Tips For A Healthy Learning Environment

It’s time for another guest post from Piper–this one offers some tips for creating a healthy, supportive learning environment in the belly dance classroom– The one thing I’ve noticed the most about teaching belly dance is that confidence is the best side effect to come out of it.  I always get girls/women who start off in baggy clothes.  They want to learn belly dance, yet they won’t show off the belly.  And this is common throughout all body types and ages, (yes – even the skinny young girl is shy about what they have).  The women start off by being a bit shy, ...

Relearning and Reinforcing Body Integration

Image by solostinwi via FlickrAbout a month ago I pinched a nerve in my neck. OUCH! Even though the experience was less than ideal, I was able to tune into my body and learn or, I should say, re-learn some very important body lessons. As a firm believer in learning through our kinesthetic experiences, this strengthened my educational philosophy and excited my teacher self, even with ice packs pressed firmly on my neck. The nerve I pinched was on the right side of my neck, which caused major pain down my right arm. As a right handed person, this affected everything ...

Relearning and Reinforcing Body Integration

Image by solostinwi via FlickrAbout a month ago I pinched a nerve in my neck. OUCH! Even though the experience was less than ideal, I was able to tune into my body and learn or, I should say, re-learn some very important body lessons. As a firm believer in learning through our kinesthetic experiences, this strengthened my educational philosophy and excited my teacher self, even with ice packs pressed firmly on my neck. The nerve I pinched was on the right side of my neck, which caused major pain down my right arm. As a right handed person, this affected everything ...

correcting your partners mistakes

A thread on Salsa Forums got me thinking about this situation. You're out dancing salsa and your partner makes a mistake. What do you do?It seems that some people correct their partner's 'mistakes' or will try to explain moves while dancing. Others just give positive feedback and don't mention the mistakes at all. There is also a third group that will not say anything. At least not while they are dancing. They will thank their partner after the dance but will not point out anything positive or negative.I belong to the second group. Personally I find that positive feedback often ...

On taking notes

A couple of months ago I started dancing again in the Netherlands. It took me a while to organize everything and to find a new place to take lessons.It has been a lot of fun to start dancing again but there is one thing I learned from this experience;Even in just 2 months I can forget a lot of the things that I have learned!Aside from that it also taught me something though. I need to keep better notes.For a while now I've been writing down the new moves/combinations that I learned. At first I just wrote down their names ...

So how did I start dancing salsa?

As a kid I danced a lot.My mom was an A level competition dancer in the Netherlands when she was younger and she thought that dancing was something everybody should learn. Maybe it is only because I have heard it so often but I agree.Dancing is a great way to have fun, make friends and stay fit. It also teaches people how to interact with the opposite sex, something that a lot of people seem to have trouble with these days. It seems like that ability went out the window around the same time partner dancing did.But I digress. Not ...

Salsa is life

As we all know, life is like a roller coaster.There are highs and there are lows with moments of tranquility and amazing thrills in between.Learning to dance salsa is just like that. There are highs and there are lows with moments of tranquility and amazing thrills in between.Sometimes we think the stars are within our reach. At other times we feel like we will never learn to dance properly. What we often forget though is that all this time, during both the highs and the lows, we are making progress.I'll be the first to admit that it often does ...