PART ONE 

PREPARATION:
GET INTO YOUR BODY & CONCENTRATE YOUR MIND 

PREPARATION

It is important to recognize that the state of your mind and body coming into practice is almost as important to the development of your dancing as the dancing itself. With that said, I’d like to take a moment to discuss preparation.

It seems perhaps a bit obvious to say that you need to be in your body when you are trying to develop as a dancer, but our modern lives are an increasingly out-of-body string of experiences, in which our mind drags our body along for the ride from one thing to the next thing to Get Things Done! We are rarely aware of our bodies, and, when we are, the awareness is minimal, just enough to tell them to do something they usually do not want to do, or when something hurts. We rarely listen just to hear what they have to say. We love to dance, because bodies naturally love to dance. But, competition ballroom dancing, or Dancesport, is something more; it involves wanting to develop and refine our movement so that we become more efficient as movers and so that we can do and express what we really want to express to our audiences. As such, it involves giving up some bad habits and thus that we are aware that we have bad habits to begin with. This is a challenging enterprise and if we are to undertake it, it is best to develop a quality relationship with our body, so that it is more likely to accommodate the things we would like to do with it. 

Before we begin there is something we must understand, namely that we are not our body or, rather, what we assume our body will do on any particular day is not in fact what it will do on any particular day. Each day it may feel a bit different. It may be capable of doing different things. Sometimes it feels sore and achy and like it cannot do much of anything, and then once we warm up a little, it does great things. Other days it feels great and immediately does everything we ask of it. We must check in and find out how it is doing today at this moment.
Also it is helpful as you train to notice where your body may have weaknesses, so that you can give your body in advance whatever particular supplemental exercises or warm-ups it may need to stay strong and flexible.

We are biological creatures and we must nurture our bodies and train them as such. It is helpful to think of your body as a horse in training. Your body will need patience, guidance, and persistence. So it is you and your body/horse that will go into practice together. Knowing this will help immensely with your expectations of how you will progress.

Breathe
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The first step to engaging our connection with our own bodies is to find a quiet space to sit or stand where you won’t be disturbed and to take a few moments to feel your breath. Breathe deeply and consciously. Then take a moment to listen to what your body is telling you. Is it sore, tight, tired? What shape is it taking right now? Move your body around a little and feel what else it may have to say. By taking a moment to listen to our bodies, it is easier for parts of our body to coordinate with each other, and, as a result, for us to move in the way we want to move. Also, once we have brought our awareness into our own body, it is much easier to be aware of things outside of ourselves, such as the music, our partner, and the space of the ballroom. If you find difficulty sensing what your body feels, see the body scan exercise in the Sample Practice chapter at the end of the book to help yourself listen a bit more deeply.

Once you can hear what your body has to say, then you can begin to request things for it to do. And when you have requested it to do something, you will need to listen and see if it is doing what you have asked of it.

Concentrating mind

Your mind in ballroom dancing should work like your breath. You are constantly breathing in, taking in information from your body, your partner, your surroundings, and then breathing out, directing your body to do something, actively producing something on the dance floor. So, both sides of your mind need to be constantly engaged, the one side that you tend to use to listen and notice things and the side that tends to direct or instruct your body to do things. It is up to you to keep an even back and forth so that you are almost doing both simultaneously.
The process of tuning into your body and hearing what your body has to say has the automatic advantage of concentrating your mind, which, like your body, does not always do what you would like it to do. When you arrive to practice, your mind is often still elsewhere and takes a bit of time to focus on the task at hand. It often is caught in thoughts or emotions from the day. Getting into your body calms the mind and reminds it what its task is to do at this moment.

There has been much written on mindfulness and the advantages of being truly present in each moment. Suffice it to say that the more you are able to be present during your practice, the more you will reap the rewards.

Try:

​See how much of your body you can feel at this moment and see how much you can be inside of it. Check in briefly before practice. Is there anything your body wants to say to you? What is contracted, stretched, tight, open? Where is your sense of balance? Do you feel heavy, light? Move around to the music. Can you sense where you are in space? 

 - Excerpt from MOVING AS TWO: A Guide for Ballroom Dancers
By Suzie Hardt
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