Movin' Easy Dancewear

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.

Why do we dance?  To move the fluids in our bodies.  Craniosacral Therapy is discovering the importance of the fluid around the spine and the skull.  Those connect with the nerves and the production of other fluids throughout the body.

Why do we dance to move the fluids in our bodies?  To get more life.

When fluids stop moving, life stops, right?  When dancing stops, the fluids are deprived of their immediate and most complete outlet.

Look around at dance and dancers; the direction is toward more life.

What’s different about dance that is so important to the body fluids?   The fluids get their chance at a complete wiggle and tingle and along with that the neurons of the brain are recording and connecting up in ways that only happen with massive amounts of delight.

The added benefits are the increase in oxygen to the entire body from the smiling and the stretch of every muscle and every reflex at the same time.

Moving fluids with the richness of oxygen brought to life by the surprise and delight of dancing, that gives us more life.

Today I spent 2 ½ hours in St. David’s emergency.  So OK, my dance, Pilates, Tai, Yogi training wasn’t enough to get the trash can up the hill and when the heavy load came crushing down on my hands, the cement did a job on all my knuckles.

So there I sat in the holding room for hours.  So what is a dancer to do but dance?  And of course, my whole life comes together at these emergency cross roads.  Yesterday, I made a huge breakthrough in a Cranio-Sacral therapy session with Maria Scotchell.  Two issues were screaming to be dealt with.  Thanks to an argument with my lovely wife on the way to the session, the energy roaring through my body demanded a resolution.

So, so , and many more emphatic so’s later I was face to face with my need to become more grounded in the ways I relate to everyone and also dealing with a growing healing bringing together my right and left sides.  Sound complicated?  My sister shakes her head at my writings, and asks, “How did you get so complex?”  Uh, well…

The basic dance issue is the one solved by the butterflies-saw them on PBS Nova- as they launch into their long nomadic flight from Mexico to Canada and back.  Survival is too stark a word to describe their launch into life, facing every obstacle and using all the forces of life’s gifts to complete their life cycle.  For humans, we translate those forces as the skills of hope and trust in the outcome along with the ways we use our brain, our senses, and our communication to keep moving ahead.

So here I am, dancer in the emergency room, waiting.  What a gift to have all this time and a minor localized injury to deal with my weird self.  So I move my head left and right activating the dance brain, checking to see if that helps in the healing my fingers.  OK, I relax a little from the tension of the injury, and my breathing kicks in from many years of training to connect my breath to movement.

So far so good, my hands are not hurting; probably thanks to the ice I automatically put on every injury.  Next lesson from Tai Chi, I coordinate my hips with my head movement which gives me a flow of energy through my whole body passing the wounded area.

Dancing is a key mover of energy because in the process of circular movement, the brain by passes not only physical limitations but also negative thought patterns that lead to frozen bodies that lead to chronic pain that builds upon itself.

What happens if I get my hands involved, with deep scratches and cuts on each knuckle?  My mind got a little too active and I did a run through of Cha Cha routine Ginger and I are learning from Rudy Gonzales.  Blood definitely begins to flow with whole body dance turning in all directions.

Fingers are throbbing now.  Time to return to healing movement, adding the hands and arms to the side to side flowing movement of head and hips.  Head and hips cross the mid-line of the body going one direction, both hands with palms facing move in the opposite direction.  Ahh, there is the breath again, yesss.

Now what is the dancers job?  Rest.  I immediately feel the relaxation process kick in.  The brain is so beautiful to hold the maps that we build over time.  Modern dance is my entry point to explore my entire body and locate problem areas.  Many of the techniques familiar today such as tightening and releasing muscles came from the techniques discovered by Modern Dancers.

The use of the imagination is a dancers tool box as we locate and work with specific areas of the body.  Today I called on my brain map for sending light to my hurt fingers.  It is this skill that professional ballroom dancers use to brighten their minds and their bodies to enliven the straightening of their knees, the placement of their feet, and the swivel of their hips.  Not every person calls the energy they send light, but the process is something specific to dancers who coordinate their imaginations and their energy to express their personalities and their skill.

So all these dances lead to me laying down, waiting still.  What a great two hours.  This body is going to come together.  And some day soon, I will be really dancing ballroom without the clunkiness that my current brain map loves to hold on to.

Amanda finally released me from St. David’s even after I offered to take up residence and use the room as my writing office.  So, the so’s could go on the road, and I walked home.  The bright sunshine and the glistening greens were the perfect accompaniment for my walk.  And of course, a dancer’s walk is like no other with the experience of using the whole body connecting with seeing everything at once.  My years of dancing among the trees and in the middle of creeks brought back a way of communicating and breathing that is hard to explain.  Enough so’s for today.

Dance among all of the arts is the fast track to learning.  Example after example, study after study, dance changes the way we learn, and how we think about learning.  Children become better students.   I appraoch my llife differently at each stagte of my dance study.

Something happens in the learning pathways to free up the movement of information, to build connections to planning, commitment, and the ability to discard old patterns to make room for new ones.  These processes are usually noticed as a change in self esteem or an ability of students to focus or make a commitment to their studies.

For me the changes come in being open to ideas or opportunities, to sorting out emotions that move energy or block energy, and always my process of understanding how to benefit from the vulnerability of leaping into the next dance.

Studies have show the same benefits from the study of music and art.  Dance is obviously a unique combination of the arts that uses the whole body as paint brush, canvas, melody, and syncopation.

So when we exercise, we build the capillaries that take more oxygen into our blood vessels.  Yet my guess is that not all exercise is equal in the way we take that oxygen into our bodies.

A couple of clues are the natural ways we move while laughing, crying, and yawning.   Laughter captures the body in a new way, making the oxygen so effecient and the body so receptive that we release stress and even digest our food better.  The involvement of the body in crying and the extreme intake of oxygen needs no explanation.  Another clue is yawning, that complete stretch that involves everything the way a sneeze does but in the opposite direction.  The body is completely engaged, completely receptive, and unique things happen with a yawn that we do not even understand.

Dancings falls into this category of complete involvement.  There is a joy, or fun may be be the word, that comes from creating almost a new person with each moment.  New synapsis are firing and new brain maps are forming.

Although I may be stretching the meaning, studies by Steven Brown and Lawrence M. Parsons have shown that dancers have increased blood flow to many areas of the brain.  See

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-dance

Dancers know a secret to dancing that is a learned skill and is different from all the work to perfect every movement they make.  Ballet dancers use this skill to allow themselves to be picked up like a solid toy doll, to be flung like a rag doll, or to be lifted as if they were weightless.  There are actually many skills involved but one is simply allowing the body to be moved.

This skill requires a whole new brain mapping not acquired by ordering the body to complete a task and perfecting the execution.  Sounds simple but if you have had a massage and the masseuse said, “Let go of your arm.  Let me move it,” you would find that it might take a few tries to actually let the arm be moved.

The same skill is used by the follower in Ballroom Dancing and in the Scandinavian “he goes-she goes” turning dances. For many dancers, allowing themselves to be moved is as important and as difficult as directing the action of their movements.

Dancers have made many discoveries exploring this skill of allowing their bodies to be moved by others.  Modern dancers have explored the inner intention of Tai Chi and the concepts of momentum.  Systems of movement have developed such as Skinner Release Technique and Alexander Technique that explore movement that begins deep inside the body.

Steve Paxton developed a new dance form called Contact Improvisation that explores the balance of two bodies allowing the movement to emerge between them.  Deborah Hay explores the movement of the cells as an image to get in touch with an inner wisdom of the body.

Today the hands on work of Craniosacral therapy is a direct way for the body to understand how to move to its internal rhythms minimizing the planning and locomotive areas of the brain.

The Dance Secret is the tradition of healing, happiness, and communication that has been passed down to us since the first humans began to sing and dance.  See the last paragraph for the ingredients of the Dance Secret.

Dance activates and integrates areas of the brain in ways that no other activity does.

Dance is a direct way to create positive movement patterns and discard old patterns that damage our bodies.

Dance is a direct link to learning how to explore and master the relationship between how we move, how we think, and how we communicate with ourselves and other people.  

Only dance can override age boundries, disabilities, and depression.  The limitations disappear when we begin dancing.

Only dance calls on our subtle movements as well as bold ones to bring our personality together with our outward expression.

Dance along with the other ancient forms of movement seen in yoga and Tai Chi integrates every muscle in the body to act together as a full support system.

Here are a few of the secret ingredients of dance that have inspired and healed people for millions of years:

Circular motion.

An intricate web of twists and turns of body parts that cross the mid-line of the body.

Palms facing each other that complete our energy circuit.

Intricate use of fingers and toes that communicate with every part of the body including organs and inner tissue.

Subtle and bold uses of movement quality such as fluidity and percussiveness builds brain power. 

Subtle use of the head, neck, and eyes that activates the brain.

Use of feet and all body parts in rhythmic patterns that connect and build hardwired areas of the brain.

Watching children performing ballroom dance on Dancing with the Stars has inspired me.  I was impressed by their ability to go completely into every gyration needed to perform the stylized movement.

The clarity of the children’s movements required an ability to explore the extreme range of each movement of the hips, the rib cage, the head, legs, and arms.  That detail combined with putting it all together with a partner was stunning.

How is it that children can go directly to this kind of exploration and for adults it is a longer process?  Studies on the brain show that children build brain maps early on and that the brain has a process of discarding old information to build new maps.

Even more important is the processes that children have built since birth.  Their job is to explore the full range of every movement possible, every sound, every color, every facial expression, every smell.  It is only later that they begin to discriminate and select the ones that they need to survive in their family and their culture.

Children have the “corner” on the exploration market when they choose to use it like the dancers on Dancing with the Stars.  They explore the full range of every little movement.  They go there and program it into their brain.  That is what children do.

How are adults different?  I am an extreme case to find out why it takes me so long to learn dancing.  For most adults, there is the awkward stage of doing something unfamiliar, no brain map.  Then if the fun is great enough and the encouragement of friend or spouse is enough, they go for the fun.  Or if the social benefit of meeting the opposite sex is important, they go through the learning process.

Some women have an easier time because they built the maps in childhood dance classes.  This is not the case for women like some of the female Dancing with the Stars contestants who have chosen sports or careers with less movement.  These women like most men have to start from ground zero to build the brain maps for dancing.

In inquiring about men, I have heard from dancing instructors that lawyers and engineers take to dancing more readily than others.  My guess is that they go directly to build the brain map with their sense of detail and determination.  It is a “can do” attitude but one that is related to building detailed maps.

For me, I have to go through a layer of emotion before I get to the movement.  I wade through how I feel about myself doing the movement and how I have reacted in the past.  Then I send it all to a holding pond before I agree to commit it to memory.

Consequently, every time I begin to dance, it is like I am beginning new.  I have forgotten everything and have to try the step to renew my experience of the step.  Then when the feeling kicks in, I have entered the “holding pond” brain map.