During our lives, we learn to ignore parts of our body—often after injuries or trauma—and the resultant awareness of our body then has gaps. Those gaps can both contribute to repeated injury, and slow down the journey towards better balance, fitness—and tango technique. Most of the past several months I have been working on building a more robust body map for my students.
What is a body map?
I think the fastest way to describe this is to use my own experience. I was born with my left foot pointing in and my right foot pointing out, one leg shorter—you get the picture.
In my mind, I thought that my body was aligned, as my body feels “normal” to me. I had received corrections on my dancing for years from my teachers, but no one ever pointed out my body imbalances.
With input from my chiropractor and my Pilates teacher, I finally realized that when I THOUGHT I was standing in a perfect parallel stance, my left foot was slightly forward and turned in, compared to my right side. My brain was convinced that I was aligned, but my eyes could see my stance was off. My body map was incorrect.
Improving your body map
To work on my misalignment, I asked my Pilates teacher to point out each time my stance was uneven. I found it helped a lot to have an external pair of eyes helping me to move my body into better alignment. Gradually, I learned to “lie” to my brain in the correct way, so that my legs and feet aligned better. It’s not completely fixed yet, but I can close my eyes, put my body into alignment, and have things look the way they feel in my body map.
Should you correct your body map?
There is a whole other part of this discussion: should we fix such issues? Will “perfecting” our imperfect bodies put too much stress on joints and connective tissue that were not perfectly designed? I think that becoming aware of our bodies, and mapping them better in our heads, will fix a lot of minor problems. More major ones DO need to depend on advice from medical experts. In my case, this is an ongoing debate/effort between myself and my chiropractor. So far, none of the work we have done has caused more problems. I am better aligned, have better balance, and have reduced hip issues I have had for years, so that’s a win in my opinion.
Does your body map matter?
I find that I enjoy a more accurate map of my body in my mind. It helps me learn new movement and correct problems myself without as much teacher help; it also gives me a fuller sense of being alive, and more enjoyment from the amazing machine that is my body.
Try out making a more robust body map for yourself. Take five minutes, look at a YouTube video or a book that shows you all the bones and muscles of your hand. Move your hand around, locating all the pieces: you will be amazed at how many little pieces allow you the intricate movement your hand can do! Now imagine having that awareness ALL OVER YOUR BODY!
Further reading/DIY
These are the books that I have used for MANY years in my lessons. While I was a graduate student in dance, I asked my dance kinesiology professor to recommend a book that I could use to show how the body worked to my students, and he suggested this. I am on copy #2 and have bought the exercise book that accompanies it; maybe you need ideas for Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Christmas gifts?