Category: Alexander Technique

The New York Times did not report the Las Vegas shooting in the Monday morning edition – it happened late Sunday night on East Coast time. My dentist told me Monday morning shaking his head in disbelief.

I was shocked at the number of people killed – 50, and I am sure with hundreds wounded there will be more (as of this writing now 59). It is emerging that life around the world and particularly in the United States has changed forever.

The wild wild west never ended in the United States.  The weapons are more destructive today and capable of killing quickly and efficiently. And the same sense of retribution through being ‘wronged’ and going straight to violence doesn’t seem to have faded. 

These high powered assault weapons are being sold to civilians every day with few questions asked.  These acts could largely be prevented if not for the easy availability of weapons that are designed for war.

And there are fewer and fewer places we can feel safe.  Events that attract people wanting to have fun and forget about the ever troubling violence in our culture are now subject to the very thing they are trying to escape.  Large scale events, inside and in this case, outside, schools, houses of worship – the very places that are designed to be sanctuaries have been victims of unspeakable violence.

What struck me while listening to a reporter speaking about the many people who were shot was this:  After hearing shots and seeing people flee, many froze looking for where the shots were coming from or imagining they were fireworks.   He made the point that they were lacking an awareness of what was happening in the moment and not taking immediate action, which resulted in many deaths and injuries.  This may or not be the case, but it makes me wonder what I would do in this situation.  I’d like to think that the sound of ‘firecrackers’ should not be trusted outside of an event that explicitly announces them.

This reminds me of a powerful story told to me by a good friend whose husband who worked in the second tower of the World Trade Tower on 9/11.  He escaped the second plane hitting his office on the 90th floor.  Because he witnessed the first plane hit the first tower, he quickly decided to get  out of the building, against the convincing – yet sadly inappropriate advice of the security personnel on his floor.

He tried to convince many of his coworkers  to follow him – some did – but the ones who did not perished.  It pains me to think about this.  As it turned out, while running down the stairs at the 56th floor the second plane struck, he continued down to the ground level just in time to exit before the tower came down.  Acting immediately and definitively saved his life.

The tragedy is that the more people who don’t act immediately, the more others do the same. This is commonly called crowd psychology. This field relates to the behaviors and thought processes of both the individual crowd members and the crowd as an entity.^[1] “Crowd behavior is heavily influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and the impression of universality of behavior, both of which increase with the size of the crowd”.^[2][3]

Becoming acutely aware of what is happening in the moment could save time when it matters.  And that could save your and your loved ones life.

Stay aware, be safe……

……and keep dancing.

I sincerely hope that no one who reads this was affected in any way by the events in Las Vegas.

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.  Stay tuned for my upcoming expanded FREE booklet on the 10 Steps!

I’m wondering, “how do we plan?”

We plan our schedules, what competition or showcase to do, what costume to buy/rent, what food to buy, what car to buy, who to marry (one of the more involved ones I dare say!) and the list goes on.

Plans can be for the purpose of organizing, working through a problem and setting short term and long term plans which often become goals.  Goals exist  to push us towards thinking about what we want, what satisfies our psyche.

Personally, I always hated making long term goals – it scared me because I was afraid of making the wrong goal!

How crazy is that?!

Being a dancer/arts program type of person without business acumen, I felt comfortable being a responder rather than a pro active planner.

But by setting a goal, I’ve learned that I can commit to it in a way that then allows me to rethink, or abandon it altogether opening the door to something new and more meaningful.  Changing our goals can be the best plan.

The alternative is to be swayed by culture, parents, friends, bosses and the many other influences that we can be too heavily dependent upon.    That is not to say that these are not valid influences, rather that they are contributing  factors that color the outline that is created by us and us alone.

It’s interesting that the goal I set for myself many years ago – becoming certified in the Alexander Technique – helped to clarify the making of long term plans by learning to make very short term, in the moment plans.

Stay with me here!

By using a simple plan to initiate movement (e.g. a lunge)  by lengthening, and not contracting into that movement, I discovered a template for facilitating a change in general, including the process of deciding a longer term goal, like finishing my college degree decades after I started.

In dancing terms, while recognizing that I was losing my uprightness while working on hip action, I put in place my practiced plan to use my brain/thinking to counter this habit of contracting.  It was such a wonderful relief to have a simply worded plan that I could call upon, whenever I chose.

And here’s where the other side of a simple plan comes in.  The simple plan; to use words that say “yes I want to do this instead of this” was effective yet continually challenged by the feeling that my old familiar habit was right!!.

Changing habits is never a quick process, but an incredibly worthwhile one.  The method that I have learned to help you to address all matter of physical challenges is contained in a mental box full of wonderful new tools that improve health, promote a sense of ease and a reduction of pain and discomfort.

This is what I do, create a mind to body environment that includes a simple plan, easily implemented by you, along with my guiding hands.

If you have back/neck/shoulder pain that hasn’t responded to conventional methods and would like to learn more, book a lesson with me to decide if what I love to do can help you and your ballroom dancing.  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 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.  Stay tuned for my upcoming expanded FREE booklet on the 10 Steps!

I remember when I was a 10 year old ballet student being carted around by my teacher and mother to various dance conventions sometimes meeting important other teachers and choreographers .  They were trying to assess or confirm my talent via other professionals.  I sometimes felt bandied about as a fish would be judged fresh or not based on its  clear, not cloudy eyes.

Perhaps it was fair and reasonable to believe that they were doing the right thing. But to me, I felt like an exhibit.  What overwhelmed my experience was a need for approval from those in a position to confirm what my teacher and mother had already surmised about my talent.  I’m still not sure if I needed approval or I needed approval for them.

Ten year olds need validation, mostly in order to know that they are pleasing their parents/teachers/caregivers.  This is probably a healthy attitude in that the opposite – completely out of control rebelliousness would be disruptive at the least and psychologically concerning in its excess.

But still, a bit of rebelling can teach us what is important , setting boundaries by rejecting ideals and behavior that clearly don’t apply to our learned experience of ourselves and what makes us tick, and what makes for contentment.

Dancing – whether in your living room, ballroom or other events like parties or weddings – is  at the end of the day an expression of YOU.  There is only one of you, as we have heard so many times.  Self approval is our only real guide if we believe in the uniqueness of ourselves.

In ballroom terms, there is no set amount of time that behooves us to learn a routine, improve our hip action or arm styling or lose weight.  Sure it’s nice to set a goal, but that goal may be better served  by basing it on the reality of our own self approval rating.  It is easier to use another’s guide than formulate our own – that is work. Work that believes in the truth of self approval.  (This is not to say that all of us approve of all of our behavior all the time!)

Even if you don’t have a ‘pleasing others’ orientation, our culture tends to encourage achievement levels that are often random in their relentlessness and insistent on prescribed fast results with no room for exploration and failure – for more on my take on failure click here.

I found that I often, and unknowingly don’t even need a person to look for approval, I have the cultural energy field of approval!

One of my favorite quotes concerning this topic is this one from Mark Twain:

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 10 Steps to Competitive Greatness in PDF format, click here.

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.

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.

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.