The Studio is Cold and Your Muscles are Even Colder
For a Dancer, Injury can Strick Anywhere
You’ve just won a key role with a major dance company, and you are determined to be exquisite with every step. So you arrive at the studio hours before all the other dancers—before the heat even comes on. You practice your leaps and landings, push your body into precise turn out, and stretch into developé again and again and again. But the studio is cold and your muscles are even colder. . . .
. . .One of the scariest things about dancing is realizing that injury can come from anywhere. Whether it is forgetting to warm your muscles properly before a performance, fatigue from overwork or imprecise technique as you learn a new routine—injury will find you.
Depending on your age or where you are as a dancer, injury means different things. If you are new to dance and still young and resilient, it may mean nothing more than limiting your workouts for a few days and doing extra stretching and ice afterward. If you are at the top of your art, it may mean grinding out performance after performance through the pain that grows with every movement. If you are in your 30s, it could mean a career cut short.
One thing is sure. No matter what your age or your dance level, if you do not take care of your body—if you do not treat the source of your pain as well as the symptoms—your injuries will not heal. And the result could be less-than-exquisite performance, or worse.
So aside from eating right, getting rest, warming up before dancing and stretching afterward, what can you do?
Structural Integration is like a being a Dancer
You may or may not have heard of Structural Integration, but its goals are similar to yours as a dancer:
- To align and balance the body in “ideal” symmetry
- To lengthen the line of the body
- To enable the body’s foundation (feet, ankles and lower legs) to effortlessly bear the weight of the body
When those goals are met, people from all walks of life move more freely, have more energy and dance more fluidly. For a dancer it means having a body that is completely in alignment, that is fluid and light, in a state of “effortless effort”. It means the audience sees nothing more than the beauty you create with your strong, fluid body. And isn’t that what you work for?
If so, read on to learn more about how Structural Integration can help you.
Structural Integration 10 Session Series:
Phase 1 creates space in your body for the deeper work to come. During this time with you, I will use a form of myofascial spreading to warm your muscles, tendons, ligaments, AND the protective sheath (called the “fascia”) that covers all. The warmth will make them pliable, and allow me to length tight muscles, free your pelvis, straighten your posture and balance your lower legs, ankles and arches of your feet.
Phase 2 goes deeper into the body’s structure. Because the outer layers of fascia, muscle, etc. were loosened and move into place in Phase 1, I will now be able to reach the twisted, torqued myofascia and ligaments within the pelvis and release them. I can smooth the fascia that has clenched itself around your spine and neck to protect them. And bring pelvis, back, neck and head into balance with each other.
Phase 3 will focus on creating harmony in the body. Whereas in Phase 1 and 2, I focused on lower body and upper body separately, in this last phase, I will align upper with lower body and create overall freedom and symmetry in movement.
Ultimately, you will feel fluidity and ease that you have not felt in sometime. This new, original body in balance will stand stronger against injury and inspire grace and ease in your dance.
