The Belly Dance/Yoga Connection
Yoga and Belly Dancers
Ever drive by a yoga studio and notice that it also offers belly dance classes? While yoga offers benefits for any kind of dancer, it’s belly dance that is so often paired with yoga—more than any other dance form.
Incorporating yoga with belly dance workouts is becoming very popular, particularly with Tribal Fusion belly dancers. Much of the credit for this trend can be attributed to the Indigo dance troupe, a group of popular dancers including Rachel Brice, Sharon Kihara, and Zoe Jakes. Touring worldwide as part of the Belly Dance Superstars tour, these dancers have gained a wide following and attract many students to their teaching workshops. The Indigo owe their stunning muscle control and flexibility to the practice of yoga, and they share their yoga warm up and conditioning routines in both their workshops and DVDs.
While the Indigo and other Belly Dance Superstars have brought yoga to many dancers’ attention, the complimentary practice of yoga with belly dance is not really a new trend. Belly dancers have been using yoga to compliment their workouts since the 1960s.
Traditionally though, belly dance has no connection to yoga. It is purely a Middle Eastern folk dance while yoga originated in Southeast Asia thousands of miles away. Of all belly dance styles, it makes sense that the Tribal Fusion community would embrace yoga. The Tribal Fusion genre combines traditional belly dance with many other dance styles to create its own unique look and mood. It is a genre where sometimes anything goes, and it is open to accepting influences from many cultures worldwide.
Yoga Benefits for Belly Dancers
Yoga and belly dance—or any form of dance, for that matter—really do go hand in hand. Yoga offers a laundry list of benefits for dancers including increased strength and flexibility, the improvement of posture and circulation, and the ability to access specific muscles.
The focus on accessing specific muscle groups is what makes yoga an ideal compliment to belly dance. Certain yoga stretches focus on lifting and separating muscles without moving the entire body. For example, one may focus on lifting the rib cage off of the stomach while keeping the feet grounded.
This idea of separating the ribs from the stomach is in fact of paramount importance to belly dancers: this posture allows belly dancers to isolate movements in either the upper or lower body from the other half. The ability to isolate muscles and move only specific muscle groups at a time is what makes belly dance different from any other dance form. It’s also what makes belly dancing so impressive to watch.
Yoga also offers other purely physical benefits to dancers including the ability to counter-stretch specific areas of your body, build overall endurance, and protect the body from injury.
But yoga can also offer mental benefits to belly dancers. Through the instruction of breathing techniques, yoga trains dancers to stay more calm and focused during performances. In yoga, it is essential to clear one’s mind and maintain a correct breathing pattern while engaging the muscles in poses. This practice of relaxing and focusing while staying physically strong can teach a belly dancer to let go of mental clutter and enjoy performing in front of an audience. In fact, psychotherapist and yoga teacher Stephen Cope conducted a study which found that musicians who studied yoga had less performance anxiety, could concentrate on being creative, and were better able to get lost in the joy of performing. By practicing both breathing and focusing on the disciplined practice of yoga, belly dancers can enjoy the same benefits.
Resources
For further reading on the benefits of yoga for dancers, check out these articles:
