Interrupting the posture blog with this Healthy Shoulder video!

Shoulder strength and flexibility is a HUGE topic. In fact, I have multi-hour workshops on this topic alone and I still run out of time when I teach them. I love to work in this area because its not only healthy for everyday use of our shoulders and arms, but can make a huge impact to being safe and efficient with our dance movements.

Along with arm undulations and other arm movements, shoulder strength and flexibility also allows you to have better isolation in your torso! Ribcage rotations, Bodywaves and the Arabic family of movements are just a few areas where you can see major improvement just by working on your shoulders.

This video is a little introduction on a few things you can do to begin adding strength and flexibility to your shoulders. Two very important notes:

- Always work all areas of the shoulder joint including the anterior and posterior torso. A full conditioning sequence is available in a few of my online series and I'm always happy to work with you via skype or in person to create a plan specifically to meet your needs.

- Working on flexibility through strength is the safest way to find more range of motion. These exercises     guide you through both at the same time! 

Stay tuned for much more information about shoulders and arms later in the posture series!

Now that we have the foundations of feet under us….let’s move up to the knees!

Before we get started, it’s important to review that the knees are hinge joints, meaning like the elbow, they don’t rotate, well at least not much. There is a little "give" in the joint so you injure yourself with gentle twisting movements of the legs and torque in your step, but they are certainly not made to twist. Anytime your knee is not pointing forward, the rotation is actually coming from your hip joint! More on that later.

Our standard dance posture requires knees to be “soft” meaning a slight bend. This is important for a number of reasons. I’ll focus on three here. Keep in mind, many dance movements require more bend than our standard posture, the details of those movements are covered in those classes.
 
Safety – Safety first! Bending the knee joint is flexion. We want flexibility in the knee when dancing as this allows more mobility when we are pivoting, spinning, etc. If we danced with our legs straight, in extension, we’d lock out the joint and be more susceptible to injury as we tried to turn and pivot. Adding a slight bend to the knee ensures we aren’t hyper-extending. Yes, ballerinas hyper-extend their knees, but they also turn and pivot quite different than we do.

Alignment – Many people tend to lean slightly forward when they stand up straight. This could be due to the types of shoes we all wear, tight psoas and hip flexors due to a more sedentary lifestyle and many more reasons. Regardless of the reason, this stance takes the pelvis into more of an anterior tilt and shifts more weight in the ball of the feet.Not only does this put more strain on the anterior (front) portion of the body, but it will inhibit the natural movement of the pelvis and can cause more than natural curve in the lumbar spine. Example, try to shimmy with your weight shifted forward, then try to shimmy with your pelvis stacked over heels. It likely feels more relaxed with your pelvis over your heels. Putting a slight bend in your knee keeps the anterior (front) and posterior (back) body engaged for better balance! 

While we do have many movements that require us to lift our heels, this doesn’t mean we shift our weight forward, we are still keeping our shoulders back, hips over heels and knees soft. We explore this concept in more depth during classes related to the Arabic family of movements.

The standard posture of American Tribal Style® BellyDance can be challenging for so many of us when we first start dancing. Many times in level one class I remind everyone to check in with your dance posture and usually when someone is struggling with a move, it comes down to adjusting their dance posture. Unless we are constantly checking in, we tend to revert back to our normal, every day posture. 

Why is it so challenging? Our every day life greatly affects the way our body develops, where we hold tension, muscle weakness due to lack of use, overuse of other muscles that pull our bodies off balance, etc. I view our dance posture as "simply" bringing our body back to anatomical neutral. In other words, what would our natural alignment be if we didn't have all these every day life situations affecting it? What would our natural lumbar spine curve be? Where would we hold the weight in our feet? Where would our shoulders be in relation to our hips or what would our neck alignment look and feel like? 

Our posture is not only very beneficial to express the movement vocabulary, but we can use it as a tool to gain better body awareness, recognize imbalances and begin to understand what we can work on to bring our bodies into natural alignment. Everyday activities like sitting, driving, crossing our legs, looking at our phones, wearing heels, etc greatly affects our anatomical neutral posture and natural alignment. Working on dance posture in every day life will not only help bring us back into balance, but will help reduce injury, keep us dancing longer, showcase more expressive movements more safely and effectively and even heal existing injuries.. In other words, our dance posture can actually be quite healing and counter the affects of every "life posture". 

Its important to understand that the body is a working unit meaning what's going on in your shoulders could be affecting your feet, your glutes could be affecting your knees, etc. There is so much information I'd love to share, but for the sake of time (and not boring the hell out of you), I'll try to keep this blog simple. Plus, a lot of this is best shared and experienced in person with hands on adjustments and exercises.

Either barefoot or in dance shoes, take a moment and stand in your dance posture. 

Let's start with three simple exercises: Close your eyes (ok, well wait until after you read this part).

1. Feel your feet on the floor. I mean REALLY feel your feet on the floor. Feel grounded. Where is most of your weight? In your toes, in your heels? Perhaps you roll a little to the outside of your feet or the inside?

2. Next, lift one foot off the ground and notice the areas of the feet and ankle where the balanced foot makes adjustments.

3. Finally, with both feet on the ground, lift your heels and notice the changes in balance. Are you rolling in our out? Shifting weight more forward or even through the center line of your body?

Most of us don't stand in a balanced posture and we don't even notice it. Where our body tries to find balance and stability in our feet tells a huge story about our alignment. 

Now, let's play around with what balanced feet might feel like:
1. Spread your toes wide.
2. Even your weight across the ball of your foot from your big toe mound to your pinky toe mound.
3. Now even your weight between both points of your heel (inner and outer portions)

​We call this the "four corners" of the feet. ​

Maintaining this balanced foot awareness, try the first two exercises again. Check in with what changed in your dance posture. Did your knees straighten? Did your pelvis move? Perhaps your inner thighs are now engaged or your glutes contracted?
Now try lifting your heels, but maintain the balance equally across the ball mound of your big toe and ball mound of your pinky toe (this space is called your transverse arch)

Is it harder to balance? Just notice what changed. Write it down for later exploration!

Why is this important?  The list of reasons is too long to list here, but I'll share a few of my favorites and the ones I think make the most impact to our movements.

 - Finding balance in your feet is huge for ankle stability and strength which can impact your balance in       shimmies, arabic steps, slow steps like camel and turns. This will also help prevent ankle injuries.

 - Equal balance in your feet means equal engagement in your legs. Many of us roll to the outside edge of our feet (called our lateral arch) and this means the muscles along outside of our legs are working harder than they need to be. This includes our glutes!! How can we find release in our full shimmy if our body is too busy trying to use our glutes for stability when we lift our heels?

 - Balance in our feet also helps engage the adductor muscles along the inside of our legs which in turn  engages core stability as well which.....tadaaaa...... helps us better engage our back muscles for upper body posture!

The body is SO fascinating!!

So what can we do to find better balance in our feet and ankles? Aside from myofascial release (which I'll cover in a later series) and overall foot health, below is my favorite exercise to help balance and strength. Note, if you are currently working with a podiatrist, please check with them before incorporating this.

While in dance posture with all four corners of your feet firmly pressing into the floor, place a yoga block or ball between your ankles.
Lift your heels slowly to a count of five
Hold for five counts
Then slowly lower your heels for a count of five
Repeat 10 times at least twice a week

Try these out and let me know if it helps!


Next in the series, we'll take a look at the knees and hips as we work our way up the body!

I hope this information at least inspires you to check in with your body and have a greater appreciation for our dance posture and hopefully I'll see you at an upcoming workshop and we can dive in a little deeper! 

​

Interested in anatomy and alignment? Check out Alignment of ATS®
​

I think we can all agree that the Ghawazee shimmy combo is a beautiful movement that really accentuates the bounce of the hips in a very rooted and earthy way. It's a fun move to use with traditional music and I think the audience loves it as much as the dancers. 
Like much of our ATS® dance vocabulary, this is movement is a tribute to a folkloric dance, formatted to fit the aesthetic of our dance style. The Ghawazee shimmy is inspired by the Ghawazee (or Ghawazi) dancers of Egypt. You can find an example of the inspiration in this clip of Latcho Drum.

You can see the source of where the flat feet and more earthy shimmy come from, but for today's post, I really want to focus on the arm posture. 
Of course, in ATS® we have an uplifted arm posture, meaning that our arms generally stay at or above shoulder height. Elbows "engaged" meaning the shoulder joint is slightly internally rotating so the elbow joint stays lifted and palms face down and even slightly to the back. Since the Gwahzee shimmy was adapted from a more casual, folkloric dance style, it was decided the relax the arms a little to really accentuate the earthy element. For some reason, the term "relax" or "lower" your arms tends to result in dancers lifting their forearms and creating that W shape we all know is Wrong. So why is this happening and how can we fix it? 

In regular dance posture, we engage the back muscles which helps the arms stay lifted. The lattisimus dorsi works to adduct (bringing arms down from overhead) and really assists with the arms staying lifted. Our deltoids, are definitely involved, but they don't have to work as hard. When we relax our arms, we inadvertently end up relaxing the lattisimus contraction and our body then must rely more on the deltoids to hold our arms up via abduction (pulling arms up from our waist). It may sound like the same movement, but the action is quite different.

The resulting action of deltoid and bicep engagement is the W(rong) arm posture we all know too well.

So how can we correct this?
First, try to keep the back muscles engaged and maintain the internal rotation of the shoulder joint. This will ensure the elbow still stays lifted. We don't want to release the engagement, we simply want to lower the arms slightly
​
Second, imagine your arms elongating and the hands pressing down while keeping the elbows lifted. This will engage the tricep muscles which are antagonists (work in opposition) to the biceps and will ensure you aren't flexing the elbow joint too much in your arm posture. 

If all of that is way too much detail for you, then simply refer to the image below! 
Remember to have fun and keep this movement all about the bounce of the hips! Too much angle in the elbow deters from the beauty of the soft, bouncy, earthy hip movement!

Whether it's social media videos, General Skills, private lessons or Technique for Teachers....I see two small,  but significant barrel turn details that really needs to be addressed. 
​
First, the hands. While most of the time our hands are just naturally relaxing around the finger cymbals, there are a few movements where the hand position really matters. It just looks more elegant, easier to match your other dancers and in some cases can affect the positioning of your elbows too. Which we all know is a big deal in our dance.
​
So what's the scooping all about? We never rotate our palms up and this is no different in the first part of the barrel turn. "Scooping" not only makes the hand look forced and awkwardly placed, but it also takes more energy to rotate the hand and arm back to the correct position to bring them overhead. 
Remember, we want that right arm slightly inwardly rotated at the shoulder. Scooping takes away the ability to inwardly rotate that arm. So what may seems like a tiny, insignificant detail is actually changing one of the biggest parts of the movement, the beautiful arms.

While we are at it...can we talk about the arm placement while they are overhead?

Carolena, Megha and my fellow SSCE instructors have been trying to correct this all around the world for years. Along with the scooping, we're seeing this trend of really wide spacing between the arms when they are overhead. Please be sure to bring the arms closer together. I break this down a little more in my block party video. 

See below:

In short, don't try so hard. Let the movement of the arms be a reaction to the contraction that's happening in the torso. If you keep your arms rounded and hands relaxed, then you'll let the beauty of the Barrel Turn shine through!

​Don't mistake Barrel Turn arms for Barrel of Monkey arms :)

In American Tribal Style® Belly Dance, we use a system of cues to communicate to our fellow dancers what's going to happen next. For instance, a bigger twist on count one of the Basic Egyptian means we are going to 1/2 turn the move.

We don't often get too detailed into the cues of our ATS® vocabulary. Sure, we know what they are and what they communicate, but sometimes I see technique get lost in many of our cues. 

The students in my current online series, Brush Up On Basics, are amazing with how open they are to identifying the bad habits we form over time and seem to love the details I've provided that we often don't get to cover in level one. While I was making a little video for the group based on some questions, I decided this is probably something a lot more people would like to review, so here goes...

Today I want to look at the Egyptian 1/2 turn cue in more detail.

The simplest explanation is that to cue the half turn, just make the right side of your Egyptian (count one of the step) bigger and this indicates we will 1/2 turn between count 3 and 4. Making the right side bigger includes pulling the right arm back to showcase the right hip. For as long as I've been dancing, I've seen dancers cut off this part off of the movement while they are cueing. Instead, they keep their arm by their ear during the cue, but this blocks their face from the audience. See the image below for an example

Do we ever block our face in ATS®? No way. So why is this happening?

Well, aside from someone just not knowing any better, I have a theory as to why this happens, and yes.... it includes anatomy!

The way I see it, the Egyptian is a big, beautiful, spiraling rotation that starts in the hips and continues all the way up to the arm and out the finger tips. We need to maintain this spiral throughout the cue as well.
In order to do this, when the right hip twists more towards our dance box, then your right arm has to pull back a little more to compensate. Otherwise you are just turning our whole body into our dance angle and we lose the upper body spiral. Extra engagement in the arm ensures we maintain the beautiful spiral and opposition that makes the Egyptian so beautiful.

The arms of the Egyptian are definitely strong and engaged. They rely on a variety of contracting muscles in your back (middle Trapezious, Rhomboids, Latissimus and more), your internal and external obliques AND the flexibility of your anterior torso muscles (Pectoralis major for example). The bigger the movement, the more strength and flexibility is needed. This is where cross training comes into play.

So check in with your Egyptian 1/2 cue. Filming yourself can be very helpful. If you find you are guilty of the face block then work on getting the arm back with proper form and keeping the integrity of the move. If you are rocking the Egyptian spiral then just keep rocking it and be sure to check in with your technique from time to time.  Remember, your technique is still applicable in cues! 

Also, check out the slow motion half turn cue video below! It really shows the extra twist!

Thank you so much for joining me!
​The final video in our month long ATS® Block Party series is dedicated to post party recovery!
Here are three wonderfully relaxing things you can do with a yoga block to help you recover from too much fun, a whole lot of dancing or simply a long day.  Enjoy!

Here we are! The final day of this month long party! This is our final active video, but I'll be posting one more bonus block party video later today that is sure to be a party pleaser :) 
In this video we put it ALL together! Using the different block party tricks we learned throughout the month....we incorporate them all into the Arabic step!!

OK, not really! But we do want to keep our arms overhead in many of our moves and we actually do NOT want them waving or wavering for that matter!  A lot of times we simply don't have the arm and back strength to keep our arms engaged, strong and graceful while they are overhead. Well...this little party trick is sure to help!
I used to do this without a block, but was introduced to this more challenging version by miss Ashley Lopez. 
It's definitely more effective with the block!! :)

This party is about to get crazy! Well...you know...as crazy as a one person party with a block can get :)
Here's a "twist" on a beautiful move! This video shows how to use a yoga block to check in with those swimming arms in the Arabic Hip Twist. TWO different party tricks, plus...use this on variations too!!
'll show you how!
Plus added video of Laurie and Veronica trying it out after class!