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Hi all
I was wondering if any of you use breathwork in your classes. Aside from the occational "listen to your breath" comment, do you have any specific exercises that you lead your students through?
I'm studying breathwork in yoga and it's starting to spark some ideas for me in terms of applying it to bellydance. I naturally move with my breath and I feel that it is important to bring fluidity to the dance. I've worked with imagery and "energy balls" in my classes before to help lossen up students and get them to understand the internal connection between their movements. But I was thinking it might be benificial to add some breathing exercises.
What do you do? :-)
thx, Lulu
I was wondering if any of you use breathwork in your classes. Aside from the occational "listen to your breath" comment, do you have any specific exercises that you lead your students through?
I'm studying breathwork in yoga and it's starting to spark some ideas for me in terms of applying it to bellydance. I naturally move with my breath and I feel that it is important to bring fluidity to the dance. I've worked with imagery and "energy balls" in my classes before to help lossen up students and get them to understand the internal connection between their movements. But I was thinking it might be benificial to add some breathing exercises.
What do you do? :-)
thx, Lulu
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Los Angeles
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Re: Breathwork
Fri, September 11, 2009 - 10:21 AMYes, I have used breathing exercises in my classes. I've found that these don't often make much difference untill I get my students about half way through intermediate where the body memory seems to kick in and they begin to utilize the breathing tecnique to support the movement. Once an individual realizes how much smoother moves and transitions are when supported by their breathing patterns they become quite engaged in developing the breathe/movement patterning. I started using breathing exercises in class about 25 years ago when I had agroup of people who were in high stress situations sign up. :) I used breathing patterns unconciously and sort of stumbled across using them in class.
dandy -
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Re: Breathwork
Fri, September 11, 2009 - 10:39 AMOh pardon, I was just a little to quick to post I use - fill your lungs make a whistle shape with your lips, take twice as long to breath out as you did to breath in - then I encourage them to slow down the out breath as much as possible. This allows folks to relax and be more in the moment. I have them fill thier lungs up *slowly* as they go into a high back arch pulling their shoulders back down and together so the bottom point of the shoulder blades almost touch.....this is an isolation. then I have them breath out as they take the muscle tension out through the arms begining through the shoulders flowing down through the fingertips. I'm not sure how well this works writing it down :)=) I'm usually the demo type.
I put together a class I call Synergy that combines breathing, moves from martial arts, other forms of dance, yoga, stretch and tone, and a couple of other things that I have found improves things for bellydancers for my advanced student, although they said it was demanding they seemed to enjoy it.
So, I'm going to suggest that you pay attention to how you breate with a move and chart it, watch your students and adapt where needed, use the breathing exercises as they *do* improve the final movement flow.
(Probably way more than you wanted to hear:) ) Dandy
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