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Raq The Casbah – A Beginner’s Experience With Belly Dancing (Part 3)
By nikkita | October 30, 2008
Week 4-
Last night marked the middle of my 8 week session and seriously, I can’t believe that it’s almost November (let alone that October ever happened). Last night was probably the most difficult lesson I’ve had. I had been feeling kind of funny all week, so I think a lot of it was a strictly capacity mental thing. At least I’ve finally figured out how to dress because even though I’m cold in the beginning, I’m toasty as hell by the end of our first round. Not to mention last night that my arms were breaking a sweat. How does that even happen? As silly as it sounds, I was having problems with my appendages. Both my arms and my legs were like “yeah, no” and I really had to fight with them to cooperate. In the long run, I probably got twice the workout, so no complaints. By the time I got home, I felt pretty burned out both physically and mentally. I was just having a stupid day all together, so my body feeling so uncoordinated and floppy on top of it created quite a challenge. I don’t really want to label it as “frustrating” because whatever, you get over it, but too many mental hiccups in a row can really steer you off course.
But by late last night any worry or annoyance I had was immediatley washed away when I made my biggest discovery so far: I’m developing abs.
Continue after the jump!
Things started kind of late so we had to jump right in without our warm up stretch, which I’ve come to love. I’m guessing that has helped in the past with getting my brain to slow down to a feasible speed for focusing, not to mention I was probably already suffering from a case of idiot-itis yesterday. Now, I’ve always had a problem with the head circles. It’s probably the least graceful of my movements. I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with my brain being inside my head, so when it starts moving, it shakes things up. And here we are, practicing lifting and lowering our arms “gracefully” while switching directions from clockwise when moving your right arm, and counter clock wise for the left. I’m just glad I couldn’t see myself.
Due to last week’s success, I really thought I had my vertical circles down, which are controlled with your ribcage while keeping your hips tucked and your shoulders down. I did fine with spinning around with them then, but shit, walking sideways? Not my forte. I mean, I got through it, but really, I just don’t want to talk about it.
Then it was the shuffle step. You know when a belly dancer bursts into a room like, ridiculously fast like they’re freakin’ gliding on ice? Yeah, it’s a 3-step shuffle. So while that can easily turn into a skip, you have to keep your upper body completely leveled. Apparently the more advanced classes practice this with a water bottle on top of their head considering that, traditionally, dancers do balance things on their heads like swords, trays and candle aubras (I know, right?). Keeping level wasn’t too bad, but our studio seems to be shrinking more and more each week (just another sign that the next session will be held somewhere else). So when we usually do our train drills, we make a big circle around the room. This time around we were moving twice as fast and yes, dizziness definitely ensued. It didn’t help that I was wearing socks on a hard food floor as I would actually slide instead of shuffle. Ugh.
So what has changed? Last week I mentioned that I felt a physical difference in my stomach upon poke inspection, and it crossed my mind last night that I hadn’t really been paying much attention to any visible changes in my body. Now, I’m currently at a good weight (thanks Mom and Dad) and didn’t have any weight loss goals. I was more interested in toning up and just feeling better in general. Well, I took a quick peek in the mirror and holy shit, would you believe it… For the first time, to my recollection, I had a line starting to form down my belly. I pretty much just didn’t believe it, so I tried the poke test again. My stomach alone was pretty solid, but after flexing? I’m turning into a rock. When did that even happen? Overnight? Whatever, all I know was that kind of timing couldn’t have been any more perfect, especially after feeling like a total dim-wit.
In conclusion, I really didn’t feel too bad about last night’s lesson because hey, we have our days. But seeing that I am physically changing without even noticing is beyond exciting. It reminds of the day when as a teenager that I discovered that I had some tummy muscles and went around school flexing and asking people to punch me (true story). While challenging people to punch my belly is tempting, I think I’m going to make a smart decision for once and just stick to showing them my hot new belly line. Until next week, I definitely have a lot to practice at home, but that’s not the least bit discouraging. I hope to make an exponential change in skills by next week, just like the change I made in my body this past week. Man, who knows what I’ll be packing then…
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November 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
[...] Part 3 [...]