04/12/2023
It was in my late twenties that I first started to have hip problems. Every time I stood up my hip joints would kind of give way with a painful jolt. This was particularly the case on my right side.
At first I kind of ignored it and thought it would just go away. I also thought that I needed to move more; at the time I was spending a lot of time sitting at a desk job, even though I was dancing quite a bit outside of that and also cycling and hiking.
I tried to work out how I could stop it hurting, putting weight more on my left side of course avoided pain in my right hip, but wasn’t really a great long term solution. Holding onto my abs also helped but wasn’t possible to maintain. I guess my main thought was that it was an inevitable part of being a dancer. Surely working my body that hard for years, there must be a price to pay and that my price was likely a hip replacement by the age of 30! I had kind of accepted this and just got on with things in the same way.
It wasn’t until I discovered The Alexander Technique that I realised that it really wasn’t inevitable. It would have been if I continued in the way that I had been, pushing my body in directions that just weren’t possible, having incorrect ideas about how my body worked, holding tension in certain parts of my body in order to gain more flexibility in others. Being overly involved in my body while dancing but then completely ignoring it at any other time.
Twenty plus years on and my hips are still good, no pain and I feel I have so much better strength, coordination and ease of movement than I ever had in my twenties. I have a different way of approaching any activity whether dancing, walking, cycling, yoga, sitting as I have a set of tools I can apply.
I want to share some of this with other dancers and movers in this workshop with Itta Howie. Earlybird is just £20 before Friday 15th December.
Bookings:
hdfst.uk/e99624
