My New Little Corner

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I’ve gotten used to certain places at the barre. I usually prefer perimeter barres over free-standing barres and I usually like corners. I also prefer the least amount of mirror possible. If I can stand by a window or a wall, I will gravitate toward it. Even if your preferences are 100% different, you know what I’m talking about – you find “your place” and there is a sense of comfort about it. I’ve always been at war with the mirror, we’ve never been friends, not even freniemies. No likey mirror, no likey. And that has been a big determiner to where I stand. I’ll even deal with minimal amount of room and just adjust in order to keep my place.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend that I haven’t seen in a long time was in class. She beckoned me over and after a series of hugs and quickly catching up, she asked me to stand in front of her. This put me in a totally new place in the studio – a corner that I’d never gotten near. It is the corner with full mirrors and not just any mirrors… the FAT mirror. But one does not abandon a fellow ballerina in her first class back after a long time away! That would be kind of cruel, us ballet peeps have to stick together after all. So there I was standing in front of these big, FAT emphasizing, full length mirrors; standing right in front so that there was nothing to look at but me, me, me in that FAT mirror.

Want to hear something crazy? I like it. The ability to self-correct was amazing. I discovered so much about the difference between where I thought my arms, legs, hands, and feet were positioned versus where they actually were! and the ability to make those adjustments with a simple glance in the mirror… why did I resist this all this time? Well, of course, because I have body image issues and I still do but this amazing thing happened that night and has continued to happen class after class… I still judge myself harshly before class but as I start to warm up and class starts, my attention diverts from my unwanted poundage to my dancing, to seeing myself move and to matching up what I see with how it feels to move.

I have a new little corner in the studio surrounded by mirrors and I like to look… who would have thought!?! Practically by magic, I have learned to harness the power of la glace and it is amazing what there is to be learned. It’s about watching my form and watching the effort that I put in to my technique, not about worrying if I look chubby. I actually can concentrate on dancing rather than focusing on the size of my thighs – even when I’m actually looking at my thighs!

Here’s a thought… what if we begin to think that when we look in the mirror that there are dancers looking back, not girls with tummies or thighs that we don’t like; that we begin to see ballet dancers moving and dancing instead of boys and girls that are just making believe. Let’s try it, I think that we will like it!

The Dark Side of Muscle Memory

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The human body is an amazing machine. There are so many, very incredible things about it. Muscle memory is one of those über awesome things. Simply put, when you move your body, you activate sensors – proprioceptors. The proprioceptors work like biological gyroscopes. How is that for cool! Your gyroscopes help detect movement, maintain your balance, orient your body in space, and they send messages back to your central nervous system. From here there is a loop of continuous information from muscles, joints, tendons to brain, from brain to muscles, joints, tendons, and back again. This loop creates a pathway of information and that, my friends, is muscle memory – the ability for your body to recognize certain movements and replicate them over and over again. This is how a person can be off from ballet class for a year and still remember how to tendu and plié without a hundred new lessons!  Whew! and isn’t that great news!

But… Saturday I took a more advanced class (my 2nd since I’ve been back) and I was having a GREAT time, everything was working and I was even turning! I didn’t turn this well before I went off on injury/dissertation! Then we got to a combination in center – a really simple combination, really, really simple. It started off with a simple pique to arabesque and then a little walk in the park and a change in direction and keep going. I couldn’t. Everything froze up and there was a sense of panic that I didn’t understand. It was the easiest combination of the day and I could not do it.  My Awesome Ballet Teacher just assumed that I was having some foot trouble so he told me to just walk it through on flat, which I did. But the very next combination had turns and small jumps and I was fine again.

Yesterday, it occurred to me what had happened. It was muscle memory. I went out on a pique to arabesque. That was my very last step in ballet class on July 5, 2012 at around 9:30pm. It was a Thursday. That isn’t what caused the injury but it was the straw that broke the proverbial back and that is what my body remembered. What we aren’t told about muscle memory is that your body also remembers injuries and what caused them; it’s more often refered to as muscle guarding. The only way to heal it is to retrain the pathway of muscle memory from “injury alert!!!” to pique to arabesque (or you know, whatever movement was directly involved with the injury). Physical therapists call this unwinding. So let the unwinding begin. I won’t be afraid of the pique to arabesque, it didn’t hurt me, it was just there at the wrong time and the wrong place.

Sometimes we do need to intellectualize  – a bit – enough to understand what is really holding us back. Sometimes it isn’t exactly what we think, sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less…but knowing is half the battle. If you’ve had a dance injury, maybe this information will help you get over some hurdles as well. Muscle memory is an amazing gift of the body but we still have to be the boss of it!

~Let’s dance. All will be well.