When I was a young ballet dancer, people commented on how straight my posture was – no misappropriated curves in my spine (actually few curves altogether!), basically straight.  I would hear “you have such good posture”. I thought I did and so did they.

The truth is that none of the above mentioned qualities were examples of good posture – especially outside of the studio and stage. Dancers, musicians, singers, and athletes can all develop habits while pursuing their passion and unknowingly pile on interferences.  They may be in the form of stress both mental and physical and recruiting the wrong muscles for the job prohibiting the needed muscular effort elsewhere.

If interference persists, pain, ache, tightness and injury may be the result.  I was surely there 15 years ago.

We still talk about good posture as an important contributor to health and wellbeing.  What is less talked about, though, are the potential pitfalls of our belief around good posture.

Do  these statements ring true?

1. Having good posture means a straight neck and spine.
2. Having good posture means that you are “doing” something.
3. Having good posture means that you are pulling up.
4. Having good posture means that you are very relaxed.

If we take  statements 1, 2 and 3 as inaccurate, would the contrasting #4 be accurate?

The answer is a definite NO. Very relaxed is probably collapsed or  another form of compression.

So, how in the heck can we improve our posture if our potential ‘fixes’ are all counterproductive?

Exactly!

Most postural recommendations arise out of a sense of ‘doing’ something.  The problem is that when we try to correct our posture by physically doing it, we are accessing what we already know quite well – OUR HABITS.  Oh dear, we are often back to square one.

Posture, or how we move ourselves in our lives can be tricky.  Here are some common approaches. See if you can spot yourself.

1. Stiffening or bracing. (Vertebrae are held in place with little flexibility. Movement restricted)
2. Pulling down. (Vertebrae are compressing.  Movement restricted).
3. Knowingly or unknowingly holding your breath to “keep everything together”.  Movement restricted because your diaphragm and ribs are not moving.
4. Keeping your neck ‘straight’ and tall.  See # 1.

Here is what I know from years of training and teaching:

• Good posture comes from a belief that our thinking can be a powerful conscious tool that can modulate the tone in our body. (BTW, we are doing that anyway- but it is unconscious).
• We can modulate the tone in our body by understanding oppositions and by recognizing habits of tension that interfere with automatic uprightness.  Look to toddlers and animals for this!
• Good posture includes an awareness of our pattern of breathing.  Do we breath shallowly, breath in and out with unnecessary tension, or barely at all?

Every one of us dancers, social, competitive, amateur or professional can improve our level of performance by doing more thinking and doing less doing.

If this seems unfamiliar – you are right – but that is the point.

If you want to find out more, book a lesson with me, either on Zoom 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.

Happy Dancing!   If you know other dancers who may benefit from reading my blog, please forward.  If you are a teacher or studio owner, I can do a workshop on location.

Imagine over dinner, you and a friend are trying to remember the name of an unusual  named object and you both know what it is, BUT….., you simply can’t come up with it.  It is on the tip of your tongues.

(This very scenario happened in a lesson last week between my student and me).

One of you comes up with the second word, INDUCER – yes that’s it and….the first is….?

Nothing comes to mind!

We can choose to go right to the google search bar and type in “INDUCER the thing that goes on your occiput”.

(Note: the Still Point Inducer™ was inspired by Osteopathic Physician John E. Upledger, developer of CranioSacral Therapy).

And voila!  Here it is:

No more wondering; mystery solved – STILL POINT!. The information was quickly accessed, but the brains potential to recall was impeded.  Hmmm..

I thought, what if we wait a bit and don’t challenge our nervous systems to remember in this very instant, but let it marinate for awhile while the brain continues to wonder?

Although difficult, I managed to inhibit my desire to google it.  And impressively, she did too!

That day, 3 hours later, I was taking a walk and Still Point, literally popped into my brain.  I wasn’t trying to recall it, but there it was.  We’ve all been there and it’s a bit weird.

The internet paired with google is a godsend to us curious humans who want more information quickly. It is unequivocally a huge money/time saver. But, I’m wondering what can be gained from letting our brains process tip of the tongue moments the good old fashioned way.  Not google, not even that anachronistic thing called an encyclopedia.

But googling how ‘google it’  affects our nervous system returns few results.

Ironic, huh?

I did find this one:

Is Google Making Us Stupid?  What the Internet is doing to our brains.

The author, Nicolas Carr shares his own experience:

“….what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”.

In Alexander discovery terms, here is how the availability of 24/7 instantaneous access to all information affects our nervous system:

• Although we are in the moment, we are too rapidly adding information to our limited mental space.
• Eventually,  our nervous system becomes habituated to being forced to react in a staccato manner all the time.
• We are living in a version of fight or flight.

 

Changing habits rewires our nervous system.  I help people do this every day to feel better.  Whether it is creating more ease and flow in your daily life or your ballroom routines there is a toolkit available to you 24/7 once you spend some time noticing what you are already doing that is working against you so that you can provide new intentions, and thought processes that work for you.

I’d like to thank the Internet AND google for helping me with this blog!!

If you want to find out more, 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.

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

Learning….

It’s a noble process that feeds our soul and ego.

Learn a new skill  to improve yourself,  learn French, or add a checkmark to a long delayed To Do list.

But what if unlearning makes learning so much more efficient?

When I started my training in un-learning, I had no idea how challenging it would be –   days of confusion, and wanting that old model of ‘you do this and then this happens’, period.  As a dancer I had to execute, practice, learn new choreography, and acquire better technique.  It served me well, until my body started to complain.

But I soon discovered that unlearning habits that are creating impediments is truly the organic method of moving forward with ease. The world opened up in a way that I did not anticipate.

As I went to my AT training each day, the only requirement was to bring my curiosity.   No conclusions, no remembering, no testing myself or getting anxious about not having accomplished enough.  Does that sound luxurious to you?  I came to love this process and I began to see real results.  Yes, my friend, unlearning creates results.

Here’s one example:  In a recent lesson, my rower and I discussed the shoulders, thinking expansion through the shoulder girdle  and widening in the whole torso.  Pushing your shoulders back is a muscular doing that cannot be maintained in the long run and it is not a productive workaround.

I continue to work with my students in this way…….identifying ingrained habits and selecting new thinking to replace them.  We are thinking anyway, it’s just that we’re not aware of it and we are mostly guided by habit.

Here’s another more pedestrian example:  Using your cell phone – compressing your neck to look down at your phone and tightening in your hip joints.  And, we’ve been visually conditioned to see this collective habit as RIGHT.  But hey, what if we just changed our way of using our phones by NOT compressing and holding our phones in front of our face.

Then, that would seem RIGHT. Right?  I will definitely go out on a limb and say that right is also respectful of how we are designed.

If you suffer from physical discomfort both in your daily life and when you are doing what you love to do,, I can teach you how to care for yourself for the rest of your life!

If you want to find out more, 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.

Hey Dancers,

My student, (and already beautiful pro smooth dancer), Erin Marie Akin reflected on how  her lessons with me, along with the amazing self care principles of  the Alexander Technique, helped heal her back pain.

Click below for the video.

If you would like to know more about how I can help you to learn to care for yourself by reducing pain and discomfort both on and off the dance floor , 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.

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

I bought a new coffee maker last week and with happy expectation began to set the current time.  The time shown would not budge. I read the user instructions over and over, and followed step by step to set the time yet nothing changed.   Time frozen at 10:28.

I called customer service and shared my frustration.  She said “does it say 10:28”?  Yes!  “That is actually a sticker – just remove the sticker.”  Voila!  Problem solved. The takeaway?  User manuals aren’t always user friendly.  (Sound familiar?)  

We are not issued a users manual for how to operate our body when we most need it – mostly after the age of 8 when sitting in chairs in school, and soon after hunched over phones that become an exercise in spinal compression.

While being engaged in physical activity on a regular basis helps to activate muscular engagement and can be an antidote to downward pull (or bracing), we don’t really know how to modify our ingrained habits organically.

Years ago, I was baffled by the fact that I was a retiring ballerina who spent quite a few years working on acquiring strength, placement, beautiful lines and stamina. (Here’s my full story).  Yet,  with all that training – admittedly grueling at times – I was teetering on the brink of  hopelessness, coupled with anguish and pain. This, even though I had stopped performing, and was active raising a family.  But I was fortunate to discover something new and it was the only thing that helped.

It’s this:

Our mind, which is controlling our movements all day long anyway can direct us in a more efficient way, towards more ease with selectively controlled muscular effort.

If this sounds vague and impossible, try this simple movement:

Stand facing a mirror, arms hanging at your sides.  Raise one arm to the side, shoulder level.  Notice what muscles in your arm created that movement. Did your neck tighten?  Repeat a few times.

Now tell yourself to make the same movement, but remain still.  Notice if by only telling yourself to move you experience the muscular action previously.

Now begin moving your arm to the side, as before, but this time you will think of leading the movement with your fingers.  Did you use the same muscles as before?  Did your neck muscles tighten this time?

Did you use your brain to make that change?

If so, imagine what this new thought process can do for your ballroom dancing!

If you want to find out more about acquiring a User’s Manual for your body, 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.

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

When a student books an appointment with me, I ask them to fill out a form indicating what they want to get our of their lessons.  Often, the answer is “I want to work on my posture”. Over the  years teaching the principles of the Alexander Technique,  I have realized that without question our culturally conditioned answer to change is to ‘work’ at it.  Even if that is not consciously the thought.

Immediately, I encourage the deletion of the word ‘work’ from their image of improving their posture.

Quite the opposite of work.  If I’m going to preach about anything  (sorry, I can do that!), it is this:  Improving your posture is NOT about ‘working’ at it.  AT LEAST NOT IN THE WAY WE ARE CONDITIONED, in other words, work as muscular effort, tension, strain and the rest.

Forget about exercises for adjusting the position of your head  on your spine.  You are just making it worse. You may be successful in momentarily modifying the stacking element of your head on your spine, but it is reapportioning one holding pattern (your habit) in place of another.

So, what is this concept of changing your posture without re-positioning something/applying work?  How do you do that?

Let’s replace the words, work, do, implement, re-position, with the word THINK.

Yep, THINK.

Or another way of looking at it; pause and think and then proceed.

My ballet conditioned body was starved for another option besides working hard.  I discovered it by practicing the new principles that I learned from my years of training in the Alexander Technique.

In our Ballroom dancing, like ballet  – we want it to look easy, but we need to know how to BE easy by changing our thinking.  This is what I have focused on in my ballroom dancing – definitely not 100% successful, but imagine what it would mean to knock your unnecessary work load down 50, 60, 70 per cent?  Wouldn’t that feel great?

I can help you to know WHAT to think!

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.

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

Hey Dancers, Watch this short video to learn how to improve your posture via animal instinct!

Click here

Rabbit Hole: the definition from ‘the free dictionary.’

To enter into a situation or begin a process or journey that is particularly strange, problematic, difficult, complex, or chaotic, especially one that becomes increasingly so as it develops or unfolds

I’m not thinking about the political meaning, used nowadays to describe the current conditions which are some or all of the above.

I’m thinking lately about the parallels between Alice’s adventures (down the rabbit hole) and the process of continual change that we are faced with, including the positive changes we want to make in our dancing.

Change is inevitable even when that change is avoided, yet unavoidable.

Change #1 – Inconvenient, unwanted, yet unquestionably necessary

Lately, I’ve been particularly annoyed by the many traffic detours I’v been forced to endure.  If I wanted to get to where I was going, I had to go along with the detour (change).  I’m almost positive that, if you drive, you have them too.  (Even if you don’t drive yourself, you’ve been effected by them).  Alice too was confronted by the sudden upheaval of her fall down the well.

This is an example of unavoidable change.  After many days of frustration, I remembered to leave 10 minutes earlier than usual to account for the darned annoyance.

Change #2 – Exploring the benefits of unnecessary change

But what about change that is not essential, avoided  because of a certain comfort with the familiar, regardless of whether or not that familiar is working for you anymore.  We don’t have to make changes just because we or in many cases, others, have an inkling that we should.

I wrote in my last blog about how I was in my own rabbit hole while learning cuban hip action.  Yes, strange,problematic, difficult, complex, resulting in a chaotic brain.  And for awhile, the chaos did increase. 

The discomfort I experienced, trying to get comfortable with this new movement pattern was discombobulating and frustrating.

My body and mind insisted on figuring it out based on my habitual known cues.

Oh dear. That was not working.

It wasn’t until I stopped seeking a familiar feeling and basically trusted that I’d best let myself be uncomfortable as part of the process, that my whole body started to cooperate.

For the past 15 years,  F. M. Alexander’s discovery has enlightened my own kinesthetic discovery and has enabled me to help my students discover their own.

Here are 3 things that you can do right now to help make the changes you want whether it is to feel  comfortable in a new ballroom style or movement challenge, adopt healthier eating habits,  or stop negative thinking in its tracks.

1.  Believe that change is not possible without giving up that familiar comfortable feeling.  It is your habit and it’s not going away by keeping it front and center.  It will always be there, but give yourself a chance to feel foolish or just plain dumbfounded.

2.  Get support from others.  Verbalize what you are trying to change and ask for feedback and patience.

3.  Be aware of the moment that you are stimulated to react habitually and stop consciously.  Give it a moment to flounder.  Then act by responding with a different, more efficient (yet wrong feeling!) result.

This is what I can help you with.  Making changes for the better can be daunting, but  I have been down the rabbit hole and can tell you that it is a fruitful trip if you can open yourself up to curiosity and the unfamiliarity that can come with it.

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.

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

To get my free e-booklet 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness, click here.