Breathing 101

Let’s cover some basics about breath. Being better about your breathing will allow you to do more physically, make your dancing look much better, help you find more natural looking movement, and give you better presence. It’s not just enough to breathe, but actually to know some of the components to breath and how to change it. I caught myself the other day teaching and telling someone to breathe – but it’s not like they weren’t breathing and turning blue and passing out – it’s just that they weren’t breathing well.

Breathing parts

We’re going to break breathing into 3 parts. Your breath could be one of these parts, two, or all three.

Part 1 : Belly breath

Part 1 is the deep belly breath – like a baby’s breath. This is the diaphragm (the muscular division between your rib-cage compartment and your abdominal compartment) pulling down (it’s got two little fingers that attach lower down the spine). In pulling down it expands space for the lungs pulling in air and pushing out the organs in the belly. Of the three parts, this one can expand the lungs the most. In a good dancer you’ll see a nice expansion out of the belly (the rectus abdominis muscles will be relaxed – the body gets real support from the transverse and obliques on the side). Various exercises can be done internally working the diaphragm against the transverse abdominis or timing it with the transverse (things like yoga fire breath etc).

In the average population you see a lot of people never use belly breath and they need to be retaught it.

Part 2 : Rib cage breath

Part 2 is rib cage breath. This involves expanding out the ribs. It doesn’t get at much volume to the lungs as belly breath but it’s what a lot of people will do thinking they’re doing a big breath. This can be a very nice breath and many exercises can be done to expand the rib cage in different directions to stretch out the intercostal muscles (the muscles in between the ribs) and strengthen them. Some nice exercise I like to do with students in learning to expand one side (left and right) more than the other.

Part 3 : Scalene muscle breath

Part 3 is scalene muscle breath. These are small muscles in the neck that reach down to the top of the rib cage to the tops of the lungs and pull the tops of the ribs upward. This is the weakest and smallest of the three breath parts. There’s no way it can deliver the oxygen you need to do even minimal exercise, but it’s amazing the number of people just breathe with just this part all the time. People look kind of tense just breathing with the scalene, if you ask them if they’re breathing they say and think they are, but it’s really not an effective breath.

A Nice breath

A nice breath would start with part 1, then do part 2, and then some part 3. Then release those in that order. Not that is what you’re going to do all the time – it’s just a really good breath to practice. It doesn’t take into account the lobes of the lungs and it’s relation to forward flexion of the spine or backward extension, or times you might want to hold your breath (like building inter-abdominal pressure), or different breath timings (exhale time, inhale time, and holds on both ends) – that’s all for later lessons.

How are your Questioning Skills?

Our lives are led by questions. What should I wear today? What should I have for breakfast? Should I take that dance lesson? Unfortunately we don’t use our built in questioning skills to our advantage. Asking good questions can get us out of ruts that we might be stuck in, it can help us to have better relationships, it can get us past learning plateaus we don’t even see that we’re in. Asking good questions will change your life.

Western Teaching

Unfortunately we have a tradition of teaching that kills creativity and good thinking. The teacher comes in, they explain stuff, they babble on for an hour or two. Students have to take notes and repeat back the information on a test. The whole process is very one directional. It’s no wonder students get disengaged, uninterested, bored, and tuned-out. When do they get to actually think about the subjects? When do they get to feel something about it? Some will, but probably in spite of the teacher’s methods, not because of them.

Neil Postman the famous educator once said, “Children enter our schools as question marks and leave as periods.” Our society un-trains people from asking questions. It’s always amazing to me that when I stop class and ask people if they have any questions, no one is brave enough to ask any – even when they’re having difficulties – even when I know from talking to them personally that they’re curious.

Make-up a Question

Lately in class I’ve been asking people to make-up questions. Go around the room and each person has to make-up a question. (It’s not quite practical if you’re teaching a huge class, but if you’re teaching a typical sized class, try it out.) It’s not for the faint of heart, what you learn about your students will amaze you, and use your best judgment if to do it. Most people come up with amazing great questions, questions that will huge benefits for their dancing. Things that they’re interested in, engaged in, curious about – and now more involved in the class about.

Unfortunately some people come up with questions that just reveal that they’re just not there to learn anything. They’ve already closed their minds.

Becoming great comes from within

In the end, the reality of the situation is that teachers really don’t do much through giving information. In the end, you have to learn everything yourself, the teacher is really just a facilitator for it. The best teachers know this. A great teacher doesn’t have to do much teaching at all, they really have to build curiosity, passion, engagement. Students really teach themselves.

Dig Deep

Someone once wrote “you will only be as good a coach as to how fundamental the questions you ask”. Fundamental questions have driven my life. Not just simple questions like, “how can I dance this step better?” but bigger – How can this improvement apply to other movements? Is there a universal technique? What are the fundamental parts to good movement?

• What does it mean to move from your core?
• “Got belly?” How does that really help me to learn about the core? What is really going on with the muscles?
• What are the muscles of the core? How do I use them? How do I train them? Why should I train them?
• How often should I practice? Is there a point at which practice is not useful? Is there a point where practice makes things worse?
• Is there do enough, but not too much rule to practicing in dance? Is it something like over practicing acting?
• What makes good dancers good?
• What is artistic about dancing? What is art? What are the fundamental components of any art? How do they apply to dance?
• Is there a “genetic” component to being a good dancer? Or can it all be learned? Do you have to start at a young age?
• Is body shape genetic – or is there something else there at play? If you’ve seen someone go through good dance training and their feet change shape, their shoulders and arms change position, their rib cage changes, their back changes, with-in just a few months, can you really just explain things away as genetic? And “some people have it and some don’t”?
• Why do some people take lessons for years and never get better?
• If it’s clear to see that a dancer from outside the ballroom world (ballet, modern, whatever) is much better, can start doing ballroom and win right away, or not ever do ballroom and still dance awesome, why do people get so sold on thinking their coach knows everything, or you must be a US or World finalist to know what you’re talking about?
• What makes a dance a dance? Is it the music? What is character?
• How much of you do you express on the floor? How much should you? What does it mean to express you on the floor? How do I change that?
• What is theater? What makes good theater?
• If coach A says to do such-and-such always or never, but I can watch the world finalists on YouTube and they break that rule all the time, what does that mean? Is there something more fundamental being hidden here?
• If coach A says to do one thing and coach B says to do something else. Why? Is one right? Is there a way for both to be right?

Ask questions, change your life. It changed mine.

Improve your Sexiness Quotient with Boundaries

Boundaries in relationships are hugely important, but greatly messed up. Whether it’s a relationship with a friend, romantic relationship, family member, acquaintance, teacher, student, co-worker, whatever. Problems with relationship boundaries leads to losing friends, losing business, boring performances, fizzled love relationships, fighting, isolation, feeling threatened, and many more problems.

Relationship boundary skills are not taught as a class for everyone. Most people learn through observation of their parents. Maybe that’s not the best thing in the world. Perhaps you’re inheriting a divorce rate. There is lots of information in psychology about these skills, but our historical-national view on psychology (among other things) is to use this information way too late after there’s already huge problems instead of using this information early on and for improvement of everyone’s lives. And you can learn these skills from a good ballroom dancing teacher – because teaching ballroom dancing is often like being a couple’s councilor.

There’s something to learn here for everyone. For people who have really good boundary skills to learn to be more observant of boundaries in other people and why you react to them the way you do. For people who are dating or looking for someone to date. For people in long term relationships. For improving storytelling and dance quality.

People can get really messed up. And it’s not so much really that they’re messed up, it’s just that they’ve never really seen good relationship boundary skills up close. Perhaps they grew up in a home with just a single parent, or with parents that had no boundary skills of their own. Their parents fought all the time, or were distant, or alternated between the two. When did they ever get a chance to learn the tiny, subtle, joyful, fun interaction of the setting of small minor boundaries and breaking them and renegotiating them.

The Wus/Dullard/Wall flower

The problem of the wus is the problem of not setting boundaries – of not reacting soon and often enough. They don’t set up boundaries and so people step right in and they don’t respond, and things progress, and they don’t respond, and they don’t respond, and they don’t respond. But then they do respond – they go postal. They yell at their husbands, they make wild accusations that they’re being threatened, they whine that they are the victim. They lose friendships, marriages, connection with people.

The Speedster/Slut/Easy girl/Salesman/Slimy guy

The problem of the speedster is the problem of brushing past boundaries and the negotiation of boundaries that would normally happen. Instead of paying attention to the subtle negotiations of personal boundaries they just go in and take or do. They come of callous, not caring. They are kind of unaware of the people they are interacting with.

Interactions

What if you put an extreme wus and an extreme speedster in the same room together? Just wait till the explosion happens! Put either of them with someone who has good boundary relationship skills – the wus or the speedster might just think the good skills person was just boring or inert or dull… the good skills person is probably thinking “red flag! red flag!!!”. (Want some entertainment, watch the SNL perfume ad spoof “red flag”.) What if you put these different type people on dates?

Learning to Negotiate

Developing good boundary skills is about subtlety. It about doing small simple harmless actions and observing the small reactions. On the course level it’s about protection and safety, but really if you’re doing it on a course level, it’s already too late. On the subtle level, it’s about flirting and leads to any number of things based on the situation: business deals, job offers, relationships, romance, hot sex, great dance performance, or just great friendships. It gives you full control of the relationships in your life.

Romance and Seduction

Perhaps this is easiest first to see in the example of romance and seduction. There are multitudes of small interactions and information to observe in situations of romance, many people are very aware of and thus a great place to start. First, the eyes, is someone awake, aware, looking around? Or are they closed down, distracted, or “not there”? Are they smiling? What emotion are they in?

There is always a boundary between you and other people, sometimes small, sometime great. You start distant. Observe the starting condition. Now instead of just barreling up to this someone and saying, “hey you’re hot, let’s go on a date”… Instead of that, just move slightly closer. Not a whole lot. This person you are interested in, what is their reaction? Again, move closer. What is their reaction? In this method, you have started to set up a dialog. A question and answer response, a series of boundaries that is the key to communicating and negotiating intention. You know right away if someone is interested, distracted, ready, not-ready, busy, or whatever. No blood needs to be shed, no one needs to be caught off guard.

Everyone’s personal distances (distance to acknowledgement, distance to casual conversation, distance to intimate conversation, distance to friends, distance to lovers) is influenced by culture, but still hugely different amongst a culture. If you can’t read exactly where those distances are just by walking up to someone, you can improve your relationship boundary skills.

The Poking Experiment

A popular favorite amongst high school boys is the poking their finger into the abdominals of a girl. It can be done as a surprise or with total awareness. It can be done platonic-ly or non-platonic-ly. It even works well into adulthood. It’s an initiation. In the communication and developing of boundaries, there is always a boundary, someone must initiate the crossing and then observe the interaction afterward. Initiating and not observing? That’s the speedster. Not reacting to something that’s clearly an initiation? That’s a wus. Initiating again and again and again and getting negative or no response? That’s just obnoxious.

By building up a catalog of initiation actions and reactions to them we build up a repertoire of communication with someone. You need to rebuild that with everyone you meet. It’s called relationship building. You create a gentle chase, you interact with them, they interact with you. Look for a balance. (Tennis gets really boring really fast if your other player can’t volley back the ball and you learn nothing and neither of you get better). You respect and give space to the other person by waiting for their response.

Dancing

There are a lot of great dancers out there. Beautiful technique, interesting choreography, but some have no chemistry. They may dance great, but they hold very little interest for me. They are not interacting with each other. There is no timing of waiting for the reaction of their partner after they have initiated something. If a couple has great interaction with each other, it changes everything, timings are now interesting and varied instead of boring, movements have cause. For couples that have great interaction, they could do a basic all day and it would still be interesting.

Observe

So go out an observe people now. And observe your own actions and reactions. And then take a moment for peace to observe the neutral and then wait for an initiation or even better – initiate something yourself. You can learn so much by just playing the game, experimenting, having fun. Take times to take breaks, rest, heal if you have to. But then get out there and mess around. Pay attention to others reactions carefully, respect them. Work small. Negotiate boundaries and actions and then renegotiate them again and again.

Create a Great Atmosphere

I’ve been to a lot of different social dances. Some are good, some bad, some fun, some not, some just down right horrible. Whether you want to create a great dance environment, or great work place, or great dance studio, it doesn’t matter, some of the same basic principles apply. The environment that you create is far more important than how good you dance or any technical skills you might have whatever the situation is. People might be attracted in the beginning for the technical, but they’ll only stick around if there is a good environment.

Need for human connection

Everyone has a need for human connection. The Non-Violent Communication group ranks connection as one of the seven needs of a human. Forms of connection account for 5 of Professor Steven Reiss’s 16 basic desires. People will go to extreme lengths to satisfy this need, to the point of sacrificing other needs including romance, happiness, peace, independence, or even their own health. Sadly people even do some classically really bad social mistakes where they’re trying to get more connection only to drive people away.

Some people will say anything just so that they can be part of the group. Even if they don’t believe what they are agreeing with. Even if what they are saying is mean and spiteful and they’re a “nice” person, they say it or agree to it just to fit in.

Bashing others or bashing a common perceived enemy is a common tactic people use. (Gossip can be a form of this.) It kind of works to bond you with someone else in your group, but has some serious draw backs. It probably worked better centuries ago, but we live in a connected world, people eventually hear everything. Actually, it probably didn’t work long ago in small towns either. It also sets up an atmosphere of judging. What if you don’t believe the same things? What if you want to go against the judgment in the rumors? Will you trade your independence / knowledge / happiness to keep your connection with your current group?

Being judgmental

We’ve all know and seen people like this. They’re perhaps too vocal about “I like this…” and “I hate this…” and “This is no good…”. (Perhaps a bit self centered too.) Some people have an opinion about everything, which in itself isn’t bad, but they feel they need to share it with the world. All the time. Again, this creates an air of judging.

Many people’s first reaction to being judged is to be defensive or at least cautious. If dancing is at least part about being expressive, do you think they’ll be more open and expressive in this kind of a situation? Are they going to become great dancers in a studio like that? Or worse, the social dancers that feel they need to correct everything someone is doing. What about just having some fun? Why would anyone in their right mind go into a dance situation like that?

If you’re a dance teacher or a dance student, please, save the corrections for the appropriate venue: lesson time.

The judgment concept is actually much bigger than this. People have judgments going on inside their head all the time. To turn the judgment thought process into a thought process of perception and observation is the main key to get people expressive in their dancing (or anywhere else in their life).

A story: I started my dancing at a studio that was hugely judgmental in attitude. I look bad, I think it was horrible. That poor teacher, he was a total wreck when it came time for him to compete. Anyway, further down my path of discovery and learning about dancing, I took my first acting class. (I’ve taken many more since then.) I was stunned that first time though about how they all behaved. About how much it was about observation and not judgment. Everyone should take some acting classes.

Fairness

We are as people wired for fairness. When things are unfair, we are acutely aware of it. If you’re at a dance (or whatever the situation) try to spend some time with everyone. This is especially important for the leader of a group. One of the main qualities we all consciously or unconsciously attach to leadership is fairness. If you’re running a dance, you own a studio, whatever, don’t spend the entire night dancing with just your partner. Dance with everyone in the room. Systematically, one by one go through everyone in the room and dance with them each once, then lather, rinse, and repeat.

Try not to favor anyone in any of your classes. Even if you think you’re being private and just telling one student that “they’re so talented”, other students will hear. Don’t do it.

 

If we work together, we can all easily get all of our need for connection fed. We can all be more successful. Working together can be more enjoyable. Create a friendly environment in which the community can grow.