Thread: Helping students relaaaaax into the movements

I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, but I need more!

How do you help students shift from *forcing* their bodies into the moves to *easing* their bodies into the moves?

How do you help students who are very tense by nature to relax?

How do you teach them to get grounded, lower their center of gravity?

(I'd love to hear from students who've received 'aha' moments as well as teachers)

My own personal experience as a student is when I started applying the same relaxing techniques that I do in yoga when the instructor told me to "let her do it." To which I became as limp as a noodle. I don't know if this helps others or not but it did help me to apply it the same way.

Or tell them to visualize chocolate and marshmallows melting on a warm, gooey s'more. The goal is to become one with that s'more!

Food imagery ALWAYS works for me ..l;,

Imagery is good. Also, practicing the moves in water, especially a heated pool, is good.

Dancing with your eyes closed. This is good for learning undulations. I close my eyes too and when I peek, everyone's movements are much more smooth, relaxed, and unselfconscious. I have them slowly open their eyes and some of them are able to capture what they were able to achieve with their eyes shut.

Oh, great thread! I have a students, both beginning and intermediate who are so tense. It's hard to imagine being so tense and yet still enjoy the movement of the dance as much as I do. I try to tell them that some of the moves feel like I'm stretching, but that's not quite what I'm trying to convey either. Can't wait to try some of these techniques!

Originally Posted by SidoniaOfNashville

Can't wait to try some of these techniques!

ditto! Fotia, do you mean she did some hands-on teaching?

A lot of times folks are holding their breath, or breathing shallowly. Sometimes it helps to drill movements that students already know, but to have them focus on breathing slowly and deeply while drilling.

A lot of times folks are holding their breath

Just watching the Enta Omri video I posted made me hold my breath...and I got 2 inches taller in my chair from my clenched ass cheeks. I know Lauren started this thread just for me!!!

PM'ed you Lauren :0)

Closed eyes, breathing into the movement, and actually singing are good. Dr Mo Geddawi got me into the last one. You can't sing and not breathe at the same time. Singing along with the track, just singing "da da da" or whatever, makes a profound difference. It doesn't matter if you're a bad singer.

Something happened to me last night that relates exactly to what you are talking about. As a student, I recently took some advice from this board and drilled some moves learned in class to belly dance music I love and will listen to on a regular basis. This helped immensely. My teacher has a hard time getting me to relax as I am often very tense. I was receiving feedback from my teacher that I have been thinking too much about the moves (SO true). And when I danced to the music I love, instantly I started to relax into the movements and did a shimmy without any real problems. I was getting into the music, putting my body and soul into the music, putting every frustration, ounce of sadness, everything into the moves I was doing and I felt so free! Now I'm going to try to translate this into the choreography I am learning and I think it will help so much. Especially if I do this after I practice every night. Then I might associate any type of dancing with the movements I do to music I love. I even moved to a drum solo piece (although I have not yet received instruction on drum solo pieces) but I am so excited by drum solo pieces that I just ran with it and impressed myself.

Make them laugh! When teaching a shiver (tight controlled shimmy) I always tell my students to picture yourself outside in the freezing cold and you've got to pee and all of a sudden your legs start shaking! Get's them and the point across, every time.

Just from my own personal observations (and experience of course), a lot of students try to do the move... too BIG. Smaller is better in a lot of our moves (proof: shimmy! It's not a side to side hip bump, it's a tiny little movement with tons of impact). Emphasizing that less is sometimes more in belly dancing sometimes helps. A tiny, very isolated tick/twitch/slide/move is going to be much easier (and better to look at) than an all-out, hold-your-breath, GRAND movement. IMO. :)