Body Check In

As my past blogs show, I am quite serious when it comes to health. Though I have always kept a healthy mind, body and spirit, the dance program has had its influence. This, unfortunately, may not be true for everyone in dance, whom, when feeling the demands of the body, seem to oftentimes fill those demands with inadequate foods (e.g.--soft drinks, fast food, as is often noticed). Making nutrition and health seminars mandatory really is a great idea, for it seems many do need work in this area.

I feel great. Without health, all else comes tumbling down. After years of tweaking, I have developed a very pleasant balance of mind, body, and spirit. I have gotten to this point after keeping strict diets (currently: Ayurveda), exercising (via yoga and a weight resistance training called Slow Burn), surrounding myself with positive/forward-thinking company (currently: Lisa, very much so!), not drinking alcohol or smoking, and undergoing various meditative/shamanic experimentations. Lately, even, the hot tub has been of great use. In result of all this maintenance, I feel that the preliminaries for advancing in dance are taken care of.

Having several aspects of health down, I can further strengthen my body. Richard often mentions the muscles that need to be contracted in order to execute various ballet movements. I am always interested in ways of finding out how to build them. With health down, I can also put more focus on figuring out more learning techniques outside of independent learning. Being that battling something independently oftentimes works very well for me, I could always use techniques in the ability to learn from live instruction. Statistics class, for instance, was nearly impossible to pay attention to in class, though I was able to make an A in the course by studying the material at home (this same case happened all throughout x-ray school). At the very least, dance feels different, where dozing off to another’s instruction seems a bit more difficult. My mind appears to require faster blood circulation in order to really click with the material that is being shown. Coffee in the past has worked wonders for my ability to focus, though it came at the cost of feeling mentally imbalanced, getting stomach irritation, and occasionally getting allergy-like itching.