Many health and wellness experts extol the extraordinary fitness of professional dancers. All professional performers, athletes, and competitors rely on their bodies to support them on stage. Their professional success depends upon their body’s ability to express their talent. The exceptional performance begins within, however, depends on the external demonstration of their gift. 

For a moment, please consider your body’s perspective. Your body is an animate, energetic, and functional machine supporting your mind, emotions, and spirit to make it through your day fulfilling your obligations, taking care of your responsibilities, and enabling your performance of everything you do.  

When your professional or personal activities result in compliments, rewards, applause, or simply satisfaction, to whom do you give the credit? If you’re a dancer (or an athlete), your body receives a large amount of appreciation from the rest of you.  If you are a professional, a manager, a sole proprietor, spouse, caretaker, teacher or health care worker, you acknowledge your intelligence, your training, your innate ability, your passion for the position—rarely, if ever…..

Do you appreciate your physical self for delivering the results you’re so proud of? 

Dancers do…  They give their body Respect.

Making the body first priority is natural for those whose livelihoods depend on their physicality and ability to deliver a performance on demand. Particularly true regardless of whatever else is going on in their lives emotionally, psychologically, or intellectually. If the kids are sick, the debtors calling, parental criticism, car won’t start, a full moon, whatever…the show must go on…and that depends on their ability, physical ability, to show up. Regardless of personal distractions, their professional commitments rely on their bodies to fulfill them. 

While we cannot control the inevitable results of the aging process, we can maintain many of our physical attributes: strength, flexibility, and energy. Certain elements decline with the passage of time; however the rate of decline as well as the amount of decline can be managed providing we pay attention to our bodies.

Spot on….

Dancers’ edge relates directly to dancers’ awareness of what’s going on INSIDE their bodies, as well as what’s going on in their environment. A technique ballet dancers use to orient themselves is called “spotting”. (Ice skaters have adopted this strategy to maintain their relationship to where they are on the ice.) Prior to beginning a spin, the dancer/skater selects a spot on a nearby wall to direct their focus.   

A laser stare keeps the dancer’s head in place as their bodies pivot in a tight circle. Just before the body returns to the starting point, the dancer’s head whips around to re-align itself with the body there. The “spotting” allows the dancer to rotate as many times as the choreography dictates. This dual awareness merges the physical self with the intellectual and spiritual self in a perfect internal unity. At the same time, the totality of the person identifies its placement in the room, on the stage, in their environment.  

The dancer’s orientation is perfect within their body and in their environment. The audience observes this unity with respect bordering on awe, because of the perfection visible in the performance. 

“Happy feet” refers to every aspect of your body… 

If you can move any part of your body, you can and you do, dance. It’s more about attitude than it is about ability. Happy feet happen at any age—and are not necessarily restricted to your feet. Happy feet, too, is an attitude applied to every physical aspect of your body. 

Dancers have “happy feet” when their performance lives up to or exceeds their expectations. When that happens, the dancer attributes it to their body’s leadership in aligning the other elements (spirit, knowledge, muscle memory) to create the awesome, almost an out-of-body experience of beyond perfection into the ephemeral.  

For the rest of us the experience of physical, mental and spiritual unity is often described as “being in the zone”, “on the top of your game”, “awesome”. And when that happens, how often do we give credit to the body that brought us to the dance in the first place. 

Body Awareness leads to Body Awe… 

To achieve the dancer’s edge, follow the dancer’s lead. Begin with awareness of your body: if your body is healthy, then your body supports you. Actions, thoughts, inspirations begin within. As soon as you become aware of your body’s messages, your enhanced awareness provides guidance for your choices.  

Awareness of your body guarantees personal and professional success. Listening to your body provides the dancer’s edge when it’s time to make decisions, take the first step, “spot”  prior to the spin in your office, your home, anywhere in your life. 

The essential elements of success are demonstrated in the Dancer’s Edge: the who, what, where, and why are explained in the article above.

The how is up to you…learn to talk to your body, learn to listen to your body, learn to perform at your peak…with perfection!

Body Talk opens the door to the open exchange of information between you and your body.

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TIME IS STRUCTURE:

Years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. We spend our waking hours filling in our calendars, Day Runners, Outlook scheduler with appointments, calls, letters, email, errands, meetings, and other obligations. Time is the great equalizer among men and women; every one of us has the same number of minutes in a twenty-four hour period, 168 hours a week. How we choose to fill those spaces determines who we are, what our priorities are, and expresses our commitment to what we want in our future.

This oh- so- serious – subject deserves a little lightening up!

Enter The Body Knowledge System® a sustainable solution to our health and well being:

DANCE YOUR DAY AWAY!

The elements of dancing lend themselves to everyone’s schedule as soon as we become aware of how to apply them to our activities. It’s your time, it’s your body, and it will become your dance. Take any activity, professional or personal, and apply the metaphor of motion to enhance the experience, improve your production, and enjoy the process! Rather than suffering through your responsibilities, professional obligations, personal tasks; dancing through your day brings benefit beyond your body’s wellbeing and health. The magic of movement increases your breathing

that aerates your brain, making your more alert and smarter. Free form motion lifts you emotionally and spiritually as well. As you move to your own music, you strengthen your body with your personal grace. All of these elements increase your confidence, empower your work and play, and your body awareness becomes body AWE!

CHOREOGRAPHY

Planning, coordinating, and learning apply to every performance whether on the stage or at your desk, in your home or on the field, at work or at play. When you check your calendar, you notice the restrictions, the limits of each period. Like chains wrapped around your body, stifling your creativity, the tick-tock of time confines your body and your mind to the allotted space—at the same time, it cramps your mind and stuffs your spirit.

After imagining your dance, the next element of choreography is warming up the muscles prior to motion. Whether you’re studying for a test, preparing to write a business email, planning a menu, researching a report, the first step is preparation. As a dancer stretches and breathes consciously for release and relaxation, a working person prepares for the assigned task that is part of their job description.

Theatrical wisdom reinforces the importance of practice and preparation prior to performance. Regardless if your scheduled hour or day contains professional obligations or personal play, you’ll enjoy filling those minutes once you’ve warmed up in anticipation of the quality of your performance.

Warm up on the dance floor is physical and motivated by your body. Warm up for each activity during your day to create more productivity during the time you are filling with action. The prep benefits your body, oxygenates your mind, and inspires your spirit.

Try this tomorrow: When you awaken, stretch your muscles beginning with your toes and work your way up to the top of your head. Once out of bed, extend your fingertips over your head, out to your sides, and gently down to the floor in front of you. Scrunch your shoulders as you inhale deeply, and then relax your shoulders as you exhale.

Feel the music?

Hear your body purring in appreciation?

Move your happy feet and get on with your day!

Relish in Today & Take On Tomorrow

PERFORMANCE

Looking at your watch, checking your Day timer, you smile in anticipation of your next activity. Warming up before taking the first step in your dance for that hour will ease the transition between tasks, between mental efforts, between people. If your work requires face to face relationships, either intense or casual, your warm up allows others to interrupt (cut in), change partners, or simply “Exit Stage Left” without causing undue hardship to your or your schedule.

Maintaining the image of your dance throughout your day, allows you to go with the flow. Whether today’s dance is a solo performance, a partnership, a line dance, ballet or a folk dance, your grace, strength, and overall wellbeing brings your best performance to the stage. Depending the dance you select to perform during the period, your movement has the most positive effect on your partners, group, and the audience.

Even though the alarm goes off to signal the end of one activity and beginning of another, your finale awaits you not the impersonal, objective hands of a machine indicating the top of an hour. You may shift from a waltz to a jitterbug, from a tango to hip hop, from flamenco to the electric slide between hours, days, or even minutes, depending on your task, your approach, your feelings about the action and your best approach in the moment.

Try this tomorrow: After appropriate warm-up, perform your activity with your music in mind. Sway in your desk chair, tap your toes beneath your desk, slide across your kitchen, skip to and through the open doors, tippy-toe up the stairs, step up, swing and sway at every opportunity.

Life is a Spontaneous Smash Dance—or it should be!

APPLAUSE! APPLAUSE!

Dancing through your activity broadens your perspective, bringing inspiration and awareness to improve your performance. Before the phone rings summoning you to a meeting, before you put your keys in the ignition to drive home, after the last forkful of the evening meal, always remember to TAKE A BOW! Take several bows, you’ve earned the appreciation of your body, your mind, your spirit—and your audience.

Listening to the admiration from inside and outside you, as you cool down and ease into the next hour, the next activity, this is not the finale. Your dance continues into the next warm up, inspired performance and appreciative cool down before the next time period, the next activity.

Try this tomorrow: Before the final curtain, before you close your eyes to sleep, reflect on those spaces in your day filled with action PLUS motion when you dance through the time doing your work. Are you smiling at the recent memory? Of course you are! You’ve sprinkled sparkle on your schedule, you’ve lightened your load, you’ve created anticipation for the next page of your Day timer—and the dance you will do as you fill the hours with accomplishments

Warm up, perform, and cool down.

Take your bows, relish in today and take on tomorrow!

Dancing through your day becomes a habit, a custom, a daily practice.

“Practice Your Dance! Dance Your Practice!”

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