Is yoga the answer to becoming a better dancer?
“In other words, a healthy range of “turn-in” equals a better performing “turn-out” (5)
A girl likes to dance, mom puts her in dance lessons and eventually she auditions for a professional ballet school. Years later (around 8 for most) she graduates and is lucky enough to make it into a ballet company. Fast forward to those years where she is preparing to move on. Could be 5, 10, 30, years later. Her soul and heart might be full but her body and mind are tired and then yoga happens.
But here’s the question, why wait? Why so late in the game? Even if we’ve never done yoga before, we have all heard about the great benefits of it. Whether it is peace of mind and stillness or cross-training. It’s hard to understand why dancers take so long to tap into a practice that can bring them so many positive results.
Among all the reasons why a ballet dancer should practise yoga as early on their career as they can, these are my favourite three:
Connection to your breath
It is fair to say that a dancer needs movement in their life. Even when we are sleeping or in complete stillness, it’s through breath that all humans find that innate sense of movement. In yogic philosophy, pranayama (aka. Breathing exercises) is considered the root of our life source, or prana.
When a dancer is able to not only acknowledge their breath but also control it, it can help achieve a higher level of performance to the extent of boosting their stamina and controlling their nerves.
As a group or corps de ballet, breathing together can be the only way to move exactly at the same time as the person beside you(1). As a soloist, the benefits of breathing control go from finding more fluidity in your movement to the prevention of ‘choking’ on stage, both physically and mentally. Our ability to respond positively and to assess whether or not we can take on a challenge (aka. That first principal role) can be easily changed with a controlled and slow breath(2).
A great easy example of yogic breath is Ujjayi breath. Ujjayi means victorious breath; it’s also referred to as ocean breath due to the sound it creates, it encourages the full expansion of the lungs, and, by focusing your attention on your breath, it can assist in calming the mind(6).Balance
When we talk about balance, we can refer to it in two ways. In a manner, dance and yoga are so different that practicing both of the opposites would bring a sense of balance in our life. Dance and other highly competitive disciplines can negatively affect individuals’ body image and body satisfaction and lead them to unhealthy habits and behaviours, such as eating disorders. Yoga, on the other hand, it’s a non-competitive practice where there is no wrong or right and it grants us the time and space to explore our mind in relationship with our body
On the other hand, we can speak of the balance that yoga brings to dance by working groups of muscles that we sometimes neglect.
More often than not, professional dancers and ballet dancers in specific focus a great deal on enhancing their external rotation of the hips or ‘turn out’. To even think of dancing in parallel positions let alone internal rotation can easily make them cringe.
“When people talk about tight hips, they’re typically talking about tight hip flexors: quads, deep hip flexors… muscles that bring the knee closer to the chest,” says Atkins, nodding to externally-rotating exercises like pigeon pose and figure-four stretch. “While most of the time, yes, the stretching of muscles that externally rotate the hip feels nice, we often forget that the hip also internally rotates. So incorporating both internal and external rotational stretches will help to balance out the entire pelvis.” (3) Internal hip rotation is when the thigh is rolled into the midline of the body.
Internally rotated hip poses in yoga allows muscles to strengthen and develop a healthy balance between contraction and stretching. This might be like legs together such as in Eagle Pose but can also be in separate legs such as Warrior III, toppling tree and standing splits or one leg at the time such a tree pose.
Interestingly, hip internal rotation deficits have been correlated with low back and sacroiliac pain (4). Studies have shown its prevalence to be around 12% of all dance types of injuries and it can prevent you from performing the most basic positions. In other words, a healthy range of “turn-in” equals a better performing “turn-out” (5).Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention towards a conscious awareness of bodily sensations and perceptions. It focuses on the non-judgmental monitoring of stimuli and experiences which adopts a curious, open, and accepting attitude(7) which coincidentally can help a dancer branch out and find their true identity, something most of us struggle with at one time or another.
A major difference in yoga and dance is the inclusion of intentional rest, referred to as savasana, or corpse pose, in yoga. Almost all mindfulness practices include a period of intentional rest during which the practitioner listens for “messages received from body movement, touch, voice and other modalities”. The dance community, especially in Western culture, predominantly views rest as unproductive and detrimental to progress. Little do they take into consideration, rest enhances mindfulness so that movement comes from sensory awareness rather than mimicking another person doing the movement.
If you’ve ever heard that less is more, mindfulness is a perfect example of it. When looking inwards into their body and allowing time to rest, dancers can enhance their awareness of micro-movements such as subtle weight shifts, breathing, body postures, and body image. The enhanced awareness of collective micro-movements contributes to larger movements, positively impacting dancers’ overall performance abilities(7).
As our industry keeps on evolving, it would be interesting if we could offer as many resources to young dancers as we can. The benefits of strengthening one’s mind at the same time and with the same care we do with our bodies can not only result in more accomplished dancers but also a dance community that grows into a more sustainable direction. Over focusing on the exterior has definitely led us towards toxic environments, body dysmorphia, lack of confidence and overall losing touch with our own self.
For a practice considered to be detail-oriented, dance fails to bring that special awareness towards the smallest and almost imperceptible features that make us human. And isn’t being human and feeling the feels what makes us a better artist anyways? Whatever the question is, yoga seems to be able to always have an answer.