Tag Archives: #Ballet

Sleep Is Better Than Cake

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Whenever you are in the midst of something stressful, cake seems like the thing to do. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just me, but I have a feeling I’m not alone in this reaction. Whenever I’m experiencing a lot of stress, cake becomes my BFF. Or ice cream. Or cake and ice cream. Or… you get the picture. So when I spent literally years under the weight of stress, well… that’s not the only weight that happens. I think you get the picture.

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Milk Bar cake. If you are going to have cake… have some serious cake. 

 

The thing that I always forget is that feeling good is better than eating cake. Yes, actually eating cake does help me deal with stress. Well, for the short time that it takes to eat cake. But the rest of the time, not so much. It’s short-lived help, to tell the truth. What really helps is getting some sleep. Like actual sleep, good sleep, restful sleep. Which doesn’t happen just because I lie down. And when I lie down after I’ve eaten half a cake, I can guarantee to you that good sleep isn’t going to follow.

Learning to better deal with stress is such an important part of being healthy, not just for the stress itself but for all the stuff that happens (or doesn’t happen) around stress. Like cake. And no sleep. Lately, I’ve been eating lighter.  Very little cake… it was my sister’s birthday – happy B-day M – so there was cake but I’ve been cooking, drinking water, taking vitamins, and dealing with stress in better ways and as a result, sleeping well. It’s definitely better than eating cake.

Other ways to deal with stress:

  1. Cuddle the cat, any one of them, or the dog… or they each get a turn
  2. Go for a walk
  3. Read a good book
  4. Take a warm bath
  5. Have some warm mint tea
  6. Watch a ballet DVD
  7. Write in my journal
  8. Sing (poorly but hey, this is not American Idol here)
  9. Dance
  10. Talk about it with someone who gets it (Carboy or another good friend)

Hopefully, you’ve got healthy ways to handle stress… healthier than cake, so that when the occasion calls for cake, we can totally enjoy it and get good sleep too.

All will be well

 

 

Let Love Lead the Way

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Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter.

~Richard Feynman

I’m not a physicist but I loved the to the hilt, jazzy way that Dr. Feynman approached the discipline both as a student and as a professor. If you aren’t familiar with Richard Feynman, I highly suggest you google his name and take a look. One of the finest minds in physics, Dr. Feynman was a professor at CalTech and just a guy who loved physics, I mean really loved it. I like to think that it’s the way that I approach my discipline – both as a lifelong student and as a professor – and I’d like to think it’s the way that I approach being an adult student of dance. I’m not going to figure out all the answers and maybe there are no answers or maybe every dancer’s got their own answers and no two will be exactly alike. But I’ve got to fall in love with something and then do it, fall in love with ballet, fall in love with moving to the music, fall in love with ballet class, fall in love with it all over again. I don’t think I fell out of love with ballet but I think that in this case absence did not make the heart grow fonder and some recent experiences that weren’t so great didn’t help. But I think Dr. Feynman’s words apply, let love lead the way, allow love to cover hurts and harms, look beyond the annoyances and let love fill in the all the spaces instead, fall deeply in love and dancing will follow.

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Dr. Richard Feynman at CalTech (photo care of CalTech Archives)