steps, use them! But let’s be honest: wouldn’t you just die for a crazy dance like that? To feel the freedom of motion and obviously the freedom of mind, getting into it ‘like no one is watching’? To become a fool?

This wall flower thing is exactly why I will be in the studio 5 times a week and I invite you. Let’s be fools and, like David Bowie once chanted: let’s dance! Yesterday morning was the first of The Morning Moves and it was complete bliss. Not to mention selecting the music. People or no people, I will be there, available to you and to the heart beat, dancing my ass off. Because if anything, opening up to the gift of dance everyday is a present on its own.

For those who have experienced the healing and energizing effects of dance at some point in their life, The Moves may be a long awaited morning workout opportunity. And they’re right: you will get fit and in better shape. But let’s take a look at other benefits:

1. You will forget you are tired. Feeling heavy and done with after waking up? You. Will. Rise. During an hour of pure dancing, while connecting to the inner body and attuning to healing frequencies, tiredness will proof just a state of mind, your attention is elsewhere, in the now.
2. You develop a sense of inner rhythm. Knowing life flow and how it expresses through your body works miracles in daily life. You get to know your rhythms and how to move with them. High energy becomes your friend, just as low energy. Through dance we don’t fight anything, we bring everything to awareness.
3. Dancing provides you a sense of musicality. You will know music from the heart. Whatever party you attend, you know how to let the music guide you deeper into the dance. People will watch you, yes. They might think you are crazy, yes. And you, you will be dancing.
4. You will know masculine and feminine polarities within yourself and others. How these unique qualities of life feel and move can be explored through dance. Feel how the feminine opens and how strong the masculine enters space.
5. Stress can be located and vaporized, by you. While dancing with stress, as if it were your dancingpartner, you take it into the Now, again, into awareness. You localize the stress and know it. Bring attention, dance with the stress and say farewell.
6. Dancing in awareness creates a higher frequency. The strong magnetic field around everybody’s heart creates an even stronger collective heart that illuminates and transforms everything around and in it.
7. Dancing brings joy and awareness to yourself, others and the planet. While dancing freely, you open the heart so it is able to connect to the hearts of all sentient beings (Life, to make it short).
8. Dancing is the smile of the body. How? You inhabit your body and this radiates out. You will inspire others by transfering information (body language, skin radiance, life oozing from your whole being).
9. Anything you did not want to feel, anything you pushed away comes into light. Because dancing is something very physical, you will feel where stress and other emotions manifest. Movement allows you to literaly put stuff in motion.
10. The foremost benefit is that you are aware. From there life is dance and dance is life!

There's a Force That Can Heal Trauma

http://www.onebillionrising.org/14116/theres-force-can-heal-trauma-think-sohini-chakraborty/

 

THERE’S A FORCE THAT CAN HEAL TRAUMA, AND IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK – SOHINI CHAKRABORTY

18 DECEMBER 2014 > V-DAY

 

Dance can set you free. It can liberate your body and liberate your mind. That is what I have learned in my own life and that is the lesson I remember while working with women who have been taught through violence to see their bodies as disgusting, shameful, or ruined. Every day I see dance undoing this shame and setting individuals free.

During the early years of my life, I grew up in a village outside of Kolkata before moving into the city with my family. When I was 13, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I was an only child; I spent three years watching her die. The only dance lessons I had ever had were in a strict academy and I couldn’t stand the rules; I am a born rebel. However, three months before my mother passed, I started to dance in my own way, finding my own style. I saw then that dance is not just about aesthetics or entertainment. It is about something deeper; it is about freeing the body to express itself, releasing whatever is within you. I danced through my mother’s death.

I went on to train with an influential Indian dancer late Dr. Manjusri Chaki Sircar who was known for incorporating feminist theory into dance. In university I studied sociology, focusing on violence against women and criminology; I kept returning to my belief that dance could be used to deal with some of the human behavior about which I was studying.

Then one day in 1996, I was walking through the Kolkata Book Fair when I saw a poster put up by the anti-human trafficking organization, Sanlaap. On it was a picture of a girl and a poem that ended with the words, “I am no more bride to be. I am no more mother to be. I am no more future to be.” These words struck me. I thought maybe dance could be a tool to help these women. I volunteered with the organization and as I got to know the women there, I discovered that survivors of abuse, rape, and violence often become separated from their bodies. They have been taught by their abusers that their bodies are sites of shame; the women were cutting themselves off from their bodies so as not to belong to them.

I began to work with these women in a creative dance process. It wasn’t about saying, move your leg here, put your arm there. It was about helping them to find a way to express themselves and to see their bodies as the source of their power. I saw women who had closed down come back into their bodies. Much of the pain that was locked away in the body began to be released. Women who had been rescued from sex trafficking told me their bodies were impure and filthy. Through dance, they began to see that their body is theirs, that it is a creative tool that nobody can ruin or pollute.

Could more women find this freedom? Could I somehow provide needed job opportunities? With the help of five survivors who I had met while volunteering, we decided to create a group called Kolkata Sanved that would take this dance therapy to abused women throughout the city and train them, in turn, to teach it to more women. We wanted to give individuals a tool so they could change themselves. We wanted to create a wave of dance that would wash through society. Very often in when working with survivors, physical power is overlooked and individuals are seen as victims. This is something that must change. At Kolkata Sanved we see individuals as proactive advocates who can find empowerment through a process of struggle, freedom, and change.

I remember a girl who used to come and warily watch my classes. She wouldn’t make much eye contact and she was sullen, detached. After the class, she would try to persuade the other girls that it was a class for mad people. I went and sat with her. Slowly she began to tell me the story of her life: her parents had died when she was young and she was sent to live with her grandmother where an older relative raped her. “I can’t see anything positive in life,” she told me. “Whatever happens, I only feel terrible and ashamed.” There are hundreds of stories like hers.

After we spoke she began, tentatively, to join in with some of the movements. As months passed, she began to feel dance liberating something within her. It made it possible for her to talk about her pain and to overcome it. The bonding that occurred among students in the class and watching others overcome their pain were crucial experiences for her.

Today, that girl is one of our senior dance movement therapy practitioners. She did something she thought she never could; she got married and now she is pregnant. It is difficult to explain this process with language. Dance is about making it possible to love your body and to love yourself. Without talking, you can convey a message and find autonomy; you can reclaim your power. Our entire approach is based on Dance Movement Therapy process including discussions, group feedback and self reporting so that children and individuals have a space in which to have their voices heard.

I am thrilled to be part of One Billion Rising. It presents a way to take our philosophy to the global stage. Our goal is to see the one billion women on this planet who have been abused rise up as one. I know some people think, why dance? Why not something more “serious” or more political? I know and the women I work with know that dance is both of these things; dance is a symbol of all we wish to see in the world. I believe that women across the world can dance until we are free.

As told to the One Billion Rising team.

To contact Sohini, visit her website www.kolkatasanved.org or email kolkatasanved(at)gmail.com.