Nadirah, the San Diego award winning Middle Eastern Dance Artist was quoted in a article at BellyDance.com, writing, “The physical benefits of belly dance include helping you to evenly strengthen your core and spine, thus promoting good posture. It increases muscle tone and flexibility, which builds a stronger body.”
Inner Healing
Using belly dance to restore the body, awareness is placed on the inner self in both a psychological and physical way with the intention being to make the movements for healing and balance. In this way, a connection is made directly with the inner body, which activates the body’s healing power. The movements of the belly dance stimulate energy in support of building up inner strength that comes from the movements and this revitalizes the body.
It goes deeper than this, when women experience the wholeness of their bodies in the present moment of now, they fell completely alive. The practice of moving parts of the body in new ways immediately draws attention away from the ever-present thinking to being in the moment of the beautiful movements.
Belly dancing, when approached in this way, is capable of great healing. All of the emotional stuff that is stuck and held in the stomach area, is released and flows away effortlessly from the lower torso. In other words, with the belly dance, the trauma held in the lower part of the body as emotional or physical pain dissipates. Skilled practitioners simply say to dance this negativity out of the life.
Everyone is Welcome
Now here is another beautiful secret. It does not matter at all what age a person is or what the shape and size of their body is. The only thing that matters is the movement. Labeling ourselves, as too “something” to do belly dancing is a false perception; we are never too old, fat, young, thin, clumsy, or anything other thing that blocks us from the experience. Just simply discard such false notions because they are not true. And then dance.
Allow yourself to feel the rhythm of the music, to “get it” in the depths of your soul, and move at first slowly and cautiously and then with more vigor after you feel the taste of freedom. No one will judge the performance, so please do not judge yourself either. Just let go and enjoy. When one reaches this state of body harmony with a stilled mind, then belly dancing is a wonderful pleasure and the healing has already occurred.
Nadirah asks, “Do we dance to please others or do we dance to please ourselves?”
The marvelous answer is when we dance to please ourselves; we automatically please others who happen to observe what we are doing.
You can see more about and by Nadirah at her website: http://www.bellydancingdivas.com/.