Dancing and self-realization

Those who are born dancers would probably not realize how dancing shapes their lives, but the rest of us do experience this. To keep things simple, I would just talk about the physical layer. One of the first things I that happened to me physically, was the realization of some of the muscles and other body parts that I never knew existed in my body! "What? There are balls in my feet?" "What you mean my arms are not connected with my back?" "Use my inner thigh muscles to drag? Where are these muscles? In my inner thigh? Where's there?" The list can go on.

One of the other things that happened was the awareness of my posture. I started realizing how bad my posture was and actively corrected it. My best friend Bernie was also the best dancer on UMass team. He had given me this "homework": sit and walk with good posture - shoulders down, chin up, etc. Since I used to hang out with him all the time, he had many opportunities to critic on my posture (which mainly involved yelling at me in German tone - "where's your homework?" and punching my back or pushing my shoulders down). He also gave me some other "assigments" like practicing standing on my toes while waiting for the bus to work on calf muscles. I changed my office chair's setting so that it can no longer recline even a little bit.

It took me a while to develop the habit of being in a good posture without even thinking about it. Some of my friends who knew me before I started dancing did notice these changes. I'm not claiming I achieved perfection, but I do know that I've certainly changed.

In the time that followed in which I got opportunities to train others, I was told the similar experiences by others. Being a witness of their progress, I have also seen them from being a complete unaware about their posture and body parts to the point where they have a good realization of such things. Of course, one can easily escape this kind of training and changes. But I think it's really worth letting dance change your life.