I need a manual
Sep. 29th, 2004 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenI went to bellydance class last night. In hindsight this was a dumb thing to do as I'm still sick and it was raining cats and dogs. OTOH the teacher praised me personally as being "excellent", so my ego is well taken care of, if not the rest of me.
This was my second class. We built on what we did last week in terms of reinforcing proper posture, and then went on to learn more about isolating movements. We focused a lot on the hips, and the twist-like motion that will evolve into a shimmy, and we also did a bit with the shoulders and the rib cage. I predict the rib cage will be my weakest area, but we'll see.
I'll give my teacher credit, though. She's extremely chatty, but she does know how to break a movement down so that it makes sense. Granted, I give some credit here to the yoga and other exercise work that I've done (man, doesn't that make it sound like I'm in some kind of good physical shape? ;) ) so that when she talks about things like only using your abs or gluts I'm already familiar with what it feels like to just use those muscles, but even so she can demonstrate a dance move that looks like something I could never do, and then explain it in small parts that show how it's all very easy.
We're still mostly on learning the basic concepts, which is something she talked about at the start of class. Basically she said that she knows we haven't done much "dance" to our dancing yet, but that once we get these foundations down we'll see the rest of dancing just fly. Last week was a little too basic to see that, but this week it was much easier to see how the things we were doing were going to evolve into actual dancing, so I'm looking forward to it.
I'm finding that so far it's not a lot of exercise, but this might be because it's very low impact ("I don't do jumping," says my teacher about herself). I guess it's more like yoga than weights or cardio. You might not feel it as you're doing it, but if you do it enough you'll see results.
Thus far I would definitely keep going with this, though. It's fun, if nothing else. We'll see how the final six classes go, but at this rate I could see myself finding ways to take more classes once this is done.
The rain chased most of the students away, so cute girl with guy's name was not there. I don't know if that's due to the weather or her not coming back for the rest of the class, though. Oh well.
As for today, I woke up feeling like I'd been very stupid to go out the night before. If I hadn't already taken two sick days last week I would have definitely called in sick this morning. I probably should have anyway, but here we are.
I resolve to spend the rest of the week doing nothing more strenuous than going to work. Which is admittedly frustrating as I miss fresh food!! But cooking takes too much energy and brainpower, so I'm going for the lesser of two evils. For now. I may try to compromise on this by throwing together a pizza using herbs and veggies from my garden. Not too much effort, but maybe just enough for my body to enjoy what real food tastes like.
In happier news, the leaves are starting to turn. I live right on the cusp of New England, so I get some really good foliage in the fall. It makes me want to take walks in the woods, and then bake things. I'd love to try my hand at making apple pie this weekend, but we'll see if I'm feeling up to it. [fingers crossed]
Hmm. I need a fall icon. Or a bellydance icon. Or I need two icons of one each.
This was my second class. We built on what we did last week in terms of reinforcing proper posture, and then went on to learn more about isolating movements. We focused a lot on the hips, and the twist-like motion that will evolve into a shimmy, and we also did a bit with the shoulders and the rib cage. I predict the rib cage will be my weakest area, but we'll see.
I'll give my teacher credit, though. She's extremely chatty, but she does know how to break a movement down so that it makes sense. Granted, I give some credit here to the yoga and other exercise work that I've done (man, doesn't that make it sound like I'm in some kind of good physical shape? ;) ) so that when she talks about things like only using your abs or gluts I'm already familiar with what it feels like to just use those muscles, but even so she can demonstrate a dance move that looks like something I could never do, and then explain it in small parts that show how it's all very easy.
We're still mostly on learning the basic concepts, which is something she talked about at the start of class. Basically she said that she knows we haven't done much "dance" to our dancing yet, but that once we get these foundations down we'll see the rest of dancing just fly. Last week was a little too basic to see that, but this week it was much easier to see how the things we were doing were going to evolve into actual dancing, so I'm looking forward to it.
I'm finding that so far it's not a lot of exercise, but this might be because it's very low impact ("I don't do jumping," says my teacher about herself). I guess it's more like yoga than weights or cardio. You might not feel it as you're doing it, but if you do it enough you'll see results.
Thus far I would definitely keep going with this, though. It's fun, if nothing else. We'll see how the final six classes go, but at this rate I could see myself finding ways to take more classes once this is done.
The rain chased most of the students away, so cute girl with guy's name was not there. I don't know if that's due to the weather or her not coming back for the rest of the class, though. Oh well.
As for today, I woke up feeling like I'd been very stupid to go out the night before. If I hadn't already taken two sick days last week I would have definitely called in sick this morning. I probably should have anyway, but here we are.
I resolve to spend the rest of the week doing nothing more strenuous than going to work. Which is admittedly frustrating as I miss fresh food!! But cooking takes too much energy and brainpower, so I'm going for the lesser of two evils. For now. I may try to compromise on this by throwing together a pizza using herbs and veggies from my garden. Not too much effort, but maybe just enough for my body to enjoy what real food tastes like.
In happier news, the leaves are starting to turn. I live right on the cusp of New England, so I get some really good foliage in the fall. It makes me want to take walks in the woods, and then bake things. I'd love to try my hand at making apple pie this weekend, but we'll see if I'm feeling up to it. [fingers crossed]
Hmm. I need a fall icon. Or a bellydance icon. Or I need two icons of one each.
