Want to become a better dancer? Relax!

Are you nervous before a show, recital, ballroom dance competition or any other stressfuyl event?

Here is a short breathing exercise that feels wonderful:

Close your eyes...
Imagine how it would feel
to be gently stroking
a long, broad, smooth strip of silk or plush velvet.
For a few moments
just focus on imagining the feeling
of stroking this smooth silk or velvet.

Now let your breathing become long, slow, and smooth.
Imagine that your breath is stroking YOU
stroking your whole body as if you were this strip of silk or velvet.
Stroking you from head to toe, very gently.

Open your eyes when you feel completed.

Want to become a better dancer? Dig out the questions that hurt you when you were a child

Mothers and fathers can do serious emotional damage to their children by asking them aggressive rhetorical questions. Do any of these remind you of your childhood?

- What (the hell) is wrong with you?
- Can’t you get anything right?
- Why can’t you be more like (Bill, Jane)?
- Why do you get more (stupid, lazy, clumsy) every day?
- Don’t you have anything better to do than (read, daydream)?
- Why are you doing this to me?
- Are you always that (dumb, bad, useless)?

Of course, these are not real questions (if you ever tried to answer them truthfully, you know what I mean). They are utterances of negative emotions, and from the parent’s perspective, not always vicious but expressions of frustration and exhaustion.

However, a little child with her (his) highly sensitive energy system feels hurt, scared, shamed and powerless, especially if these kind of questions are repeated over and over, and the parent is yelling.

EFT to the rescue. Dig out these childhood questions and tap on them. Include not only the wording but the body expressions (like pinched lips, clenched fists), and the tone of voice. If your first language was not English, by all means use the language of your childhood.

In my experience as a practitioner, the first question (“What’s wrong with you?!”) is especially devastating since it implies that there is something profoundly wrong with you, and you just can’t find out what it is and fix it.

So ask (and tap if you wish) this question: “What if there was nothing whatsoever wrong with me?” Don’t let your mind answer it, just let it hang in the air and be.