Dance Better Now

Overcoming self-doubt in dance

 

Many of us have worries that we do not dance well. This is despite the fact that logically we know we can dance. We have gone to dance classes, we have practiced and we have received feedback on our progression. But still, we have this self-doubt.

This makes it hard to enjoy dance. If we always doubt our abilities no matter how well we can actually dance, then we will never enjoy dance as much we could or should. And this is what makes self-doubt so insidious. When we should be dancing and enjoying ourselves, we are actually worried that we’re not dancing well, and upsetting the person we are dancing with or that others think less of us. Not only that, but it can also make us think about giving up or not putting as much effort in as we would really like.

Clearly, none of this is ideal. Therefore, overcoming self-doubt will let us enjoy dance more and put more effort into improving our ability.

There are two methods that you can use to overcome self-doubt in dance. One is a bit strange and the other will seem a little familiar. I have found the first one to be easier, but it needs and open mind. The second takes time, but it makes a little more sense.

Tapping

Tapping is based on acupressure points. Point that cause us to take on a more positive attitude toward anything we choose. From experience this works incredibly well.

You can learn more here.

However, let’s cover the basics now.

First, remember these points:

• The side of your hand –the karate chop part
• Just above the eye brows
• The cheekbone just below the eyes
• The upper lip
• The chin
• The collar bone
• The middle ribs on the side – just above where the elbow touches you sides when your arms are down
• The top of your head

Now take one of your greatest concerns about dance. Say not looking good, losing time or forgetting a step. Imagine it happening and notice how you feel.

Now in your head repeat this concern. Say something like ‘I will dance terribly because I will lose timing’ or ‘I just know I’ll do something wrong when dancing tonight’.

While repeating this statement spend around 5 – 10 seconds tapping each of the parts of your body listed above.

Once you have gone through the list, stop and think about your dancing again. You should notice that you feel better about it now.

Next, come up with a more positive statement. Say something like ‘I have been getting better at dancing and my timing since I have started. As long as I work at it I know I will get better’ or ‘Given my level, I am dancing well and everyone will know that’

Now repeat this statement while tapping each of your body parts on the above list for 5-10 seconds at a time.

Once that is done stop again and see how you feel. You will be feeling much better now.

Anytime you’re feeling stressed or in self-doubt about dance, go through the tapping procedure again.

If you want to find out more about tapping, then check out the link to the right and sign up to the email list. Margaret is excellent and really wants to help you.

Removing the fear of choking

Self-doubt can get right into our heads and make us choke when we need to perform at our best. There has been a lot of research into why we choke. The book shown to the right summarises a lot of this research. The author Sian Beilock has done a good job of explaining what we can do to reduce choking and in the process remove a lot of self-doubt.

If you take a look at it, then you will likely find something that you can use.

However, there are two techniques that are simple, make sense and have been tested to see that they work.

Get used to it.

The more you do something the less doubt you have about it. How many tive have you have had a doubt about your ability to walk?

If you think you can push through it, then this is a method worth trying. It will be difficult, but it will work. The other advantage is that it makes your practice as well so you get a double benefit. Before you take this path you need to be clear of one thing – you are going to intentionally put yourself in uncomfortable situations so that you can become stronger and no longer worry about them. Being clear about this in your head will help you apply yourself more and take the edge off the fear.

Once you have committed to this approach all you need do is find as many situations where you will need to dance. Ideally, situations that trigger your self-doubt. This could simply be group classes somewhere else, small comp’s within your dance school or social events. If you feel too stressed then just remember, that the purpose is to get over the stress.

Exorcise the concerns and enhance the positives

Have you ever noticed that when you talk about something that is troubling you that it no longer seems like such a big deal?

Often when we start to worry about something is gets locked up in our brain and we just keep focusing on it. It hangs around and ties us up in knots inside, and then fills us with self-doubt. However, if we get it out, then we feel a lot better.

Once of the easiest ways to get it out is to write it down. Writing it down sends a signal to the brain that the information has been stored, and no longer needs to be worried about. This then means it will no longer be the focus of our brain.

Side note – telling people about plans to exercise, lose weight, start a business etc. can be detrimental. By talking about it, the brain thinks the job is done and focus is lost. If you do talk about it, then make a promise or a prediction that compels you to follow through.

Once you have exorcised the doubt, it’s a good time to build confidence. Start to think about the things you can do. You have been practicing for a while so you have improved in numerous ways. We need to be reminded of this at times. With some conscious effort we can make our brain focus on the positives, and really reduce that self-doubt.

Do you ever try to create your own dance figures?

Sometimes the best way to understand something is to try to create it. If you read my e-book (you can sign up to the right if you have not), then you will recall me talking about learning styles. There are three major types: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. There are others, but these are the most common three. 

It's pretty obvious what each is. People with a visual preference like things to be shown so that they can understand them, people with an auditory preference like to be told and people with a kinesthetic preference like to do it themselves to understand.

When we are younger, we usually have a stronger preference for one. As we get older, we get better at the others and become more balanced. In my e-book I explained how dance needs a bit of each, and you need to sometimes think about which you should try to use if you are having trouble. Sometimes you are switched to one that is not optimal. 

In this blog post I want to talk to you specifically about using the kinesthetic approach.

 

When you use the kinesthetic learning style you have a go at doing it yourself and then notice what happens. This approach can be great because you will likely make many mistakes. These mistakes will then help you understand the nuances of a dance.

• Your legs will get caught up, and you will then understand how important foot placement is.
• Your partner will not be at the right place or need to be remarkably flexible, and you will better appreciate how important connection with the partner is.
• You will end up with an extra step, and you will understand how each step needs to fit with the music.
• You will get to the end with nowhere to go, and you will understand how each figure needs to lead into another.

Simply put, you will make and FEEL numerous mistakes. These will help you better understand why figures are the way they are and what makes them work. All of a sudden you will recall moevements you have made in the past that were not correct. However, more importantly than that, you will know why they are not correct and how to correct them.

There is a saying I like:

There are 3 types of people in the world. The wise, who learn from their own mistakes; the happy, who learn from the mistakes of others; and the those who do not learn from either: the fools!

In this instance you are trying to increase your wisdom as dancers. By trying to make your own figure, you will develop a deeper understanding of how dance works.

So choose a dance style now and try making a figure for it. Try it with a partner, see if you can work out the leads and follows. Determine how you can get into it and out of it. Decide if you like how it feels. Then see if you like the look. Then think about where you might use it. 

Doing all of this will give you a much greater appreciation of dance. 

You never know; you might come up with something good too!

Do mean and critical teachers make you dance better?

This is the first post topic that my dance teacher has suggested that I write. It seems I am a bit of an oddity. I do not do well with compliments. As soon as I am told I am doing something well, I dance poorly. When I am told I need to work on something of that something is not good enough, then I seem to dance better. Am I an anomaly or do I just know what I need to help me dance well? That's what I will talk to you about now.

Should your teacher always be positive or should they keep telling you what's wrong?

The basic explanation

If you've read my e-books (see the link to the right), then you will know about meta-programs (which is just a fancy name for the way we operate). One of these meta-programs is called the Towards-Away From program. Basically: Do you operate best working toward a goal or do you perform better when trying to avoid a problem?

Weight control is a good example. Some people gain weight and feel motivated to lose it. As they lose the weight, the motivation drops off. Others, like to focus on being trim and possibly feel more motivated as they get closer to their goal. The first group is the away and the second is Away From.

I certainly seem to be an away from person. I like to move away from bad dancing and I tend to slack off on my diet when I lose a bit of weight. But is this common?

In dance, it's probably not. I think most people who take up social dance like the idea of dancing, and came to dance with the goal of learning to dance. This would make most people in dance Towards people. And I would then seem odd to my teacher. 

It took a while, but my teacher did learn to stop being so damned positive. I then was able to improve my dance faster.

However, is this really the single best way for me? Regardless if it is or not: would it actually help others?

The Need for Positive Motivation

Remember when I said that most people in dance would be Towards people because they wanted to become good at dance? Why then would you get people like me in there then? I actually got into dance because I was in a period of boredom - I had left study some years ago, and was feeling an itch to learn. I was trying to move Away From an uncomfortable state of being intellectually inactive. Turns out social dance was just what I needed too; there was a huge amount to learn

So even though I was not looking for a goal, if I did not feel that dance was going to be something that I could learn, then it would not have helped me remove the problem that I had. I had a different teacher at that time and she had been trained to be suitably motivation, and tell me how well I could dance. Which I assume she told all her students: dancers are just Towards people on the whole. And, despite my natural tendancies, this is probably just what I needed at that time.

One of the best books about what motivates us to learn and not choke under pressure is a book by Sian Beilock called Choke.

This book covers a lot science about what makes us fail under pressure (all the way to how the letters in our names can affect us). However, there is one section that explicitly shows that criticism at the early stages of learning something can kill motivation forever. How many people hate mathematics because of a bad experience in school?

So at the start of a student's dancing career, it's good to encourage and use positive motivation. But does it work all the time; even for people who are goal oriented?

The Black Hat

Not many people say this, but: Edward de Bono is a dude!

Don't know who Edward de Bono is? He is the man who invented the term Lateral Thinking. There's only a handful of people who spend a lot of time thinking about thinking (a topic I enjoy reading about) and he's one of them. I think the best book he wrote was Six Thinking Hats. 

 

In this book Edward de Bono argues that we need to put our minds in a collection of different states (each represented by a coloured hat) when we think about an issue. This helps us see a problem from all perspectives. We can then make an informed decision.

One of these hats is the black hat. It's the hat that represents negative thought. Not negative as in bad, but negative as in what it wrong or what could go wrong. Edward de Bono actually suggests that this is one of the more important hats. If you can find all the problems and then fix them, then things have to be great.

This is probably a good summary of how I approach dance. Look for all the problems and then fix them. A strong focus like this might not be ideal for all students, but you do need to spend at least some time looking at what needs to be fixed. 

But does it really need to be negative?

A Caveat on focusing on problems

You have probably also heard me talk about the inner game by Andy Gallwey. This is a concept introduced by Andy Gallwey when he was teaching tennis. Although he did not have the words used by neurologists to explain it, he found that the most powerful part of your mind could be used to focus on performing better when your conscious mind is distracted so that you cannot be negative about what you're doing.

 

This is best explained by using imaging in dance. When you imagine something being done to you, like your hips being pulled to improve hip action or your back being made rigid to help with posture, you are no longer being negative. You are too focused to be negative, and like magic, you move as you should. This shows the power of the unconscious and the power of uncontrolled negative thought. So as good as it is to focus on problems to solve them, you need to stay in a positive state of mind if you want to use all your ability to dance well.

So Should we be Negative of Positive?

From the above it would seem that you need to be strategic. In fact, this post might be better for teachers. However, you can, as a student, use this to think about what you need from you teacher at a certain time. The basic rules of be positive at the start, focus on problems as a chance to improve and keep your mind positive while you fix problems will likely always hold though. You just need to work out the balance that is needed for each situation.

Imagining your way to better dance

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.

Hypnosis for better dance

A few weeks prior to writing this post I tried hypnosis for my dance.I am now going to share with you what happened so that you see if it will help you.

I had two issues that I wanted to deal with. One was my motivation to practice outside of class: I was very good at finding other things to do, which might be simply nothing. The other was my lack of focus when dancing under pressure (such as competition); I would often think about things other than dancing, things like the judges, people watching or about why the chose the particular music for the competition. These were all about my attitude toward dance so I figured that the were ideal for hypnosis.

If you have read parts 1 and 2 of my e-book Dance Better Now, then you have read about other techniques to help with your attitude. Hypnosis is like these, but because someone else is planting the the desired ideas in your mind, you do not need to put effort into focusing on maintaining these ideas. This can make it both easier and more effective.

This is certainly what I found.

The next day after my hypnosis session I found that not only was I more motivated to practice dance, but I was also happier to practice. I could feel the link between my practice and my goals with dance (whatever they were at that time - maybe improved foot placement or musicality or balance with a certain step or just feeling comfortable with a routine). This made practice much more enjoyable, easier to put effort into, and much more effective.

What I also noticed when I was dancing in general was a greater focus on my dancing, and less on what was around me. After talking to the hypnotist before the session, he noted that the issue was simply that I didn't focus on my dance. Thus, the idea he suggested was that I focus on my dance. This is more positive and more useful than focusing on not being distracted in competitions or gradings. And I did notice this especially when dancing in a comp'. I felt more relaxed and focused, I enjoyed it more and I won despite the extra competition that I had this time (I still prefer to win by default though).

So I would have to say that hypnosis was really helpful for my dance. And it was quick and easy to do too. I would therefore recommend it to you too. However, you can't expect miracles - if you just don't have the flexibility or fitness for dance, then you probably just need to exercise, and maybe hypnosis can help with the motivation to this.

If you do want to try hypnosis, then how do you go about finding the a good hypnotist for your dance? I asked my hypnotist just that, and this is what he told me:

1. Referrals -The best way to find a hypnotist to work with is by a referral.  If you have family member or friend who has used hypnotherapy before and were happy with their hypnotherapist, then ask them to refer you.
2. Credentials - Some institutions give hypnotherapy certifications after a three-day seminar, while some give only after a 750-hour one-year training course.  Typically, the more extensive their training the better a hypnotherapist the person will be.
3. Talk to the hypnotherapist prior to the session - A good hypnotherapist will be more than happy to speak with you before you even book a session.  Call one up and speak to him or her.  Get a feel for the person.  Do you connect with this person?  Does this person sound like he or she cares about you and what it is you want to improve?  How do you feel intuitively?  Does the person sound like he/she can help you? Does he/she see you as someone they can help or just a dollar sign?
4. Been where you are - If you want to see a hypnotherapist to improve your dancing, it might be a good idea to see a hypnotherapist who has also been in the same ‘shoes’ (pun intended) as yourself, hence a fellow dancer.

He also suggested that you avoid the hypnotist who:

1. Guarantees certain results or the number of sessions it will take.  The results and number of sessions vary depending on the issue and the person.
2. Doesn’t provide you a recording of the session.  Most good hypnotherapists will record the sessions for you and email it to you so you can listen later on and reinforce the suggestions.
3. Talks about specific details or names of other clients.  This is a huge no-no and a violation of client confidentiality.

I can vouch for the need to find someone who understand dance and who gives a recording. I use my recording each time I need a "recharge". I also found that talking to someone who understand dance really helps communicate your needs effectively, which makes for a better experience.

My hypnotherapist, Dustin, has recently made a hypnotherapy product to help with better dance (he is a dancer too). I have tried that along with my specific personal recording from the session with him. I certainly found my specific one was much more useful, but general products are really good too, and I can recommend them. If you would like to try out hypnotherapy to improve your dance, then click here to view more details for a really good example. 

Just for disclosure - if you buy something from this link, then I will probably get a commission. In either case, if you feel that you have some beliefs (maybe about how good you think you can be) or an attitude (maybe you just don't really see the value in practicing) that limit your dance ability, then I can really recommend hypnosis no matter where you go.