Movin' Easy Dancewear

Dance, like music, is not a spectator sport.  Even from the couch, our cells are creating vibrations that mirror and map the dance or the music that we are watching.  In the book This is Your Brain on Music, Levitin explains how the brain cells create matching tones of music we hear.  And in a study on dance by Brown and Parsons in Scientific American, “The Neuroscience of Dance.”  They say, “Investigators have found that when people watch simple actions, areas in the premotor cortex involved in performing those actions switch on, suggesting that we mentally rehearse what we see.”

We all know that children explore everything.  They want to go everywhere, touch everything, and eat everything.  As they get older they want to make a game out of everything, or a song, or a dance, or a picture.  They explore.  They put things together.

Before my son could walk, I held him up to a bamboo chime.  He explored the sounds and played with the differences in the pieces for much longer than my arms could hold him up and way beyond my attention span of watching his exploration.

What does a child explore?  The answer is beyond our comprehension because we have long discarded the tiny distinctions that children can hear, see, feel, and generally perceive.  Use it or you lose it is the rule and we lose it because we train ourselves to believe there are a limited number of colors, shapes, sounds, movements, and perspectives visually and perceptually.

I began to ask myself why I am so delighted with the movement of children.  They are exploring in an infinite universe that I have long ago forsaken.  When a child runs, all my senses tune up because a lot more is happening than I understand.  So what is the real connection between the child’s exploration and everything they do with their bodies and their sensations?

I got the answer when I saw enough children scream when they were taken out of the sand box.  With my grandchildren came along, I set out to find out what was going on in the sand box.  Miss Twala would insist on staying in the sand box.  When it was time to go, she was just like the other kids I had seen screaming.

So I decided to do what parents are not able to do and stay there in the sand box as long as she wanted.  The parents knew they would never get home at this rate and became irate with me.  But they knew that between my stubbornness and Miss Twala’s high pitched voice, they did not have a chance of budging us.  We would walk home or they could come back for us before dark or we had to come up with another alternative.  Miss Twala was the same in the swing.  Get down?  No not yet….on and on beyond multiple infinities of adult attention span.

What was she doing at age 1 for that long that was so important that all matter within one hundred yards had to be shattered with her scream unless she “got her way.”  Whoops, there it is.  What is this “her way” and why is it hers and not ours?

When I read The Brain that Changes Itself and This is Your Brain on Music, I got the answer.  The child is building connections in the brain.  In the sand box and in the swing, the child has not finished building the connections that the child knew needed to be made right then and there.

There was something else about Miss Twala that I noticed.  She, more than her two sisters, wanted the experience in the sand box to be like it was the last time she was there.  She connected the feeling of being in the sand box at the end of here play time with something special and absolutely necessary.  The exploration for her had a sequence that meant something important.

I do not claim to understand what is going on in the child’s mind, but I did begin to watch for those times when the length of time and the sequence of exploration were important.  And after much play, what I found totally surprised me.  Miss Twala of all people said, “I’m done.”  She completed whatever brain connection she was working on and was ready to go on to something else.  The adults are jumping up and down in delight, “Wow.  We get to go home now.”

My journey into dance has been a series of mazes trying different styles from 1960’s thrashing to study of many forms of improvisation, and finally entering formal dance training with modern, tap, ballet, ballroom, tango, and Latin dancing.  I discovered that when I dance something connects inside.  I am exuberant and somehow able to clear away negative thoughts and bound up places in my everyday life.  I go past obstacles.  I bring my whole body and mind to the task.  And the next day, I apply that exuberance and that learning to my relationships, my job, my creativity, my hopes, and dreams.

My first breakthrough with dance was in a Japanese Karate class.  I loved the dance form that crystallized the fighting movements.  And I was good at it.  The second breakthrough was sparring with 10 year old kids.  We connected in a way that was not happening with us older types.  There was a kind of click that would happen when the ten year old and I began to explore together.  We were learning from each other.  I loved entering the exuberance and the delight of those moments of exploration.

It would be many years later when I discovered that children use movement to explore.  Because I loved teaching as my first profession and because I loved dance as exploration, I began to notice how children use movement.

Why is dancing with children so urgent?  Because we adults shuffle the child from place to place without noticing that the child’s job is to feed their brain so it can grow.  Dance is the major way they make connections with the body.  This is their “occupation.”

Toddlers dance and we are delighted but when an older child explores a movement over and over in public, we feel like it is our job to nip that action in the bud.  Crawling over and under the chairs in the airport is for us dangerous and unsanitary.  Yes, we need to make our judgement calls, but the activity is what the child has chosen to build their brain at that moment.

Like in the airport, we stop children’s brain feeding times at all times of the day and at any location.   When the child is exploring movement, we either do not notice or we judge their occupation to be a low priority. 

How can we expect anything but computer and game addiction if we have ignored the child’s basic brain food, dancing.

Superbrain Yoga exercise is dance.  http://homeopathyplus.com.au/superbrain.html  Improves memory and brain function by using a simple crossing of the midline and a plie.  Dancing daily uses both principles in a variety of ways affecting even more areas of the brain.

 Organs and cells have intelligence and affect our personalities.http://tinyurl.com/smartcells   If cells have memories and memories shape us, then dance is a powerful learning tool.

Dance trains every cell in the body and calls on all parts of the brain to coordinate that training.  Why is dance so complete?  Take the muscles, dance trains large and small muscle groups, gross and subtle movements, connects muscle and nerve activity coordinating every part of the body, coordinates parallel and circular motion.

That is only the beginning because the training goes deep into the brain and the cellular intelligence to program rhythm and phrasing, emotion and empathy, anticipation and planning not just for a task but for communicating a complete artistic symboling of a personality or a theme.

Bring in the training of the breath and controlling states of mind to build dance as a complete trainer of smart cells.  Organs respond as dancers learn to focus and control their stress levels and build  an awareness that coordinates mind control, breath. muscle function, emotion, and communication.  This highly trained awareness leads to the greatest skill of all, the  ability to explore down to the cellular level.

The ballet warmup “barre” stuns me especially when I watch professionals begin their work day.  The internal focus is worthy of any meditation and the personal silence is as rich as any prayer.  Within their silence and careful attention to the slowest movement is a flood of internal conversation and information download.  Each dancer is measuring their day’s unique energy level, body tone, and reaching within for the incentive to reach new heights in the day’s performance.

The complete body enters every movement, creating a new palette for the day.  Yesterdays injuries and disappointments must be washed clean in these silent moments of concentration.  The arms and legs gather energy from deep within the torso and pass across and around the body in ancient rituals that free the brain to heal the body and focus the mind.

I imagine the origins of these movements were codified in the earliest temple dances.

Child brain builds at dance studio is a related blog on

http://www.michaeljacksonmemorialss.com/remember-michael-jackson

Psychology Today says it, dance is an up and a way through the morass.  I will look forward to their in depth look at these dance teacher comments that basically say “build a new space in your brain” for clarity, rhythm, and getting down.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20090407-000003.html

What is the most frequent comment of the stars staying or leaving the show?

Dancing has changed my life.  It is said in many ways, the best thing that has happened to me, I have gone to the next level, the chance to grow personally, I am hooked on dancing, found new parts of myself, allowed myself to come out, feel more passion, really learn to go fot it, or I will never be the same.

Dancing is a yes, whether from accomplished athletes, seasoned performers in other genres, or never moved before geeks.  Dancing is a doorway to a personal and physical clarity that goes beyond athleticism, beyond tricks and tasks.

In the past, getting to that dance doorway has been a rocky path for men and some women.  Dancing with the Stars has opened the pathways to the dance door.  All ages, genders, hearing abilities, and even people with missing limbs have a new incentive to dance.

Ready to go, many people have been waiting for the excuse to fully commit their bodies to the mind bending exercise of dance.  For others taking the step through that doorway means jumping over obstacles such as false fears about clumsiness and lack of rhythm, or men’s fears of women’s judgement.

Beyond the obstacles comes the learning curve of entering the dance that requires full commitment of body, mind, and spirit.  The brain must be completely rebuilt to connect planning with anticipation with balance with position in space with meter, rhythm, and pace connected with every muscle and nerve connected to large and small muscle groups and, with feeling and passion and the courage to move the entire body full out.

All of that and combine the brain maps for awareness and communicating with a partner or with a group.  Challenge, yes.  Change your life, yes.  Dancing with the Stars tells it all.