Lighter Than Air

Recently the world of dance has come under scrutiny as a cruel, cold, competitive world.  While there may be some truth to this idea, it is also partly myth.  All of the world offers opportunities for cruelty and competitiveness.  One industry alone does not hold the market share.  I wrote the following piece years ago when I happened to be working with a lot of dancers and I drew from my own experiences as a young woman who grew up in the world of dance.  Most things are not just one way or another.  Most of the world is comprised of half truths - in order to embrace our world we must look at truth from a variety of angles and not get stuck looking at the world through a narrow lens.  Let caution be present and allow complex understanding to be our guide.  Let there be room for recognition and understanding of the many facets in most parts of life.

 

Lighter Than Air
Anne Moore, Psy.D.
February 2007

The moment I enter a dance studio I want to move my body - extend myself feel my body move and work - that feels lighter than air and has nothing to do with body image or weight.  The love of dance is about your soul - not your body - it is an art form and an emotional expression.  I used to think dance was about working around your body - not feeling it, pushing through pain, ignoring it.  I could not have been more wrong.


Dance is a gift: Each of us has the opportunity to be given the gift of experiencing our body.  Most people never learn about the power and grace that is awakened in your body as you learn to dance.  Dancing is about strength, power, and grace.  It is an energy force that begins in your heart and shoots out of your fingertips, toes, and the top of your head.  If you learn to understand and harness that you get to walk around with that energy always the rest of your life, in any circumstance or situation.

Try this: First position, head and neck long, tailbone down, shoulders back, ribs together - make eye contact, smile, how do you feel?  Imagine keeping that awareness and posture with you always, at school, out shopping, especially anywhere you may feel vulnerable.  No one’s body ever looks or feels bad in this position.  So the next time you feel uncertain, alone, or vulnerable try practicing your posture – it won’t erase the things that are bothering you, but it may make you feel stronger and improve your ability to deal with things.  That’s positive body awareness - it is built into dance.

Try This: Sink into your stomach, let your shoulders droop, let your head hang.  What are you ready to face now?  What if your friend came up and said something that sounded like criticism to you right now?  How would you feel?  It feels like hiding and vulnerability, as a matter of fact, you may be even more likely to interpret things as negative and let them bother you more - feeding into a negative image about yourself which then becomes focused on your body.

Example: Once, as a young woman in college, I was out with a friend and met some of his girlfriends from college.  Initially, they were not very nice to me but as I stayed they warmed up - one even said to me later that evening - “I was being rude to you and you didn’t respond and you didn’t act hurt - as a matter of fact, you didn’t even seem to notice” - (it was true, I hadn’t) - and I liked that about you and decided to give you a chance instead of being catty.  That experience was a direct result of years of training in dance - I instinctively live in my body in a powerful way, people pick up on that and respond more positively, and I didn’t notice her pettiness simply because - I wasn’t looking for it - when you feel powerful and live in your body at any size - it doesn’t occur to you to be a victim or the target of meanness.  Dance is empowering.  Eating disorders are weakening - There is a lot of speculation about dance and eating disorders but the two really do not have to go together.  Dance is about strength, creativity, and artistic interpretation as well as precision and control but also flow.  It is about power and grace.

Eating disorders are about brittleness and weakness and a false sense of control.  The more you focus on your weight the less you live in your body and the less ability you have to dance and the more likely you are to acquire an injury.

Emotional strength, artistic strength, and physical strength. 

When I see young women at my office, there is a lot of talk about a “dancer’s body”.  It is not the body that gets the part.  There is room for a lot of variation in a “dancer’s body”.  The young woman that gets the part is the woman that knows who she is and because she has a strong knowledge of herself she can then interpret the emotion of a ballet and use her body as an artistic tool - This young woman who walks around in her body even when she is not in dance class.  This is emotional strength and this is the other piece of dance that is just as important.  I don’t care how perfect your body is – if you don’t have emotional strength you won’t make it in dance or life and it would be a mistake to keep focusing on your body and changing that when what really needs to change is your mind and how you feel about yourself.  It is way too easy to make failures and disappointments in dance and life about our bodies - I’m not buying it - Next time you are intimidated or disappointed, think about how you feel in your body and your mind and notice what you are focused on - is it your stomach or some other individual body part?  Or are you focused on your spirit and the way you feel inside when you dance and move.  I bet it will be an artificial focus on the body rather than what you are doing.

For example: I remember being in dance class and feeling off.  It was a day I couldn’t keep up.  I felt clumsy, awkward, criticized by my instructor and the class felt like it went on forever - anyone ever feel that way?  What I remember about that day is that I made a small mistake early in the class and was embarrassed.  I stopped focusing on dance, stopped feeling my body, and began to get stuck in my head on everything I was doing wrong and guess what - I did a lot wrong that day.  I was emotionally slumping.  It wasn’t about my body or my physical strength it was about my emotional strength.  That experience easily could have turned into a desire to control my body, lose a few pounds, etc…and I would have missed the whole point.  Instead I endured, left the class, cried some, and regrouped by going home, eating dinner, caring for myself and moving on.  If we focus on physical strength vs. size, and we exercise our emotional strength - Dance can actually inoculate us from poor body image and eating disorders.

- Anne Lewis Moore, PsyD