Author: bettechamberlin

What is your belief about your spine?

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

There is a truth about our design that is inescapable. Yet often, our beliefs are in conflict with that truth. And knowing just a bit more about our spine can invite a change for the better.

I ask my students to answer these 3 questions about their spine.

  1. Where does your spine begin and end?
  2. Is your spine more flexible or more stable?
  3. What bones connect to your spine?

 

Sometimes when a new student walks into a first lesson I can see that they are trying to lengthen their stature. For sure, this is a worthwhile endeavor, and one which I focus on. Yet, I find that the way to modify posture is to question one’s belief about the structure and quality of their spine.

First, let’s answer question #1 Where does your spine begin and end?  

Your spine starts at the level of your ears, the intersection point is behind your eyes. Your bony skull (your head) sits atop your first vertebrae (C1), the Atlanto occipital joint.  Your head/neck/rest of your spine relationship has everything to do with balance, poise and availability for movement – think accelerator (freedom in the neck muscles) in place of brake (contraction in the neck muscles).

When you want your car to move, you release the brake and depress the accelerator. Your neck muscles are NOT designed to brake in order to HOLD your head in place – exactly the opposite!  Let go and go!

#2  Is your spine more flexible or more stable?

Actually, both.  Although no one intervertebral joint moves very far, there are many, so our torso is quite mobile.  Yet because of the curves (cervical, thoracic and lumbar) the spine is stable when we want it to be.  Think about carrying a bunch of books or a water jug on top of your head.  Because your spine is springy it can manage the distribution of weight.  Men lifting their partners need a stable and springy spine.

#3  What bones connect to your spine?

Your 12 pair of ribs (right and left) connect to your spine in the back, and the sternum in the front (except for the 2 floating ribs on either side that only attach to the spine).  Keeping the breath flowing freely throughout your swing, waltz or tango enables the ribs to move away from and towards the spine, giving it a bit of massage.

The back of your spine connects to your sacrum, which which connects to your pelvis.

The takeaway.

If we are to have “good posture” we are better off knowing that our spine is buoyant, strong, stable, breathing, flexible and curvy.  If that changes your belief at all, think about these qualities in your lessons and you will notice a difference in movement quality, freedom and flexibility.

Happy Dancing!   If you would like to book a lesson with me, please use my contact form, tell me about yourself and leave your availability.  I will respond within 24 hours.

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

 

 

 

Is there such a thing as effortless dancing?

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

I clicked the play button on the video and was transported to that wonderful world of pleasure, excitement and amazement.  It was Fred Astaire dancing in “Top Hat and Tails”, posted by Fred Astaire Wisconsin.  You can see it here:

Without question,  I am not the first dancer to name Fred Astaire  as a model of freedom, ease and coordination. There is just something about his movement that evokes  a pleasure derived from watching a fundamental lightness born of grounding, confidence and joy.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, when asked on the day of Astaire’s death what inspired him most, he answered, “the quality that I admired most from his dance was effortless, very light and crystal clear”.

George Balanchine revealed his own genius as a ballet choreographer, yet along with Rudolf Nureyev cited Astaire as, hands down, the century’s greatest dancer.

Balanchine goes on to say “He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.  George Balanchine (quoted in Horizon, Jan. 1961)

I’m fascinated by Balanchine’s  last description of Astaire’s  dancing as distilled.

Distilled means something is removed, made more pure, or as definition.com explains, “to extract the essential elements of; refine”.

Distilling as a way of becoming more effortless in your dancing, still means there is much work to do.

And the work is mental.  Using your brain.

Here are 3 things that can help you achieve this.

  1. An awareness of what you are already doing.  Am I bracing, holding my breath, tightening my neck, trying to be ‘right’?
  2. When you know what you are doing, create a new approach through thinking of what you do want, in place of doing something that is familiar, which is driven by our habit. For example, thinking about widening your shoulders away from one another rather than physically pushing them back.
  3. Maintaining a synergy between the above 2 things.  Only when you are aware of that pesky inefficient habit can you make a change.

 

In other words, the form we are adopting in our dancing is borne of an absence of stuff that gets in our way. Think prioritizing lightness and freedom instead of  trying hard (again, what we already know).

If you want to know in more detail how to achieve more lightness, effortlessness in your dancing you will need to distill your movements down to what is truly needed.  I work with dancers teaching them just that.

Happy Dancing!   If you would like to book a lesson with me, please use my contact form, tell me about yourself and leave your availability.  I will respond within 24 hours.

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

 

Stepping into the unknown to gain clarity

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

I remember when the only way to solve a movement challenge was to bounce from one solution to another.

Ticking them off in a fury of trial and error using known options.  Known, yet not workable.

Arm styling using my arm more ‘effectively’ as opposed to looking at organizing my whole self in order to get the arm working well. Changing directions in a crossover break by turning my head without looking with my eyes. And stiffening my stature in an effort to have better posture.

Habits, in particular from my ballet training, run deep.  I’ve found that it helps to always be attuned to them.

As a review:  the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Done these things?

I have, with poor outcomes.  We are continually recruiting our known options for the purpose of making improvements:  Including ballroom technique.

So, why do we often choose what is clearly not working simply because it is familiar?  Or, in other words, not going beyond the scope of what is our habit.

Because the familiar habit is a familiar feeling.  It’s difficult not to cling to that.  We don’t seek something else because there is an immediate sensation and satisfaction that says ‘this feels right’, even when we know that that very thing is not working.

So, it is worth thinking outside of the rumba box……..yes, proper hip action is important, placement of the feet (V position), good posture – what IS that?  Easeful, upright posture in ballroom is the same as easeful upright posture in your life.  The only difference in ballroom is that you are applying it to a form,  a frame and the movement that follows.

If you are compressing your spine when drying/fixing your hair, you are probably doing the same thing while moving around the dance floor with your partner.

Here are 3 things that you can do to become aware of your posture no matter what you do:

  1. Neck tightening in response to a trigger – picking up that dropped blueberry off the floor, speak, be  annoyed, laugh, extend your head/spine back to look at the moon or while being dipped by your partner.
  2. Breathing – notice when you stop or when it is shallow. Particularly before a challenging section of choreography. Our body needs oxygen just at these moments.
  3. Expand the space around you – see the whole room, both objects and people.

 

My students are amazed when they learn tools that were unknown to them.  When we observe  habits that are no longer working, those tools are easier to apply.

This is the process I can offer you.  You will feel more easeful, alive, have less pain and gain clarity about how your brain effects your body.   We are using our brain every day automatically.  Imagine the benefits of applying our brainwork in a conscious new direction? 

Happy Dancing!   If you would like to book a lesson with me, please use my contact form, tell me about yourself and leave your availability.  I will respond within 24 hours.

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How’s your conditioning? It’s not just physical….

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

I used to think that conditioning  only referred to activities such as exercise, body work, and all manner of movement in support of competitive ballroom dancing.  We talk a lot about forming a strong and flexible back, lats that are willing to be activated in Latin and Rhythm, and upper backs that bend as the head tilts to one side or the other in Smooth or Standard.

Ballroom is an athletic endeavor as well as an art form.  So, the idea is to best use ourselves in a way where we can elicit both.

Conditioning exercises offer weight work, stretching, cardio and a multitude of workout expressions (think The Barre Method, Pilates, Yoga, Gyrokinesis/tonics, biking, running, swimming, the list goes on and let’s not forget Pole dancing -I hear another great workout, although I have never tried it!).

Any of these assist our dancing in a way that gives us more physical fitness.  All good.

But I am also thinking about conditioning in a new way.  Here is a definition via Merriam Webster: 

A simple form of learning involving the formation, strengthening, or weakening of an association 

between a stimulus and a response

 Ha!  Amazing, Merriam Webster must have known about FM Alexander’s  troubles trying to find out how to stop contracting his neck muscles before reciting Shakespeare!!
To cut to the chase, so much of the dancing we do is governed by our learning and our conditioning within that learning.
 
Here’s an example:
You are approaching a telespin.  As the woman, you step forward and your partner spins around you as you pivot while closing your feet.  We may be conditioned  to tighten our neck, hold our breath or stiffen our backs unknowingly as a habitual association between a stimulus and a response.
The stimulus is the telespin, the response are habits as above cloaked in ‘this is right, I know this’. ‘It is familiar’.
BUT, maybe NOT efficient.
Our conditioning, or habitual reaction is strong and ingrained. We react all day long, but in a split second, unconsciously. It is a very useful approach to recognize the familiar, right feeling thing that isn’t working for us anymore, and then take a pause and think about doing something different, however new and unfamiliar.
 Another way of practicing change and recognizing conditioned habits is to sit and meditate in unconditioned awareness.  In this way, we are in the present, not the past, not the future but being just now, in the moment.  I have become acclimated to this simple yet supremely powerful way of being.  If you meditate, you already know the value of pausing.
The work of dancing is not only sweat born out of hard work, but being curious about the habits that get in the way.  I always do better when I remove something that interferes rather than adding something.
I can help you to identify and troubleshoot interferences that make dancing a lot harder than it should be.

Happy Dancing!   If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

Be Curious like a 2 year old

Posted on | by bettechamberlin | 1 Comment on Be Curious like a 2 year old

Why is it that we seem to equate curiosity with 2 year olds.  I mean, aren’t 4,  5  and 6 year olds curious?  Do we have to go all the way back to age 2 to remember that we were truly curious?

Hmm..think about it…..

Kids don’t set out to be curious. They don’t say I’m curious about those lights in the sky and which ones are planets, which ones are stars.  They are merely enthralled with the excitement of discovery.

One of the best reasons to be around a toddler is it reminds us of how pure our joy of discovery once was.   However, many adults are seeking the unknown, unfamiliar and uncommon inspiration for their work;  accessed through being in the moment, unfettered by rights, wrongs, shoulds,  expectations or obligations.  Just like a 2 year old.

And here’s another reason to re-examine our toddler self.  We had GREAT posture.  Just like the cultural interferences that may have dampened our curiosity in favor of ‘rightness‘, we often find ourselves out of whack and uncomfortable in our own bodies, divorced from the freedom and easy uprightness that we all knew very well as little kids.

But it is possible to regenerate the ease, coordination, and freedom in movement that we knew years ago. Since we once had it inside us, we can access it – but now we need to find that users manual that we didn’t need -UNTIL NOW.

I was grateful to have found my users manual 15 years ago in the midst of intense neck and shoulder pain. (For more about this  click here).  Training in FM Alexander’s discovery was key to kicking me in the butt and teaching me that my ballet habits were firmly established, not useful anymore and not going away anytime soon.  Here are 3 things that I learned and continually pass on to my students:

  1. Be curious – as Moms Mabley said:  “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” It’s impossible to change when using the same tools that have not worked before.  There was no aha! moment for me until  I got curious and questioned my habitual patterns of ‘fixing’ my posture.
  2. Replace “just do it” with “just do less” or the more commonly stated “less is more”.
  3. Question your assumptions about how to change your posture – ballroom or otherwise.  My students inevitably realize that it is infinitely more pleasurable to pause and be curious when change is desired.

 

And YES, we all have things that we want to change – better diet, consistent exercise, stop reacting with anger, gum chewing (I’m doing it now!), sitting at the computer too long (uh-huh) fill in yours here ______.

What’s the habit you want to change?  If you don’t have any, that’s great.  Let me know how you’ve managed to avoid them or how you have eliminated them.

Happy Dancing!   If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

Good Posture Part 2….. and who is this elegant guy?!

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

 

Frederick Matthias Alexander

This older gentleman is pretty spiffy.  He’s probably just out taking a work break, maybe just walked the dog and has some time left to read the front page of the newspaper.  He’s certainly dressed as if he were going to the most important business meeting of his life.

But you would be hard pressed to find a photo of him in anything but a full (often) 3 piece suit with tie, spats and the quiet demeanor of someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about posture, efficiency of movement and an economy of effort.

It is safe to say that this guy – F.M. Alexander contributed to the world some 100 years ago a brilliant assessment of how posture and freedom in movement can be improved in these three key ways:

1)  Be quiet (no exclamation point here)

2)  Believe and operate in a way that your head governs the relationship between your whole spine starting with your neck spine.

3) Be aware of what you are doing while moving, dancing, playing an instrument, bending down – basically everything.  Can you remove some tension?

I remember when posture was all about ‘straightness’.  From the age of 8 on, my ballet training singularly informed my view regarding posture.  Not that I was aware of this at the time.  I was just mimicking my teacher, other students and ‘trying hard’ to look pulled up (as I was constantly being told).

The conundrum of ‘pulled up’ is easily explained in the use of the word pulled:  it is a word that conjures great doing, muscular effort and even strain.  Given that, what is the reference point for good posture?  As I, and my students have learned it is more about removing something than adding something.

And that thing is unneeded muscular tone.

But the how to do that is a surprisingly simple yet challenging process of realizing the strength of our habits and the resistance to change.  Sound familiar?

Alexander’s discovery illuminated to the world that there are scientific tools that can be learned to move through life by responding (change, using your brain as a guide) as opposed to reacting (using your habit as a guide).

What do you notice about FM’s  ‘posture’?  I’m seeing someone who is sitting with a minimum of effort, yet fully upright, even in his mid 60’s.

Interested in learning how he got this way?  Watch for my upcoming video explaining more about all this.

Happy Dancing!   If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

 

Competition Preparedness – Here’s how I won and can help you win too!

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

 

Here is my showcase with my new partner Ivan Kudashev,  Jersey City Competition, Fred Astaire Dance Studio regionals. Thank you Ivan for being such a wonderful partner!  We received the highest score out of 47 participants!

Yep, it takes the village of YOU to succeed in developing skill, ease, strength and beauty in any physical endeavor.  Ultimately, if competition is part of your life excitement, you want to feel prepared and confident so you will enjoy yourself while performing.

But there is more to do. Beyond the time you spend in the ballroom, let’s consider what you can do to bring the cat’s meow to your dancing and add fitness to your life as long as you live.

Because I have a professional dance background, people think that I  get out on the ballroom floor and naturally do pretty well. But the reality is that because I’ve made the choice to stay healthy going into my , let’s just say, ‘mature’ years, I do cross training on a regular basis.  It’s not just ballroom lessons.

I’m not a fan of gyms so I make it a priority to walk briskly 2-3 miles a day.  That is my constant. If nothing else happens, at least I’ve done that.  After taking yoga classes for 10 years, I now practice myself in my studio 3 to 4 times a week even if only for 20 minutes.

On days when weather is an issue and I don’t feel like braving the heat, cold or rain, I bike briskly 30 minutes on my stationary bike.  The cardio aspect is helpful in keeping my blood pressure at a healthy level.  That seems to be creeping up over the years, but  boy does getting the heart rate up on a regular basis keep it at bay.

On Saturdays I take a gyrokinesis class with my friend and fabulous teacher, Andrea Sandahl. This class is particularly helpful for ballroom dancers to strengthen, lengthen and create more mobility in the spinal muscles.  Especially great for Latin dancing!  I use some of these exercises in my own teaching.

But for me it’s more about staying healthy and adopting a variety of movement modalities into my everyday life.  And it most definitely does help bring stamina, strength and freedom to the ballroom part of my life.

As far as nutrition, I focus on eating healthy fats, limit grains. and, no surprise here, limit added sugar to 6 (women) to 9 (men) teaspoons per day.  I’ve learned to abandon baked goods and salty snacks for the most part .

But yes, have your chocolate cake/baklava/pie (insert your favorite here) once in awhile!

The work that I do with all my students addresses habits -patterns of movement that are inefficient and limiting.  Becoming aware of  our head/neck/spine relationship is key to getting a leg up (quite literally!) in your ballroom dancing.  Other opportunities are noticing that you hold your breath, overeat, not moving enough during the day, and one of my favorites, learning to pause before losing your temper and saying something that you can’t take back.

In my next blog, I’ll talk more about what actually happens in a lesson and how I can work with you to learn unique tools to help you have more energy, a healthier spine and respond in an efficient way to all matter of stimuli.

Happy Dancing!   If you find this intriguing, book a lesson with me, either on zoom.com or if you are in the NY/NJ area at my studio in Montclair, NJ.  Please use my contact form, tell me about yourself and leave your availability.  I will respond within 24 hours.

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

 

 

 

 

Truth in Dancing

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

As I am in my home studio sneaking peaks of the James Comey hearings, I am struck by the thoughtfulness of his testimony and the tenor of his responses.  They are measured and he is careful not to ascribe fact in a way that would question his testimony. He is honest and hedging – “I could be wrong”, “as I remember it”.

As a seasoned attorney as well as a former FBI director, he is straddling the line between honestly answering questions from both sides of the political spectrum and stopping just short of fueling the flame of what must be some deeply felt emotions.  He is behaving appropriately.

While dancing, we don’t have to withhold our emotions. It is completely appropriate to be outwardly and truthfully feeling and what makes us interesting to watch is all about the emotional content of our dances.  Jive is fun and playful, rumba is the dance of love, cha cha is flirty, waltz is smooth and elegant….. and so on.

The dance styles dictate the mood of emotion that we are asked to access. But after that, we are left to interpret and project the style into our own presentation.  Like actors, recruiting truthful emotions is very much a part of our job as ballroom dancers.

It has always been my experience that the difficulty in accomplishing this truth is juggling the style part and the deeply felt emotion indicated.

For example, cha cha is flirty and playful.  It also has quick hip action, footwork and arm styling.  The challenge for me is to integrate all that technique while maintaining not only the style of cha cha but the truthfulness (organically accessed) of  the style.

Yet, if we want to excel in cha cha – or any other dance style – we’ve gotta do all 3!  Especially the last one, truth.

Konstantin Stanislavski, a seminal Russian actor, director and teacher was known for his focus on mobilizing the actor’s conscious thought and will in order to activate other, less-controllable psychological processes—such as emotional experience and subconscious behaviour—sympathetically and indirectly.[25]

It sounds like we as dancers, whether professional or amateur are seeking the same thing. Crafting our conscious experiences and our subconsious – so often more truthful – into a beautiful mosaic that resonates not only with our audience but ourselves .

So, James Comey, do hold back just a bit.  It is appropriate (my take definitely).  But not for us!  We can appropriately and fully express our feelings on the dance floor without censure or criticism.  In fact, we are apt to get more criticism from NOT doing it. I was told more than once that my dancing was cold!

 Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art. (Stanislavsky)

Happy Dancing!   How do you work with projecting dance styles. If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

Got Passion?

Posted on | by bettechamberlin
Ilya Ifraimov and Nadia Goulina FADS Montville/Princeton

What is that feeling?

For this writing, it’s not about sex but the orientation towards life and finding your true self.  Finding self- what makes you tick, happy, ecstatic, alive, equals an ability to find one’s true passion

I found my own passion later in life and happily added another one 12 years ago.

A bit of back story here:  As an advanced and professional ballet dancer, I knew that I was pretty good at it.  Dancing as a career option was planted by my mother very early in my training.  It was not something that I decided myself, short-circuiting a potential deep, personal connection with ballet.

My dancing days were filled with the requisite classes, rehearsals, performances, massages, pointe shoe sewing, and ubiquitous dieting. I was by nature a disciplined candidate.  I was driven by the attainment of success and being liked by the people who made key decisions regarding upwardly mobile casting and promotions.

My mother was the monkey on my back as my primary motivator, unknowingly contaminating my own potential drive and passion. 

Yawn, another stage mother story?

She was, and I was a dancer who worked hard – too hard.  Even though I was not really walking in my own shoes, the nature of ballet was simply this:  You either work your brains out and rise to an acceptable level of achievement or you hang up your toe shoes.  So I did – work my brains out.

There is a difference in the kinesthetic condition – your level of muscular tone – when doing something that emanates from your core.  That place of excitement, energized by that pleasurable connection, on a cellular level.  Something you are passionate about.

It is true that I valued the time I spent as a professional ballet dancer and because I derived satisfaction from being good at it, the run was successful and so much of it was exciting, rewarding and rich in friendships made and retained to this day.

However, depression runs deep in the offspring of parents who push their own agendas on their children.  At a point in my life when I stopped performing, taking class and teaching ballet I was not a happy camper.  Depression, just like the hole in the ground, enveloped my being. What could I do that I decided, enjoyed and was good at?

My own discovery of what I wanted to do came after years of Jungian therapy with a very gifted woman. With her help, I  found the Alexander Technique, a method of self-care in an environment of awareness and curiosity –  tension reduction  and the means to modulate tone in our bodies for the better.

I was stunned after my first lesson at how free and easeful I felt.  There was something delicious about giving up a whole lot of bracing which I was unknowingly holding onto as if I were still performing.

For years I longed to explore the art of ballroom – for my own enjoyment.  This became a platform to utilize the amazing principles that I trained for via the Alexander Technique.  I am most comfortable working with movers who wish to explore the unique tenets of Alexander’s discovery – the head, neck, spine relationship.

It is always a joy to see dramatic changes during the course of our partnership.

I’m grateful to have found not one but two passions, and to be able to pass these on to dancers is thrilling.

 It’s never too late to explore, find, and pursue your passions!

Happy Dancing!     What is your passion story?

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

Lose Phone – Reduce Stress

Posted on | by bettechamberlin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Sunday, my cell phone went missing. I was sure it was in my house but after looking in all intuitive and non-intuitive places  – nothing!

Oh my.  This is my everything phone, both personal and business.  I will spare you the details around this loss and talk about the shock of the loss and an interesting silver lining to an upsetting mystery.

On Monday, I was still looking for it, but I needed to be out doing errands for a few hours.  As I started the car the glaring ‘bluetooth connection failed’ appeared and became yet another reminder that my Iphone was indeed in a location unknown to me .

My phone addiction – no awareness until now – was beginning to kick in and thoughts of missing family ’emergency’ calls and prospective client inquiries was unsettling. Texting was out, weather and time checking (no wristwatch here!), and of course no opening all those important dinging emails begging immediate attention. (Delete, delete, and delete…)

By the time I got to the third errand, boy did my nervous system calm down!  My un-tetheredness to my device was morphing into the realization that “I am happily minus a familiar, habitual YET now conscious stimulus that creates a tension filled non stop startle“. By removing it, I experienced freedom of movement,  And a freedom of thought.

Being aware of nervous system states and the means to modify them adds a welcome discovery to my own predicaments. But not always……think the shoemakers children have no shoes.

BUT, in this case I immediately noticed space, expansion, calm and a clear contrast to my previous phone dependent nervous errand run.  I breathed, smelled the roses (in the grocery store), and felt my senses come alive. (I’m not making this up!)

So,  remove interferences in order to change inefficient patterns.  Hmmm…..Did I unconsciously lose my phone in order to consciously teach myself a lesson?  Maybe.  This I will never know for sure.

But, for sure the experience of calm and breathe that appeared due to the absence of a strong stimulus was a powerful reminder that we always have a choice.

I feel fortunate that somewhere in the netherworld a choice was made for me this time and I was the lucky recipient.

So will I replace my phone?  Of course! I am now thinking about getting an upgrade status, with no upgrade available. Bring the price down.  Get the best deal.

But I am also planning to schedule phone moratoriums where I can be untethered for longer periods of time, smell the roses (again in the grocery store), enjoy what I am doing in the moment.

Sorry Iphone, we’re separating……..more often.

Happy Dancing!     Do you have a habitual excess of muscular tension that you would like to eliminate? Please leave your comments  I can help you – it’s what I do for others (if not always for myself!)

If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.

To get my free 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.