For Everyone Who's Been Asking About Somatic Bellydance

This weekend's somatic belly dance class was amazing! I knew a lot of my somatics work dovetailed beautifully with belly dance, but not until seasoned professionals started making major movement breakthroughs did I realize how valuable this stuff is to us.

During class, we did a floor warm-up, aiming to bring our minds and bodies into alignment. Then we physically realigned our bodies with detailed deep tissue work in the hip area, freeing up the muscles and increasing our range of motion, releasing deep muscles (yes, psoas fans, you can get there from here!) and more superficial muscles directly involved in belly dancing hip work.

The really crazy stuff happened once we got deeper. Quite literally.

As part of my somatic training, we study Body-Mind Centering, which has a heavy focus on organs and glands and their role in movement. And when we began bringing our organs into the equation, it was worth ten classes on spinal flexibility! By bringing in the internal organs at the base of the rib cage, we freed up new ease of motion, new nuances of articulation, and a new joy in dancing, thanks to the sheer pleasure of our "new" ability to move. To address the hips, we began to dance from the organs in the pelvis, particularly the reproductive organs, and felt new subtlety and freedom in our movements there as well.

Once we had turned on all the lights in our bodies, it was time to move. I used imagery and metaphor to guide students through some improvisation time, then we finished up with a quick developmental movement series, balancing the glands, and finished up with a bit of qigong to round out the afternoon and bring everything to a close.

It was a great class- I left feeling energized and excited for the next workshop. Watch this space to be the first to know! And trust me- you want to be there.

Here's Autumn's review of the class, with pictures!