A few posts back I talked about how you can use hypnosis to improve your dance ability. If you didn’t read it, then take a look here. The reason why I put this post up was that I had used hypnosis myself and found that it worked really well. From this experience, I have come across another easy way to quickly and increase your dance ability.
But first, back to the hypnosis.
I think that one of the major reasons for my positive experience was that the hypnotist that, Dustin, I used was also a social dancer. After the session, Dustin told me about a really good book that was related to how we see ourselves and how this affects our success in all aspects of life. The book was called The New Psycho-Cybernetics.
I planned on reading the book at some stage, but I wasn’t sure when. However, Chrtismas was coming up and my sister was asking what I wanted. I remembered the book and she got me that. Good timing too – I was able to start reading it over the Christmas break.
There were a few key things in the book that really struck me. Things like how it was written by a plastic surgeon who was trying to understand why some people had near miraculous life changes after facial surgery and some people actually felt they looked no different despite the clear fact that a part of their face had been changed.
However, there was one key part that really resonated with me as a dancer.
In chapter 3 the authors report on research into improving basketball skills with imagination. The researchers took 3 groups. Each was asked to take some shots at the hoop and their average score was taken. One group was then send away to do nothing for 20 days. Another group practiced taking shots daily for 20 days. The final group spent 20 minutes each day imagining that they were taking shots. After 20 days, each group was tested again for their shot taking ability. The first group sore no improvement (as one would expect), the second group improved by 24% and the third group improved by 23%!
That alone is interesting, but what does it mean for you as a dancer?
I mention a few times in both part one and part 2 of the e-book Dance Better Now that visualisation and imaging techniques can help with dance. I imagine that you probably also imagine going through dance routines in your head before you go to sleep at night too. What this research means is that not only is imagining yourself dancing something that everyone does, but that it is probably far more useful than you realise.
Practice is always good, but if you don’t have time to practice physically, then at least take time to really imagine yourself dancing well. You might do this before sleep. You might want to actually meditate when you do this to make the imaging clearer. Or, you might want to use hypnosis recording like Dustin’s.
Regardless of what you do, do it and don’t forget how much it can help.
