A great New Year requires great tunes. Here is a mac-daddy 33 song playlist to get you step-touching, crawling, sliding, and breathing heavily.
Photo by Pole Ninja Photography.
1. Choose three breathy songs with minimal lyrics.
(Suggestions from the December Playlist are listed below.)
2. Assume one of the following positions: seated, supine (laying on your back) with feet on the floor (start of a hip bridge), quadrupedal (all fours), or sitting on your heels.
3. Practice breathing at a slow comfortable pace.
4. Then, follow the rhythm of the music as you...
As you move through the song, focus on moving from your pelvis. Gradually, incorporate body parts you didn’t incorporate before: use your head, your arms, your fingers, and toes. Emphasize the lengthening on the front side of your body as the back side shortens -- and vice versa. When you find spots that offer more resistance, explore them more.
Can you curl so small it is barely visible? Can you make it bigger than you believed it could be?
Song suggestions:
Track #3 - Kareful, "Backwards"
Track #4 - Ash Walker featuring Zeb Samuels, "Blue Veins"
5. Either remain in that position, or change positions for the next song as you...
Isolate the movement to one part of the body; sway the hips, arms, or head as the rest of the body rests. Then gradually, move your head and pelvis together in a side bend. Swish to the other side...like a snake or a cloth in the breeze. Work out the kinks as you follow your breath.
Song suggestions:
Track 5 - Handbook, "Sixteen Lights"
Track 6 - George Fitzgerald, "Full Circle" featuring Boxed In (Bonobo Remix)
6. Finally,
for the entirety of the third song.
Can you do it only with the thighs, the head, or the hands? Feel the floor beneath you and the space around you as your circles become strong and continuous. Reverse your circle and see what it offers.
Song suggestions:
Track 7 - Bluetech, "Phoenix Rising"
Track 8 - OBESØN, "Friend To An Enemy [NEST HQ Premiere]
As you repeat the patterns over and over again, you may drift into new positions. This is ok!
Focus on moving as a result of your breath. Begin small, subtle and easy. Gradually express full range of motion as you move.
There are no wrong answers, as it is an exploration. You think you look weird? Great, you are doing it right. Keep going. You feel sexy? Fantastic, exactly. You feel stiff? Beautiful, move through that.
Heightened focus brings greater results, so focus IN, and feel the space around you.
Enjoy, and share your discoveries....
“I don’t do balls,” I used to say.
Like many other dancers I knew growing up, I formed an identity around being a dancer with no interest in activities involving balls, pucks, paddles, etc. (unless I was dancing with it).
In high school, I almost failed P.E. class because I flat-out refused to participate in any sports activity. As a result, in later years, whenever someone would throw me a ball I’d duck away rather than catch it, or if I did attempt a catch, it would be in a stiff and panicky state. It was embarrassing.
Ki’ilani (seen in the video) changed my relationship with catching. She loves balls more than anyone I’ve ever met. Every trip to a large store includes a visit to the sports aisle to feel balls. She even keeps a ball in her pocket for comfort tossing. One of our quarantine activities has been ‘dance catch.’
Have you ever bought any digital tutorials or courses? Or saved videos on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube?
Chances are you grabbed them because wanted to remember and LEARN the material.
But, did work through them?
How has it been integrating what you learned into your dancing/living/teaching?
Or, are the videos collecting digital dust...waiting for you to give them a chance?
If you have gathered materials, especially if you PAID for those materials, but haven’t given them the attention you intended, how about getting out your calendar RIGHT NOW and booking yourself some self-learning time?
If you look at any beginner movement class, you'll see widely-varying degrees of bodily awareness. However, regardless of how someone moves, with a little bit of cueing, anyone can feel if they are in contact with the floor or not.
You don’t need skill or imagination to sense your contact with the floor. You may not be paying attention to it most of the time, but it doesn't require anatomical awareness to grasp what 'weight-bearing' is or to notice which of your parts have the most pressure.
Weight bearing is a constant thing (unless you are temporarily airborne, space traveling, or swimming, you are bearing weight, somehow).
Yet, the details of rolling contacts are rarely zeroed in on outside of higher-level movement environments. But...they could be.
The first is called ‘Bodyfulness’ by Boulder author Christine Caldwell. It’s swelling with information for or anyone who’s ready to look at the how and why of how they move. The author founded the Somatic Counseling program at Naropa University and has been in practice for more than thirty years.
She says:
“The body isn’t a thing we have but an experience we are. Bodyfulness is about working toward our potential as a whole human animal that breathes as well as thinks, moves as well as sits still, takes action as well as considers, and exists not because it thinks but because it dances, stretches, bounces, gazes, focuses, and attunes to others.“
Have you been to a dance class that was supposed to be beginner-appropriate or all-levels, but the class progressed in a way that made you want to disappear?
Maybe you had fun the first few minutes when the sequence was short, but then the instructor moved on, and on, and on. With rapidly dwindling confidence, you were left stumbling in the wake of an ever-growing sequence. Perhaps physically you could have done it all, but you needed more time to really 'get it'. It was just too much to remember.
I've been there. In classes and in auditions, I've been there.
You can only stumble around, a count behind everyone else, for so long before you want to shrivel into the corner and become unseen.
When you’re new to a style or form (or even just with a new teacher), learning a lengthy complex piece of choreography (maybe alongside people much younger or more skilled than you) is daunting and often
disheartening. Based on what I've observed, the amount of choreography delivered in many dance classes leaves a LOT of people behind.
In my opinion, if you are still trying to remember the choreo during the last minutes of class, you're missing out on the joy of dancing, the part where the movement starts to carry you and you can transcend who you were when you arrived.
My message is this:
If you flow with a gourd of your choice between now and Nov 5, I’ll send you a code for $5 off any event or video.
How:
Get busy with you pumpkin and catch it on video.
Post at least 15 seconds on FB or IG and tag #pumpkinflow and @flowmovement
Send us a message on either platform with the link to your video and we will send you your discount code.
Yesterday, I witnessed a group movement experience that I was SO glad I was not a part of.
After a month away and a week of living the truck driver life, I got a month-long pass to a nearby gym. It’s primarily a rock-climbing gym, but they have a weight room upstairs.
This particular gym runs some group conditioning classes inside of the weight room. While I was gleefully doing irreverent things on the back extension bench, a voice came over the loudspeaker letting everyone know that “Body Blast with Mr. Blasty Blast” [ok, not his real name] was starting soon. I thought, “Oh nice, I’ll get to see if I would ever want to join the class.” Consensus:
OH NO, I WILL NOT FUCKING EVER. (Unless you pay me. I’d consider it if money were involved.)
It's the last month of 2015! Whoa. I remember when the year 2000 was unfathomable. Here are some tracks from artists I've been moving and decluttering to....
Here is the first ever monthly song playlist! Each month, I am going to introduce you to 10 or so songs that I like to move to and teach to. Expect a blend of higher energy dance songs to get you warm, sexy, deep, moody tracks, and ambient breathy songs. Let me know which ones work for you and if it led you to any new discoveries.
