Today Deborah Vogel wrote:
"Another Dancing Smart newsletter has been posted.
This one is on improving focus and I have included
an excerpt from Train Your Brain: A Teen's Guide
to Well Being."
Go to Deborah's site The Body Series and click on the blog button in the top menu.
You can learn ways to train yourself to focus away from negative emotions, tension and anxiety. Positive emotions will enhance all your work in ballet and dance training. Positive emotions strengthen your immune system.
Learn how to enjoy - relish! - ballet class, school, and all the inherent challenges life brings. When you know how, you can change your life direction. You do not have to wait until you are "grown up".
Showing posts with label adult ballet class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adult ballet class. Show all posts
Avoid Being Too Stiff For Ballet With Simple Resistance Stretching
A while ago when I wrote an article about office space workouts I was astounded at the high number of times it was read. I was aware that many recreational adult ballet dancers sit on a chair all day, or do some other repetitive or physically confining work. If you cannot sit on a physio ball, as I've suggested before, there are ways of getting more flexible with daily resistance stretching, sitting at your desk.
With recent discoveries about how to get more flexible by understanding the connective tissue in the body, called fascia, the most simple of exercises can be appreciated in a new way.
Understanding resistance stretching and doing just a little every day will improve adult ballet, and any sports or fitness activities.
Many working people like us experience neck pain and stiffness every day. Sitting in front of a computer screen, perhaps in a detrimental ergonomic design, (working with supports for back, elbow and wrists at the wrong angles) will build tension in the neck.
Lacking a good office chair, low back pain and stiffness can progress from periodic to chronic.
Having your feet too far from the floor affects your posture also, adding to neck and low back strain.
This is all worse, and creates anxiety if you are feeling this tension increase all day, while planning to go to your adult ballet class in the evening after work, or some other sports/fitness activity.
Stretching with resistance is the ultimate yet simple way of staying more flexible. For example: you intend to stretch the right side neck muscles. You reach over your head with your left hand, and pull your head to the left. Resistance is pushing back into your hand with your head. If you have never stretched like this, it sounds strange.
However, it feels wonderful!
If you had five minutes in the morning and another five in the afternoon, you could do daily stretches at work and gain on getting more flexible. Then, when you got into ballet class, you'd feel a lot different!
Failing to do any kind of stretches daily regardless of your other activities is not good for you. However, learning a simple yet effective routine will start to reverse your decrease in flexibility.
Is it too late for you to get more flexible? I don't know, and maybe you feel that increasing your flexibility would be difficult. If you learn properly and work gently, you will make progress. I have found Deborah Vogel's Ultimate Stretching Guide for good stretching exercises to be an easy to learn at home program.
With recent discoveries about how to get more flexible by understanding the connective tissue in the body, called fascia, the most simple of exercises can be appreciated in a new way.
Understanding resistance stretching and doing just a little every day will improve adult ballet, and any sports or fitness activities.
Many working people like us experience neck pain and stiffness every day. Sitting in front of a computer screen, perhaps in a detrimental ergonomic design, (working with supports for back, elbow and wrists at the wrong angles) will build tension in the neck.
Lacking a good office chair, low back pain and stiffness can progress from periodic to chronic.
Having your feet too far from the floor affects your posture also, adding to neck and low back strain.
This is all worse, and creates anxiety if you are feeling this tension increase all day, while planning to go to your adult ballet class in the evening after work, or some other sports/fitness activity.
Stretching with resistance is the ultimate yet simple way of staying more flexible. For example: you intend to stretch the right side neck muscles. You reach over your head with your left hand, and pull your head to the left. Resistance is pushing back into your hand with your head. If you have never stretched like this, it sounds strange.
However, it feels wonderful!
If you had five minutes in the morning and another five in the afternoon, you could do daily stretches at work and gain on getting more flexible. Then, when you got into ballet class, you'd feel a lot different!
Failing to do any kind of stretches daily regardless of your other activities is not good for you. However, learning a simple yet effective routine will start to reverse your decrease in flexibility.
Is it too late for you to get more flexible? I don't know, and maybe you feel that increasing your flexibility would be difficult. If you learn properly and work gently, you will make progress. I have found Deborah Vogel's Ultimate Stretching Guide for good stretching exercises to be an easy to learn at home program.
Higher SAT Scores From Ballet Class and Pointe Shoes?
In a southern California newspaper, a report by Chris Moran says " The College Board annually releases a report showing that the more arts and music courses students take, the higher their SAT scores are. Sweetwater Union High School District's survey of its own students five years ago found that students enrolled in visual and performing arts classes had higher grade-point averages than those who were not. The correlation is an admittedly chicken-and-egg argument over whether the arts make students smarter or smarter students pursue the arts. "
A recent article in New Science Daily presents the following:
"Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities across the United States. In the Dana Consortium study, researchers grappled with a fundamental question: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?"
#8 in a series of points made is:
"Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills."
MARY BELLE MCCORKLE and SHIRLEY KISER wrote in the Tucson Citizen, "How the arts make kids smarter.
Students' scores improve in the three R's when they're exposed to music, dance and the theater".
Betty Oliphant, former Principal of The National Ballet School of Canada insisted on high academic standards, because she grew up in London in the earlier 2oth Century where dancers were considered dumb. Personally I don't think you can learn the classics if you are dumb.
What is dumb anyway? Shyness, less-confident, dyslexic, under-nourished? Maybe not interested in the usual social issues and dramas?
If it were not for the internet I would not know that scientists find this subject interesting. Artists know that they are not less smart than scientists. They also know that the money needed to run all these multi-university studies could run a small ballet company for a season or two.
Scientists and artists alike need patrons - and competition is fierce. Patrons need artists and scientists, and vice versa - so it's a chicken or the egg situation - and it makes an interesting holisitc picture for us all to function in.
But if your parents worry that your grades will drop if you spend too much time in pointe shoes or the ballet class - just mention the higher SAT scores!
A recent article in New Science Daily presents the following:
"Learning, Arts, and the Brain, a study three years in the making, is the result of research by cognitive neuroscientists from seven leading universities across the United States. In the Dana Consortium study, researchers grappled with a fundamental question: Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter?"
#8 in a series of points made is:
"Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills."
MARY BELLE MCCORKLE and SHIRLEY KISER wrote in the Tucson Citizen, "How the arts make kids smarter.
Students' scores improve in the three R's when they're exposed to music, dance and the theater".
Betty Oliphant, former Principal of The National Ballet School of Canada insisted on high academic standards, because she grew up in London in the earlier 2oth Century where dancers were considered dumb. Personally I don't think you can learn the classics if you are dumb.
What is dumb anyway? Shyness, less-confident, dyslexic, under-nourished? Maybe not interested in the usual social issues and dramas?
If it were not for the internet I would not know that scientists find this subject interesting. Artists know that they are not less smart than scientists. They also know that the money needed to run all these multi-university studies could run a small ballet company for a season or two.
Scientists and artists alike need patrons - and competition is fierce. Patrons need artists and scientists, and vice versa - so it's a chicken or the egg situation - and it makes an interesting holisitc picture for us all to function in.
But if your parents worry that your grades will drop if you spend too much time in pointe shoes or the ballet class - just mention the higher SAT scores!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
