Holiday Stress?

Here are some juicy movement morsels to help you unwind:

OM LAILA SEATED SERIES

Bring your awareness to your breath anytime you remember - breathing like you are blowing up a balloon in the low belly is ideal.  Breathe through your nose for this work.

Sitting exercises with legs extended in front of you and arms supporting:

• Open your heart and ground through your sitting bones - keep your shoulders gently away from your ears.  Move your torso in wavey ways and make space in your heart centre.  Open the skin all around your ribs, especially in between your shoulder blades
  
• Seated shimmy - alternating from one leg to the other, or one leg at a time.
• Push your feet away like pedals, then draw them back in. Engage from your dan tien (the area beneath your bellybutton).
• Twirl your ankles in both directions.  Connect and power the movement from your dan tien.
• Alternating your weight from one sitting bone to the other.  Walk on your sitting bones: forward, back, side to side

HIP OPENERS

• Diamond pose (knees bent with bottoms of feet touching.  Legs are about 18" away from body): press the soles of the feet together and lengthen the knees away from the feet and away from the hips - let the legs soften open as you wave yourself onto your sitting bones, or gently alternate a bounce from one side to the other.  Use the arms behind you for support.  Staying with the breath and the internal waves, bend forward without rounding the back, aiming the forehead for the arches of the feet.
  

• Second position (legs open out in as wide a V as possible, feet open, knees drawn into thighs)  Do a wave series here.  Use the waves to help you side bend, twist and forward bend).  Draw the legs back together in front of you using the dan tien.
  

Easy Pose Wave Series:
Sit in a comfortable cross-legged position (this works really well on a chair or with the sitting bones up on a meditation cushion of yoga block!) and do the following waves. Concentrate on the 3 weights of the body (head, torso, pelvis).
side - bottom-up and top-down
forward - bottom-up and top-down
circles - both directions
figure eights both directions - lead from head and let the movement trickle down through the ribs and pelvis
omi or tilting circle - lead from head and/or ribs



ABDOMINAL WORK:

Slow Roll Back
Sit up on your sitting bones with your knees bent and your feet on the ground.  Start with your back "straight" and then concsiously round your back connecting into your dan tien and opening the skin of your back.  Deepen this rounding and back-opening as you slooowly roll back.  Continue to engage the dan tien and use waves as a way to soften and release elsewhere in your body.  Let your muscles feel heavy, luscious and draping.  Be sure your neck is free and your throat is relaxed.  Let your head touch down last and only release the dan tien when it does.  Let the head completely reat into the floor and release all effort in the neck.  Let your head roll side to side. 

Wavy Crunches
Take the full weight of your head in your hands and lift it slightly above the ground. Send the weight of your head to the dan tien and do waves in this position:  bottom up circle (eyes look up, forward, down and back), lateral circle (omi) , side-wave.  Later add figure eights and top-down circle.

MORE TO COME...Stay Tuned

RAKS TORONTO

RAKS TORONTO;
An Online Community for Toronto Bellydancers

Post your events; buy/sell costumes; chat
Find out about workshops etc

Raks Toronto was founded in Feb 2002 and has 350 dancers registered as members, all from the Toronto area and from all different schools.  Best of all, it's free and everyone can post to it.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/raks_toronto