Healing Dance Tips

Exploring dance over these many decades has healed my body and spirit in so many ways. I will continue to share on a weekly basis practical and applicable movement suggestions that you can experiment with on and off the dance floor. Some are related to how you move and others on how to keep the body in shape to move for the rest of your life.

THE FEET: Alignment and Balance

Let’s start with the feet. They are sooooo far away from our central command station - the brain. Yet we cannot move with grace and security without a developed sense of balance and alignment with those faraway feet. Let’s start with alignment:

Standing upright, place your feet right under your hip bones and knees. you should be able to drop an invisible plumb line from the center of your hip sockets, through the center of your knees, right down through the center of the ankle joint and into the center of the foot down into the ground–like tree roots. This is your “tap root”.  

Make absolutely sure your feet are aligned with one another, equal distance between big toe and big toe and same with the heels. It may be feel strange–like you are out of alignment. This is due to your muscles and ligaments being twisted about your frame for years in ways that pull the feet outward (or inward depending on how you are compensating), the hips torque and the knees develop stress patterns trying to bear all your weight unevenly. Make sense? Try it. First just stand  getting used to being in alignment. Then walk rolling the feet from heal to toe slowly around the room keeping your feet aligned. Who thought “conscious” walking could be so difficult? After you get used to the simplicity of this awareness, try dancing with a sense of grounded alignment. Feel free to email me with questions or comments on your experience. 

THE BENEFIT: This can help you get over fallen arches, varicosity due to increased blood flow in active alignment, lower back pain, knee issues and most of all assist in your ability to balance and “land on your feet” physically and metaphorically!

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A STRETCH PROGRAM:

I incorporate stretching into every class and workshop. Without limber muscles and lengthened ligaments, you invite injury and discomfort. Stretching is a remarkably successful way to feeling great daily in your dance and waking periods.

Here is a stretch program you can follow for 20 minutes a day:

Deep breath into these stretches so you stretch your body from inside out and breathe into the specific area you are stretching. Hold stretches for at least a minute and don’t over stretch.

 ·      Align your feet and then your whole body from the ground up. Center your weight evenly over both feet, let your tailbone hang neutrally, drop your shoulders and lift your neck up from the crown of the head.

·      Reach your arms and hands to ceiling feeling stretch all the way down to the hips. Drop your shoulders and lower arms slowly like bird wings.

·      Reach up again and bend to one side to stretch waist and then go over to the other side. Float arms down.

·      Roll shoulders backward in a full circle slowly.

·      Lifting head up out of shoulder girdle, bring ear to shoulder. Breath into trapezes. Go slowly to other side.

·      Drop head to chest. Breathe into back of neck.

·      Find center, bends knees slightly to unlock them and rotate hips SLOWLY in full circle working out the tight spots. Go in the other directions.

·      Tilt tailbone forward and back like a porch swing.

·      One leg forward and flex foot to ceiling. Bend from hips with a straight back and reach for front toes. Let head drop toward knee. Hold and breathe.

·      Roll up and change sides.

·      Feet aligned under hips, bend from back toward feet. Let head hang and breathe into hamstrings.

·      Runner’s lunge knee to floor only if comfortable. Keep front leg at a right angle to floor. Change sides.

·      Bend front leg and lay chest on bent leg, extend back leg ankle against ground, hands extended over head, arms and hands on floor. Change legs.

·      Roll onto back, knees to chest, roll both knees to one side and breath into lower back, rotate head in opposite direction from the knees. Change sides.

·      Roll onto stomach and stretch arms and legs in opposite directions

·      Go into a cat, on knees arching back toward ceiling.

·      Bring heels to butt and lie in child position resting on floor

·      Squat, dropping tailbone toward floor

·      Straiten legs, hang head over toward floor and parallel feet, stretch hamstrings.

·      Roll up slowly, head last. Raise arms to ceiling and pull yourself upward through every finger joint.

THE  BENEFITS: Well-lubricated muscles and joints that have circulatory momentum for your movement on the dance floor and off. 

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