Mind Over Matter: Staying focused

This is the third in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

The previous post in this series looked at the danger of focusing on what not to do. Another common problem with the way we're taught is that we're often given too many things to focus on.

Focus is a critical skill needed for advancing our dancing. It's how we train our bodies to develop new habits that replace the old ones. By focusing on continually and consistently doing something new, we learn to retrain our bodies, building muscle memory and a higher skill level that makes the new behavior become a habit - something we don't need to focus on any longer. However, without focusing on new behaviors, we're bound to continue repeating our old ones.

At the same time, the human brain can only focus on one thing at a time, and multitasking has negative effects on our ability to pay attention, control memories, and switch between tasks. So how can we make progress on any one thing when we're trying to work on several at once? How do we focus when there are half a dozen priorities?

It's hard enough to focus at all, given all the distractions while we're dancing. It's too easy to just revert to our usual dancing and not focus on anything. So imagine the challenge when we're given a laundry list of things to work on.

Learning to focus is important for progress, as is knowing what to focus on. Getting to the root cause of our problems and finding the right solution is sometimes difficult but makes learning and improving so much easier. And a good solution is something that addresses root causes while being easy for the mind to focus on. After all, if we can't focus on it, then we can't do it consistently enough to make it into a habit.

How do you stay focused on building new skills? How does staying focused affect your dancing? How do you prioritize what you work on? And teachers, how much do you consider your students' ability to focus when giving feedback or things for them to work on?

Mind Over Matter: Don't not do that...

This is the second in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

In my first post in this series, I discussed the amazing influence of the mind over the body, particularly in how the mind can interrupt what we might otherwise do well.

An important element that affects the way we dance is the way we learn to dance. In recent months I've been thinking more and more about how the way this dance is taught in our community is often detrimental to our mastery of it. Our bodies know how to do some things naturally and yet the way we talk about the dance sets up a mental frame of reference that gets in the way of that. 

One key component to this mental paradigm is our focus on what not to do. We all know this line of thinking. We're told to not do something that we're doing wrong, and the focus is on undoing a bad habit. A prime example is tight arms, the solution to which is to relax them.

There are a two main problems with this method of instruction. The first is that when the mind is focused on a particular body part, we tend to engage that part most. Think about exercising. If you've done any weight training or yoga or Pilates, you know that where you concentrate is where you will work the hardest. This is especially true of compound exercises, where more than one muscle group is engaged. The muscle you think about while exercising is the muscle you will engage the most. It's not because you're doing anything to consciously engage that muscle more. Rather, it's a subconscious reaction to where your mind is focused. So when you think about relaxing tight arms, you are actually more likely to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it.


Another problem is that knowing what not to do doesn't always tell you what to do. If I said, of all numbers from 1 to 100, don't pick 56, that's helpful to a point, but it doesn't tell you which of the other 99 numbers to choose. Likewise, telling you to relax your arms is somewhat helpful, but in essence, it's the same thing as saying "don't be tight" - it doesn't tell you what you should be doing differently in a constructive way.

I've found that good teachers will redirect your attention to solutions that help you develop new habits, rather than simply telling you to not do something. And good students ask their teachers for constructive problems, trying to understand, "If not 56, then which number is it?"

What habits have you tried to overcome with the instruction of "don't do that" and did it work? Was there some other helpful instruction that allowed you to undo your bad habit? Teachers, do you provide constructive advice that helps your students develop new habits to replace the old bad ones? How do you communicate that advice to your students? Post your responses below!

Leading and following naturally

My apologies for the long silence, but as many of you know, my life has gone through a lot of change over the last few months. I'm happy to say that I'm back online and I've got a backlog of posts awaiting your reading and feedback! - Eric

Anyone who has ever walked somewhere with someone else already knows how to lead and follow. And if you've ever walked down the street holding someone's hand, then you know how to lead and follow... while holding someone's hand.

If you've done this you know how to move in a way that guides the other person and in a way that responds to another person - without forcing them, without manhandling them, without hanging onto them. You already know how to move yourself in a way that communicates with someone else without using words.

It's my belief that the reason so many people struggle with lead and follow is because we as dance teachers give them all sorts of information that distracts from what they already know. We focus you on how to hold hands, how to hold your arms, where to lead, and where to put your feet. Plus, we teach classes focused on patterns, where the leader learns how to move the follower and the follower learns to do what he wants. The result is a mindset in which "leading" becomes equated with "dictating" and "following" means "being forced."

I started working with my students last month to shift the current paradigm, attempting to define "leading" and "following" as something other than "move" and "be moved." For the leaders, we looked at the physical change in leading that results when you think of it as "inviting" - invite the follower to go down the slot, invite the follower to go under your arm, invite the follower in and back out. The body movement is the same, but nature and feel is more relaxed, more natural, and, well, more inviting. For the followers, we looked at just going where you were being directed. The followers assume the responsibility of moving themselves, which improves their posture, balance, and ultimately their body flight. It also takes the mental focus off of the leader and puts it more on what they feel, which helps to avoid anticipation and anxiety about what is being led. The result for both partners is more in line with what we do naturally when we guide and are guided through physical contact.

It never ceases to amaze me how much our mindset affects and influences how our bodies move and react. By returning to what our bodies already know, and adopting a different mindset about what it means to lead and follow, we can establish a more relaxed, trusting, and stable partnership, which opens the possibilities for collaboration and creativity.

How do you think of leading and following based on what you've learned? How does this new paradigm above make you think about your role in the dance? Teachers, what do you think about leading and following and does the way you teach reinforce that idea or something else?

Words, words, words

Hi all - Sorry for the long silence, though as many of you already know, I recently relocated from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area. This post is one I've been meaning to finish up, but my next one - as promised to my students in Boston - will discuss the material I presented in my last classes at Arlington. Appropriately enough, I'm posting this Tuesday night, when I would normally be teaching... I hope you enjoy this blog, and please share it with other dancers! Thanks, Eric

The role of a teacher is not simply to share information, but to ensure that the information is absorbed, processed, and acted upon in the right way. Teaching, then, is all about communication - conveying a message in the appropriate manner so that the audience not only receives the message but understands it as it was intended.

A big part of communications is picking the right language to package and transmit the message. Good teachers know that students are coming into class with a preexisting understanding of the world, with preassigned meanings to certain words or concepts. For instance, students have a preconceived notion of what good posture is, what the word "connection" means, and even what it means to dance. To effectively teach the student, you must first understand what the student knows - and how s/he knows it. This is difficult for experienced dancers, given that they have the curse of knowledge.

Nevertheless, teachers throw around words like "frame" and "posture" and "step" without ever clearly defining what these terms mean in dance. It is particularly important to define terms for which the students may already have a preconceived notion or definition. When you ask a beginner student what he thinks of when he hears the word "frame," odds are he will think of something like a hard, stiff, outside border. Unfortunately, this is contrary to what the student is aiming to achieve in dance - relaxed, soft arms.

Even worse, I've seen great dancers and admired teachers use words like "pull" and "push" to describe how to lead. Not surprisingly, I see the leaders in class use their arms to pull and push their followers through patterns. It's not what the teacher meant, but because he used the words "pull" and "push," and because the students already had their own meaning of what those words meant, the students interpreted the teacher in their own way. The result? Arms leads and an uncomfortable follower.

The trouble is that in dance we use certain words or phrases that have a meaning outside of dance, and if the two conflict, it is up to the teacher to help the student understand the meaning in dance - and how it differs from the standard definition. This is critical to the student's ability to succeed, since how we understand the dance determines what we set out to achieve.


What words or phrases did you struggle with while learning to dance? What terms does your instructor use now that you don't fully understand? Teachers, how do you ensure that your students understand what you say the way you meant it? What terms do you think teachers should do a better job of explaining to ensure the student learns properly?

Contradiction in terms

It happens more often than it should, to the detriment of the student, that two conflicting pieces of information are presented by two different teachers. This presents the student with a dilemma: in the pursuit of the "right" or "best" way of doing things, which one to choose?

I would argue that these types of conflicts are really simple misunderstandings. Contradictions are often either 1) two different ways of approaching the same fundamental idea, or 2) complementary rather than contradictory, usually a difference between technique and style.

For example, consider the notion of two centers. Skippy Blair is a prominent instructor who has done more than anyone else to create effective teaching tools for important technique and mechanics. Personally, I think she's fantastic, and I think she has a gift for being able to communicate complex topics into easy-to-apply exercises (though I should note that I don't always agree with the technique or ideas she teaches).

Skippy teaches that there are two centers: the Center of Mass (CM), located somewhere around the hips, and the Center Point of Balance (CPB), the point from which we move, located higher near the diaphragm. Like any good teacher, she helps the student to understand these concepts through practical exercises.

On the other hand, Mario Robau, an amazing dancer and an incredible teacher with a real gift for breaking things down into information people can readily digest, argues that there's only one center, since, after all, it's the center, which logically means there's only one.

So who's right?

I would argue that they both are. Mario is technically right: there is only one center to a given object, human or otherwise. And it is from this center that we move. However, we move from our center with forward pitch, meaning that our upper body is set slightly in front of our lower body (this is true both forwards and backwards). Thus, the two center explanation has great value as a teaching tool for people to mentally understand proper posture and pitch and translate it into a physical response. One teacher gave the straight truth, the other gave advice to produce a specific desired outcome. Both are being effective teachers in their own way.

Another seeming contradiction: heel first or toe first when walking forward. From a strictly mechanical perspective, as far as I'm concerned, this is a no-brainer: heel first. Why? Because that is how your body naturally moves, was designed to move, and how your body facilitates forward movement by rolling through the foot.

So why would someone teach toe-first? Simple: styling. Some people think it makes a nicer line to have a straight leg, others may think the music calls for it. The truth is that as long as you're moving from your center and your feet are underneath you when you transfer weight, it doesn't really matter whether you go heel first or toe first. They aren't contradicting - it's just two different ways of moving, one being the basic mechanics of walking and the other a stylization.

What other contradictions have you come across while learning to dance? Where does there seem to be a contradiction that is really two ways of approaching the same thing? Where does there seem to be a contradiction that is really the difference between fundamental technique and advanced style? Teachers, how do you reconcile the difference when asked about contradictions?

The mystery of frame

(Hi all - Apologies for the silence these past few weeks. My day job was eating up a lot of my time and I had to put this aside. However, I am now back and will post new entries more frequently, at least once or twice a week. Thanks for reading and responding! - Eric)

How many times have you heard an instructor use the word "frame" in a dance class? No doubt, plenty of times.

And how many times have you been told to "maintain your frame" or "don't break frame" by an instructor? We all have at some time or another.

Now how many times have you heard a dance instructor actually give a definition of the word "frame" in a dance class? Think carefully. My guess is, for most of you, the answer is: never.

Think about what "frame" means to you, then post your best definitions here on this blog. What is the definition you know? What is the definition you use to dance? What is the definition of frame you use to teach? Share your answers here!