Movin' Easy Dancewear

@PBS watch Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by psychiatrist Daniel Amen.  In Austin, March 28 at 1:00 pm.  Finally bringing together how every person is unique connecting brain,  health, weight control, supplements, exerise, meditation, and rest.

Here is the promo “How to extend ones life, look younger, lose weight, and decrease the risk of Alzheimers disease, depression, heart disease, and diabetes.”

Healing movements and dances have been passed down through aboriginal community gatherings, shamanic rituals, and temple dances.  Our culture has focused on the application of these dances to the individual.

Today the forms of healing movement are uncountable, from visualization and games to dance forms with long traditions. Most seek to increase the awareness of body/mind/spirit and many seek to connect to a greater intelligence coming through the body.  Here are only a few of

Authentic Movement

Ballet Barre

Chi Gong

Contact Improvisation

Continuum Therapy

Deborah Hay cellular exploration

Deep listening/Tai Chi  http://www.deeplistening.org/heloise/Home/html

Feldenkreis

Gerdheiff

Klein Technique

Modern Dance warmups

Oriental Dance

Praise Dance

Skinner Technique

Tai Chi

Trance Dance

Sufi Dancing

Yoga

What is a dancer’s healing like?  Is it steady and quiet or fitful and restless?  Is it a time to watch other dancers and reflect or a time to hibernate?  Is it a daily celebration of recovery or an impatient quest for rehab?  Is it a time to let friends celebrate the recovery like the high school football player that grins while everyone autographed his cast?  Is it a time to let friends touch like when everyone wants to feel the baby inside the momma to be?

Pilates brings me new, sends my heart through, stays with my day, never ends when I pay.

 Pilates finds me a phrase beginning with my lats and speaking through my back crossing to my hips and my abs.

Pilates catches me in mid air pushing on the earth rising through these ashes to breath life into a new born balloon stretching to a new strength.

In memory of a ballet dancer, Pilates lifts my whole body to anticipate the next move.

In memory of the grand music of ballet, Pilates uses one move to fill the space of my entire body and to easily capture the rounded space in which I live.

In tandem with a ballet dancer, four corners of my torso send out a unison trumpet call that commands first the attention and then the action of every dancer in every muscle of every cell from my metatarsal to my cranial tip.

Riding an @Easy Street Recumbent bike is my discovery channel.  Thanks to dance and Pilates my entire body is a tuned sensor for supporting abs, tweeking muscle twinges, and raising my head and neck so that I watch where I am going rather than what my feet are doing.

Now as a novice, I have to learn to ride the TerraTrike.  Awesome ride.

 I would definitely consult a local dancer to use the MTB rocknroll shoe.  Walking is laughing when I use dance muscles, momentum, and balance.  The MTB is amazing for climbing hills easily and keeping the legs, hips, and back aligned.  And what a blast to relearn how to climb stairs.  Tricky.  I recommend the dance class or at least a dance friend to give a 15 minute lesson on the dancer’s walk.

My dancing shoes from Movin’ Easy Dancewear make dancing easier, comfy, and just the right amount of flash.  My rockin’ MTB’s from Karavel Shoes make walking a flashy move going up the hills while I stretch.

Pilates is the place to explore pain in the muscles and joints.  In Pilates, pain is the road sign for where to go, what part of the body needs to be explored next, what to move, which muscle needs support from surrounding muscles, which bone needs to get in line with other bones throughout the whole body.

Pain does all that?  Right-oh, pain does more than that.  The type of pain then lets me know when it is time to repeat an exercise so my brain will record a new set of connections.  I recognize the different pain because my body knows when we can go deeper without injury.

The body knows what healing is.  My wishes and goals sometimes override what my body already knows.  When pain comes, I usually want to think I am at a fork in the road.  I think I have a choice to either give in to my “bad” knee, my aching back etc etc.  Or I think I have to make it work better by giving it more weight or more repetition.  An even worse variation of option two is when I think if I ignore the pain it will go away.

Pilates instructors are trained to go down a third road, one that explores the connection of strong muscles and flexibility.  Pain is only one warning sign along the way.

Heard at The Pilates Studio Austin.  “Oh, so it is not my hamstrings that is keeping my leg from straightening out.  Got it.  I feel that.  If I use my abs… ouch…that takes work.  Those abs do a lot…straighten it all out…feels different.”

“Boy, I thought you were going easy on me at first.  But look at me wringing wet.  Getting in there with that form is hard work.”