Bellydance Tips

Stretching

1. Intro
2. Basics
3. Tips
4. Benefits

Introduction

Stretching the body is stretching the spirit. Since we hold so much tension and past pain in our bodies, actively working to release the physical blocks can set us free on emotional, psychological, and spiritual levels as well. A good stretching program makes us feel good, at every level!

Stretching Basics
There are two kinds of stretches: the easy stretch, which reduces muscular
tightness and readies the muscle for the developmental stretch, and the developmental stretch, which fine-tunes the muscles and increases flexibility.

1. When beginning a stretch, exhale as you move to the point of mild tension in the muscle. Breathe into that muscle, envisioning it releasing. Be gentle and patient. This easy stretch should be held between 10-30 seconds, until you feel the tension release. Sometimes this is a subtle shift: if you’re not certain, stay with it and keep breathing until you feel another release. If the muscle does not relax, ease off slightly to a more comfortable level of tension: you might have gone a bit too far for the first stretch.
2. After you feel the release in tension, ease a fraction of an inch more into the stretch, until you feel a mild tension again. As before, breathe into it, allow the release to occur. This stretch should be held 10-30 seconds as well, until the tension subsides.
3. Breathing is essential. If your breath is holding as you stretch, it signals the muscles to stay alert and hold on. Releasing your breath into the stretch, especially with vocalizations (such as sighing), cues the muscle that it is time to relax. If you find that you are holding your breath, this is often a sign that you’ve gone beyond mild tension: ease back a little.
4. Support a muscle that is being stretched. Avoid asking the muscle to relax while it is needed to support the body. Use hands, arms, pillows, etc for support so the muscle is free to let go.

Stretching tips:
1. Listen to your body. Physical tension, emotional tension, and flexibility vary from day to day, even moment to moment. As your body is different every day, your stretching should respond to the body in the present moment. Let go of expectations that it “should” be performing any specific way.
2. Tailor a stretch to your personal physical needs. Every body is different: what is good for one may be harmful to another.
3. Exhale as you move into a stretch. Breathe relaxation and release into the muscle.
4. Inhale as you are about to move out of the stretch: it signals your muscles they are about to move. Let the in-breath help lift your body out of the stretch.
5. Avoid bouncing and overstretching to the point of pain. Both can do more harm than good! A more patient, attentive, sustained stretch will get you farther.
6. It isn’t necessary to push yourself or try to go farther than is comfortable. Always stretch just under the point that is your maximum movement: leave yourself a bit of room that you could go farther.
7. Pay attention to pain: it is an indication that something is wrong! Stretching should not be painful.
8. Be aware of tension in other places during a stretch. Keep the thighs, feet, toes, hands, wrists, shoulders, face, tongue, and jaw relaxed. There is a connection between tension held in the jaw and tension in the hips and pelvis: relaxing the jaw helps those relax as well.
9. Be aware of the alignment of your body: lower back, head, shoulders, legs. Generally, hips should be squared to the body...they’ll tend to angle as you stretch your legs.
10. Keep your knees soft, never locked.
11. Keep your lower back strong and flat while stretching. Your spine should be elongated, and your chest lifted high. Don’t allow the back to sag or curve as you stretch: you can hurt your back this way. (Keeping your back flat and strong can cause some strain if your back muscles aren’t used to this work...take it gently and frequently release the back with an arching stretch, acknowledging the work it’s doing, then ask it again to be strong.)
12. Stretching feels good when done correctly. Ideally, it is peaceful, relaxing, and pleasant.
13. The keys to achieving maximum benefits of stretching is simply to do it regularly and to relax into it!Benefits of Stretching

Benefits of Stretching:
* develops body awareness; you get to know your body, yourself.
* loosens the mind’s control of the body so that the body moves more naturally, for its own sake rather than for competition or ego.
* keeps you grounded in your body
* helps you practice moving from your centre
* increases range of motion and flexibility
* allows for freer and easier movement
* strengthens the back
* makes strenuous activities easier by signalling the muscles that they are about to be used
* helps prevent injuries such as muscle strains
* helps maintain your muscle tone
* it feels good.

Some of this info adapted from Stretching, by Bob Anderson: an excellent resource for stretches for all kinds of activities.
As with any exercise routine, check with your health practitioner before beginning a new program.

© erin dragonsong 2000

Recommended Music for Beginner Bellydancers

Collections
Camelspotting
Yalla Hitlist Egypt
Cairo to Casablanca

Traditional Sound with Modern Beat
Natacha Atlas
Ofra Haza
Khaled
Sorocco

Nontraditional & Fusion
Jesse Cook
Gipsy Kings
Loreena McKennitt
Dead Can Dance
Deep Forest

Traditional Rhythms (These can be a bit more challenging)
Light Rain
FatChanceBellyDance Music for Tribal Basics
Brothers of the Baladi
George Abdo

For Intermediate / Advanced Dancers
Mokhtar al Saaid Raqs Sharqi, Vols 1, 2, &3 (classic cabaret)
Omar Faruk Tekbilek (contemporary)
Istanbul Oriental Ensemble
Hossam Ramzy or Anything on the small Araf label (baladi or “tribal”)

The Middle Eastern Dance Association in Vancouver has an extensive by-mail lending library of music and videos.
FatChanceBellyDance has a great mail order catalogue.

 

The Cult of the Hard Body

Hard of body, firm of mind: that’s the goal. Somehow in the mysterious way societies decide these things, hardness has become our highest objective. Glass, steel, concrete, sharp angles, straight lines…and an ultra trim, “tight” body.

I find it amusing, when it doesn’t depress me, our worship of hard tightness. Only in Am-AIR-ee-ka! Elsewhere in the world, funny, obscure values are given their due: softness, openness, gentleness, fluidity….

Not here. We don’t like our outlines to be fuzzy, our borders unclear, our realities flexible. We are careful not to be vulnerable, or out of control. Who knows what might happen?! (Little do we realize how much strength is in vulnerability, how much power in loss of control.)

What surprises me is how seldom we explore this value of hardness. Let’s take a quick look at some definitions*:

•Free of weakness or defects: Yes, no room for that sort of thing. Nature despises the weak, doncha know: survival of the fittest and most perfect specimens. Hmm, better take another half hour on the treadmill.

•Firm, definite; not speculative or conjectural: FACTUAL. Free from sentimentality or illusion: REALISTIC. Yes, we must have something definite to hold onto: no shades of grey or uncertainty for us. No being led about by the heart, like a bull with a ring through its nose. We must be rational. We must be logical. Everything must be scientifically quantifiable. Otherwise how will we know what is right/true/real?

• Lacking in responsiveness, OBDURATE, UNFEELING. Our feelings are untrustworthy, and just plain inconvenient. They are the biggest obstacle to financial success. We are certainly better off without them.

Unfortunately there are all those negative connotations: Difficult to bear or endure; Oppressive, inequitable; Harsh, severe, or offensive; Strict, unrelenting; In a violent manner: fiercely…
But that’s what we’re cultivating hardness for: to cope with those aspects of life, right?

And if there are a few regrettable side-effects — Lacking consideration, compassion, or gentleness: callous; Incorrigible, tough — well, nothing’s perfect!

Sometimes, at my most cynical, I wonder if it all doesn’t come down to one simple cornerstone: “cold hard cash.” After all, money’s power, right? Hardness also equates with power.

I think that’s what the hardness is all about. If you’re strong, tough, and unfeeling (combined with a little luck and a little smarts) you’re headed for success in this corporate competitive world. We’re trained from an early age.

There’s also the little matter of gender. Is it any coincidence that the “perfect female body” now looks like nothing so much as an adolescent boy with artificially huge (man-made) tits?

Okay, so softness apparently has its place on a woman’s body. Not where nature puts it, though. Nature lovingly gave us softness everywhere. It’s a gift.

Nature said, “I want you to be protected from starvation, which claims so many. I want you to be able to create life and feed others from your abundance. I want to soften the effects of Menopause. I give you my greatest gift: a fatty lining.”

(If you doubt this is a gift, go back a few centuries or anyplace where there is persistent hunger: the value of fat is not demeaned there!)
The main target of the “war on softness” is the belly. You can’t look through the “women’s” magazine section without coming across ways and demands to exorcise the demon belly.

By this time in history we should be suspicious of anything that is demonized, for that is traditionally anything feminine, nature-al, yin: anything that is the seat of women’s power, joy, and creativity.
Sure enough, the belly is the Centre, the magic cauldron where life and death intermingle and feed each other. The world and the individual meet in the belly, outer reality and inner reality, and creativity comes out of that joining. It is a birthplace of spirituality, of worshipping the temple of the Divine Within.

As Stephen Levine puts it,
“The soft belly is the primary foundation for opening to this level of being. For it is in the belly that we have so long attempted to control the world. It is the nature of the belly to turn the whole world into itself—all that we take in as food from the outside is converted to the body from the inside. It is the nature of the stomach to turn the world into itself.” † (Emphasis mine.)

He goes on to say: “The belly is our center of control and holds much tension.” This tension, this holding holds us back. It limits our ability to be in this world and in ourselves. It is a holding back from Divinity. Those closest to Divinity are soft in belly: “Baby’s belly is soft; Buddha’s belly is soft.” † Woman’s belly is also, naturally, soft.

There is a whole spiritual aspect to this, but let’s bring it back to bellydance. Another definition of hardness is: Stark: lacking in shading, delicacy, or resonance. Not the usual effect we’re going for

.
Softness is what bellydance is about. Circles and spirals instead of corners and straight lines. Fluidity, instead of rigidity. Soft and open, instead of hard and cold. Expressive, rather than harshly controlled.

Bellydance is a celebration of softness, a celebration of all that’s feminine. (Personally, I believe that is the secret to its incredible popularity and growth.) Bellydance is an antidote to the addictive Cult of the Hard-Body.

Speaking of which, I’d like to leave you with another definition to ponder:

Hard: Being at once addictive and gravely detrimental to health.
; >

* Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
† Stephen Levine, Healing into Life and Death

 

© erin dragonsong 2000

 

Posture for Bellydance

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