Category Archives: Align Ballet

Ballet.7 Pain and Beyond

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Ballet, Pete Egoscue

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Yup, coming as no surprise to anyone, my back started to hurt in class.

I had a couple of classes where I felt my Psoas muscles were weakening and then my back felt nervy and the nerves radiated down my legs and aggravated an old knee pain. I knew exactly where I was. Back at my weakest link not knowing exactly what that was.

I went to the chiro and got acupuncture and that helped but I knew it was time for a reworking of how I moved. I had to either quit or uncover movement habits that had been set years ago. I didn’t know where to start but remembered an elderly friend telling me that she had healed a very sore knee by doing simple exercises in a book names ‘PAIN FREE –  A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain’ by Pete Egoscue.

I got instant relief from some passive exercises and began to translate what the book was telling me to my specific situation. Here are some bibs and bobs;

  • If your knee is in pain it probably comes from your hip, ankle, back, etc. When we go to a doctor they isolate and fix a joint not considering that the pain probably originated in a different place in the body.
  • The body is brilliantly designed and this idea that we have weak knees and ankles by design in a myth. Our distortion of the design is what creates pain and disfunction by muscles and tendons pulling on bones.
  • The pelvis has two kinds of muscles – those designed for balancing and those for doing work. This one was a revelation as I knew instantly that I was asking my balancing muscles to do most of the lifting and that’s what caused my back pain.
  • You can build your eg. quads all you want but if you haven’t first released your flexion muscles you won’t have proper access to your quads. Releasing those muscles habituated to flexion so the design can work as planned it key.

So I am doing the tedious work of figuring out how I am moving off the grid of ease by listening to my habits. I do have lots of new strength and movement from the classes but now I need to have a new consciousness. I am doing this on my own knowing that I need to always listen with discovery in mind. Bringing to surface life long patterns and building new ones with a new awareness is my task for at least a couple more weeks. A mission whose time has come.

Meanwhile I am looking to launch a theatrical version of the book in the late spring.

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Adult Ballet.6 – Being in Space

27 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Bjarne Hecht, Dance, Learning

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My teacher, Bjarne, gave me an adjustment about balancing and it opened the door to many things.

– The exercise I was doing – balancing on one leg with the other leg in front of me, bent at an angle (in attitude).

–  He could see that I was in my head which leads me to struggle for the         balance.

– His solution was to look out into the room, not fixated on a spot, just be in the space.   He explained that when he went into a new theatre to dance he would go on the stage and ground himself in the fixtures of the theatre – the little  red light at the back, the exits signs etc. He would align his geometry  with the geometry of the theatre he was in.

– I understood what he meant and how relaxing it is to calmly be where I am, in the room. So challenging to repeat but a new goal. I could feel within myself a thread of worry that was part of my state of being that when brought into balancing brought uncertainly, and tension with it. Is this worry a result of being a student in a class? More likely, always with me and a habit that has embedded itself in the fiber of my being.

Well, that opened up an exploration of what it is to be in space. Just like our eyes are constantly adjusting their focal point and our feet are giving feedback to our bodies to balance us, our bodies are constantly getting feedback from the world around us. Because this sense ‘spatial awareness’ is not included in the commonly known five senses – touch, sight, hearing, seeing and tasting – we tend to be asleep about it but it is part of our operational package. A blind person is conscience of this innate sense and uses it as effortlessly as we use our eyes.

We are constantly sending out sensors to tell us where we are in space. That is why we can sit in a chair without looking at it, feel differently in a cathedral than we do in a baseball field or an elevator. There is nothing woo woo about this sense, it’s as important as any of the others for our basic functioning. I wonder if our lack of including it in the basic five senses that we teach all school children makes us so obsessed with how we are feeling/doing/thinking/behaving. It keeps us focused on self. We don’t bring to consciousness this skill that is the connective tissue to our world, to each other. It is this sense that reaches us out of ourselves while touch, sight, hearing, seeing and tasting are all contained within us.

I digress.

What I learned from that one correction was that I have a thread of worry/concern that I carry with me. When I am able to be free of it by doing what Bjarne recommended I feel calm and elated and present and free. And balancing is so easy.

I find this extremely difficult to do and the change will happen by building second on second. But the dance is in this adjustment,  the dance of my life.

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Adult Ballet.5 The Dreams of our Elders

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Amargosa, Ballet, Elders, Learning, Women

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As I wrote in my first Ballet blog, Edwige, introduced me to her Adult Ballet class and started me on my ballet journey.

How thrilled I was when I was sent a link to a lovely short film by Sarah Marquelle Kruger and Paul Antico about her beginning ballet at the age of 70.

It’s only four minutes long. Treat yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKya793A_Cg

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There is a place in Death Valley called Amargosa, where Marta Becket refurbished an old Opera house. She painted her audience on the wall and danced there until she was 83. She lives out there still, rescuing burros and horses, she is 91. I know they have been having funding trouble and it seems her website is now down.

Here is a trailer to an Oscar winning movie that was made about her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkIS6_nIEtQ

You can rent the full movie here for .99

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KSvfq02QSI

Marta Becket article 1970 National Geographic

 

Adult Ballet.4 – Brain to Brain

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Ballet, Bjarne Hecht, Learning

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In my last post I wrote about how my legs had always felt heavy, probably due to the splints I wore as a baby. My teacher, Bjarne, read the post and came up to me after class.

And this happened.

Bjarne said that he could help me with the idea that my legs feel heavy. (BTW, this is a man who floats around as if gravity bypassed him)

He stood in front of me and said, ‘Just imagine that there is a cloud above your head. Let yourself go up into the cloud’. I let myself imagine and felt myself drifting up into the cloud. Then a space opened up in the middle of my chest as a density dropped down. Tears flowed out of my eyes.

That was it. Something shifted.

I thought maybe I had let go of an ancient concern/effort I had always carried about while trying to crawl and walk while braced. I don’t know.

What I do know is that my legs are now light. The change is so dramatic that sometimes I get a wave of fear that I might have a wasting disease. At times I feel that I might be unstable or that my muscles aren’t strong. But I am the same in terms of my slowly developing technique. New issues on the front burner now.

But here is the take away.

Joseph Chilton Pearce writes that the brain is designed to entrain and learn from being in the presence of other brains. I am sure that people can learn from the internet and books but the gold standard is to be in the room with great teachers.  What happened to me happened not so much because of what Bjarne said to me but because of what he lives and knew how to share. 

When my son was learning to read we would have a practice session during his bedtime story. He was almost there and then the next night he would be back to where he was. I felt frustrated and that was not a good feeling to have about my child’s efforts. I looked at myself and thought, what it I hold in my brain what it is like for me to read when we read together instead of trying to get something to happen.

When I made that small adjustment he started to read with ease. He got it.

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Adult Ballet. 3 – The Image

03 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Ballet, Bjarne Hecht, Michael Cornell

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So the ‘Beauties’ fresh from ‘Align 2’ Workshop have arrived in our class. Bjarne’s arms and head requirements gave them a bit of a jolt and I wonder if any were on the verge of tears as I was in my first class. One delicate dancer was gripping the bar so hard it was squeaking and rattling.

I am happy that the class is a little slower because I have so much to work on and I can address my ‘to do’ list better when I go slowly. My list is;

– be as free of the bar as possible.

– let the dance be in my whole being

– let legs be as arms

‘Let legs be as arms’ has been a mystery to me my whole life. My legs seem heavy to move around and yet I see dancers (like Bjarne) toss them around as easily as their arms. I struggle to lift those babies. And coming back to dance after more than thirty years it has been very humbling to ask my leg to extend away from me and it just doesn’t go. I have lost much. But if I am to build again I want to do it differently or there is no point.

Bjarne talks about using an image to balance. Ballet is filled with one leg balances on the ball of your foot. I have had moments of understanding when he first explained it, ‘Look slightly up and let your body be lifted and held by your inner vision’. When I gave myself over to the image it worked like a charm. But I haven’t been able to repeat enough to make it mine.

Yes, it takes time to built the muscles in my feet and calves but the hardest thing of all for me is surrendering completely to the image. Even though I have done it and when it works, it’s easy and thrilling. As if I live in a room and when the image is applied I live on the window ledge with the wind in my hair.

How I want that. Why don’t I let it be easy? Am I battling my logic that an image can hold me? When the image leads my whole body comes under one director. My body understands how to bring all its parts together when an image is clearly applied.  I know this image space is where the dance lives.

So I seek an image for moving my legs like arms. Something that will unite my body and engage the right muscles. I have to be patient as I need the muscles to be developed inch by inch as I search to connect to the right image.

This is so important to me that I would not take class without trying to implement this goal. Perhaps feeling like my legs are a burden started when I was a baby. I was born with a floppy foot and had aluminium splints put on both my legs from the time I was 6 months to 18 months and my crawling and and walking impulses were lived out with bound legs and feet. Can the image be stronger than cellular habit? Will awareness and use of image overcome an old and no longer relevant idea? We shall see. Inch by inch.

  • The photo below is of a window on Beverly Blvd near Kings Rd in Los Angeles where old point shoes go to rest.

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Adult Ballet.2

28 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Adult Ballet, Align Ballet, Ballet, Bjarne Hecht, Michael Cornell

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So I have had twelve ballet classes and now I have a choice. Do I repeat Align 1 or Align 2 or do I leap into an Open Class where the assumption is that you have a pretty solid basis what a ballet bar is and and can take some challenges.

Even though it had been thirty years since I’d struggled through a class my excitement and perhaps hope/delusion led me to take the leap into an open Align 2 class. I knew it would be fast and more challenging but hey I’d had twelve classes over twelve weeks, bring it.

Michael Cornell had hired a new teacher and had sung his praises. His name was Bjarn Hecht and had been the principal dancer of the Royal Danish Ballet for ten years. Apparently he was all about the arms and head.

Bjarn is in his 50’s with a perfect dancers body.  I believe I remember hearing that at first he thought it was a ridiculous idea to teach ballet to adults but has since been won over. He has been dancing since he was a little boy and it all came easily to him. He moves like a dream. When he hits a perfect postion it’s as if the lights in the room have been turned up a notch. It makes you understand what physical geometry is about. And he wants the arm and head working in the classical way right from the first plie.

By the third exercise my brain was tired from trying to keep up and I felt that horrid feeling in the centre of my chest, thobbing confusion followed by shame leaving me overwhelmed and lagging behind, I felt like crying. I scrambled to keep up but it was too late as I had slipped off the calm and clear perch I had walked in with and was swimming around in a panic.

My hand, sweaty with fear clung harder to the bar, my vision blurred as I looked around for someone to follow so I wouldn’t look like a fraud. But I wasn’t a fraud, I was a student, and I was in the process of learning. Bjarne wasn’t criticizing me, no one was judging me (not 100% certain of that) they were busy with their own concerns. Sure I was overwhelmed but I was doing what Michael believes in, making the shapes as best I could, focusing on how I get from position to position, knowing that my brain would wire them in. Not today but someday the language of ballet would come easier.

Neuro Plasticity is now a thing, even though the brain was capable of doing it for years before it was ‘discovered.’ What we are told about how are bodies work informs us so much vs. what it actually is. A nod to those outliers who live beyond cultural expectations. How much can the aging body respond? How much can I persist? Yet to be known.

Bjarne, asks us to focus on ‘the dance’. Reach, extend, have a story. And I am touched by how truly he delights in moments of grace we manage to exude. He is a Master teacher.

Next week will have dancers come to our class that are fresh out of an Align 2 workshop. I have seen them, they are a bouquet of wild flowers who are thrilled beyond to be doing ballet. They have the outfits, they have the awe, the laughter and an amazing camaraderie. They even presented Michael with a bouquet when they finished their workshop. Come to us ladies, you will be in good hands.

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