How to Belly dance and look Thinner!

Posted by Angela on December 10th, 2007 filed in Belly Dance Fitness

The posture of the body in belly dance is what allows you to master the belly roll, hip movements and chest movements. When you learn how to hold your body with belly dance you get a naturally flatter belly! The basis of rolling the belly means you have to learn how to hold your belly muscles IN so you can also push your belly out.

Learning how to stand and hold your pelvis is the first step to controlling your movement and getting to your core. Sometimes with ab crunches and ab “work” it’s easy to forget how to get into the softer parts of your inner belly. That’s why the softer moves of belly dance are so effective at getting you to feel your deeper abs and your inside muscles that support your spine.

The basic feet position for mastering belly dance is feet facing forward a few inches apart. If your feet are wider than your hips, you won’t be able feel the connection between your belly muscles and your spine.

Next, you want to make sure your tail bone is sitting directly underneath you and not pointing out to the wall. When you “tuck your tail bone under” you pull in your lower ab muscles and tuck in your lower glutes NATURALLY.

The tail bone connects to back part of your pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is all the small muscles that do all the REALLY important stuff, like go to the bathroom, deliver babies and hold all your organs inside your body so you can walk upright! Phew! Thank goodness for the pelvic floor!

The front of the pelvic floor is framed by the pubic bone which connects and stabilises a lot of lower ab muscles.

The Key to NATURALLY lengthen your ab muscles and look instantly thinner is to imagine a line coming up from the pubic bone, the front of the pelvic floor, all the way up the center of the body and into the heart area or breast bone.

As you breathe in - lift the chest up and pull up the imaginary line from the pubic bone all the way up to chest. It’s like you’re lifting your abs up the center part of your body into the chest.

This type of breathing is opposite to the “belly breathing” you may use in yoga, as you are breathing into the chest and lifting the abs up as you lift the chest. Just remember you can use the breath in different ways to create different effects and images of the body.

In Belly dance the lifting of the heart-chest area is connected to the breathing muscles of the abdomen, so as you lift the chest you are working out your abs without pulling them in. You are simply raising the chest and creating the illusion of being thinner!

Belly dance is better when you know how to do the basic moves. There are a lot of belly dance videos and instructional dvds out there. Most of them have some value as you can pick up tips from a variety of teachers.

The key to belly dance is really listening to your body. Stay posted to my other blog www.dancewithangela.com for upcoming online belly dance instruction!