It’s TIME To Try This

This week I taught a really fun yoga class focusing on slower moving transitions using a clock face visualization.

Bare with me this will be dance related!

Typically, in a Warrior 1 pose I see students just take their arms up overhead without much attention to the pathway or the pacing on how they get there. They see point A: hands down and point B: arms overhead.

But as we know…it’s not just about point A and point B. How you get there, aka the transition, is a huge part of the process.

This week I had my students start with their arms down and hold this position as 6 o’clock. Then we gradually raised them counter-clockwise to 5…4…3…2…1…12.

We held the arms overhead for a few breaths and then gradually took them back down to 6 o’clock.

Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana A)

Did they feel challenged? Yes

Did we laugh about how slow yoga teachers tend to count? Also yes.

But they had some aha moments and realized they were rushing the transition and cheating themselves out of the growth and sensation of experiencing the full range of movement and not just focusing on the start and end points.

How Does This Apply To Dance?

In dance, we also want to honor the pathway, the transition, between point A and point B. Otherwise, we are just posing to music.

In FCBD®Style, we can more clearly experience this in the arm movements of our slow vocabulary.  
Often I see rushed arm sweeps/circles or “posing” in slow turns rather than moving fluidly through them.

What if we took the clock concept and added it to our dance movements?

For instance, in the Propller Turn, the arms start from 12 o’clock and the right one slowly presses down to 1…2…3 and elbow leads the way back up for 3…2…1…12.

Left arm repeats from 12 o’clock to 11…10…9 and back up.
When the right arm lowers again, be hyper aware of what happens after the ‘tick of the wrist’ cue. Your right arm should move to 4…5…6 as you turn.

Upon returning to dance angle, the arms switch through the center line of your body (you can think about this as the clock face now facing the right side of the room) with the right arm gradually raising to 12 o’clock while the left arm slowly lowers to 3 o’clock.

Propeller Turn - Left arm at 12 o’clock. Right arm at 3 o’clock

Trying this away from the mirror will really help your interoception (Interoception is a lesser-known sense that helps you understand and feel what's going on inside your body). In other words, you’ll get used to how this pathway FEELS rather than how it looks.

Have you tried this before? I’m obsessed with learning and I’ve collected so many yoga, anatomy and dance tips/concepts its hard to remember if I learned this somewhere specifically or just created it based on various inspirations.

This week we are recommending more of our most popular new releases of 2023 and this includes Katarzyna’s Elegant Arms Part One. You really do not want to miss this one!!