Dancing for Life, Part Two: Getting to Know Our Bodies

Our interview with Noel Miller shed some light on the importance of paying attention to our bodies. But it got me thinking: How exactly can we develop this awareness inside of ourselves and apply it to dancing?

It's a question I attempt to answer in this video:

Video Transcript:

Hi guys! My name is Ian Crewe. I'm an instructor at the joy of Dance Center in Toronto, Ontario, and the creator of socialballroom.dance -Where you can learn your dance, at your place, on your schedule.

Last week we interviewed Noel Miller, a fitness expert who offered up some useful insights on how we can use the idea of body awareness - you know, being in touch of what's happening inside of ourselves - to dance for life, and to prevent ourselves from from getting injured along the way.

I'd like to get deeper into how we can train ourselves to become more aware of what's happening inside our bodies, but first I want to address a bit of an issue that some people find a little controversial.

I know that many ballroom dancers see "correct ballroom dancing" as adhering to a very specific precise standard of movement and posture and so on, and if it hurts your body to do that, then so be it - that's the cost of correct technique.

I personally tend to lean more towards a more flexible approach. The way I see it is that we all have different - like everybody's body is a little bit different from everybody else's, and we need to take that into account when we're learning to dance.

If you have more tight hips for example, you may not do as much Latin Hip action as somebody else might, or if your back is stiffer you may not have as open a chest when you're going into a Viennese Waltz or another Smooth/Standard dance. And I personally feel that's generally okay.

If this is a body imbalance or there's like an injury, or something that needs to be addressed through stretching, or through consulting a professional, that's one thing. But once you've ruled that out and you determine that this is a structural thing in your body, I always say that it's better to try and just dance within what your body is comfortably able to do. Because odds are that's what's going to look the most natural for you.

There are a number of exercises that can help us get more in touch with these sensations in our body, so that we can take preventative measures to prevent an injury from happening. These are generally called somatic exercises.

There's a number of different kinds of exercises out there from Feldenkrais, to the Alexander Technique, to Mindbody Centering and Continuum. All the spiritual sounding names, aside these are essentially different movements that you can use to build your coordination, your balance, and to reduce the muscle pain that you get throughout life, whether you're dancing or not.

They're potentially very helpful. I'm no expert on them, which is why I encourage you to check them out. But they all follow certain principles which we as ballroom dancers use as well.

For example, you don't want to force any of the movement. You want to flow naturally. You don't want to use a lot of unnecessary muscles in the movement, so it's better if you you turn them off. Some muscles might be tensing more as a result of overthinking it. You want to try and relax and just do it with a smallest amount of energy possible.

It's also good to make sure that your joints and your bones are what supports you.  We don't want to have shakiness in the muscles, which can be a sign that we're we're not quite balanced, or we're moving in a way that's causing our muscles to extend themselves.

But maybe you feel like you just don't have the time or energy to do research on these different methods, and figure out what works for you. I don't blame you - a lot of us are very busy. One way that I use is I simply spend 10-15 minutes a day meditating.

Because meditation is a excellent way of temporarily shutting out the world, and getting one in touch with our bodies. And when we're there it's a lot easier for us to to - sector-by-sector if you like - become aware of any discomfort, or any sensations in our body that stands out from the baseline.

Because in our society we tend to have very short attention spans. We're very outward focused. We're thinking about work, and kids, and family, and how we're going to pay the bills and so on, and we can very easily just ignore our bodies all the time. So we don't even notice if the body is screaming at us that "hey, you know you're not using me in a way that's that's respectful, and if you keep doing this, I'm going to break down in some way".

So to give you an idea of how easy it is to to do this and how quickly you can do it, we're going to do a fast version of a body scan now.

So what I'd like you to do is find a place where you know there's relatively little distractions. If you're if you're at work right now, save this part of the video until you get home, find a place where it's nice and comfortable for you to sit or lie down. And you're going to want to make yourself as comfortable as you can, and just relax and maybe even close your eyes.

The point of this initially is to try and relax your body, but even more important to relax your mind. Because we get so easily pulled away from our body with the struggles of daily life, and as a result we get into this habit of just ignoring our body, so we're going to do the opposite.

We're shutting out the outside world temporarily, and we want to just focus on breathing, and listen to my voice. And just take a few minutes or a few moments to gradually let your mind slow down, and just get prepared to to start focusing inwards rather than outwards. And once you feel like you're in a good place for that, take your attention and put it on your head and your neck.

And just spend maybe 30 seconds just sensing if there's anything that feels different from the rest of your body. It could be a tightness or a sensation of warmth, any aching pain or soreness. Just make note of that, notice it, and you can move your attention on down to the tops of your shoulders, and the muscles around your shoulder joints.

And then further onwards to your upper arms, your lower arms, your hands, just taking a bit of time to be aware of the muscles and the joints, tendons that are connecting the muscles to the bone. And as you get more comfortable this will get easier for you. And bring your attention over to your chest. Thinking of the intercostal muscles - that's the little guys that are in between your ribs - and the larger pectoral muscles across the chest.

And as you're you know thinking of if there's anything that seems strange or uncomfortable, you may find that there's some sensations which you can't so easily describe. And if that happens I encourage you to spend a little more time on those sensations, and just see if you can find a way of describing them that that makes sense. To just throw some descriptors at the feeling and see what sticks. Because if you can find a word that feels right, it'll be easier to get back in touch with that feeling if it arises while you're dancing.

So you can say, "oh when I do this kind of movement it seems to be causing, this feeling of 'stiffness' or 'hardness' or or 'inflammation'". Or whatever word you end up deciding on.

So moving on to your upper back and your lower back, feeling the little muscles that crisscross around the spine, and a larger muscles that stretch across the back.

And downwards to the pelvis, feeling the muscles that come across the front and the back, which allow it to tilt forwards and backwards. And the hip flexors; the bands of muscle that run down the sides of the hips and the the glutes, and the IT band that runs down the outside of the sides of our legs, from our hips down to our knees

From there you might shift your attention over to your quadriceps, which are the big muscles at the front of your legs above the knee, and then the hamstrings, which are on the backs of your legs, then downwards to the knee joint. Being aware of any pain or discomfort where the tendons connect to the knee - it's a common place where we can feel discomfort. This is an easy place to injure as a ballroom dancer.

Continuing down to the calves, and the ankles, feeling any crunchiness or soreness or tenderness. And moving on to the tops of the seats, and the insteps the arch that separates the heel the foot from the balls, and then finally running out to the balls of the feet, and muscles that allow the toes to move around.

And a little reminder that as you complete the scan, just to make a little mental note of what you're feeling and where. Because these are all indicators of places we need to pay more attention to.

So we're going to come out of this now. Hopefully you haven't fallen asleep yet. So once we've developed this familiarity -

Actually before we go on I want to just say whether you're doing somatic exercises or meditation, it's a very good idea to practice this regularly - on a daily basis is ideal - because that allows you to build this familiarity, this connection between your mind and your body. And the stronger that gets the more quickly you'll be able to sense if something is amiss inside, so that you can kind of catch it right in the moment, or right in the MOVEMENT as it were.

So when you're practicing dance you might go into it by dancing your movements very slowly. And then maybe a little faster, maybe at half speed, and then three-quarters speed, and then FULL speed, and each time you're checking in with how the feelings in your body are changing moving around. And that gives you more information about whether there's something that you've done that's caused something unpleasant to be felt, and usually when that happens it means one of two things.

One is that your technique might need to be adjusted a little bit, so you can talk to your instructor about this. You can say, "hey, what's a way that I can do this differently because I'm noticing that this doesn't feel right when I do it this way". And they'll suggest different things for you and hopefully they'll be understanding if this is something that maybe is harder for you than it is for other people.

The other option that may have to do with a muscle tightness, or an imbalance in the body, or an old injury that you have. Something that that could cause more problems later on. In which case you want to either stretch that out, or if the sensation returns, or if it doesn't leave after stretching, seriously consider consulting a professional.

Because there's nothing worse than someone who loves dancing suddenly being able to not dance at all for days, weeks, months, sometimes even years in some cases. It's really hard - so spend that extra time spend that extra money if you need to. It is well worth it.

Next week we're going to get deeper into stretches, higher impact versus lower impact stretches and stretches that are safer for you and what experts today recommend. Because there's a lot of different kinds of stretches out there in the internet and better to go in knowing some basics, at least about what kinds of stretches are good for you and which ones you want to avoid because they'd run the risk of straining or causing things to tear.

I hope you found this article today helpful, and if you have any comments or questions you can as always message me on my Facebook fan page, Ballroom Dancer's Anonymous, or you can email me at ian@socialballroom.dance, again it's ian@socialballroom.dance.

I hope you have yourself a lovely week and until next time, happy dancing!