Home » Posts Tagged "Grounding"

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Apr 8, 2013 in Article, Practice | 0 comments

Practicing in high heels will make you a better man.

There is a real inequality in Argentine tango. There are almost always more women than men. How can we explain that? Despite what a lot of people say, men really have it pretty easy. Many teachers tell beginners, “all you have to do is walk.” Meanwhile, they are showing women how to do crosses, molinettes and ochos. Some men just stand there two footed, faking the lead for ochos while their partner works her bum off, staying on axis and powering through her pivots in spite of him… all in high heels, where one badly timed invasion of her axis could cause her free stilleto to slice across her big toe or impale her standing foot.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Jan 28, 2013 in Beginning, Challenges, Posture, Practice, Visualization | 0 comments

The Swagger Silly Walk

Here’s another challenge from the ministry of silly walks. This walk is all about pressing into the ground and relaxing at the same time. It is similar to a previous challenge the ‘Silly anesthetized walk’. The swagger silly walk is here to help you feel how to walk in a relaxed way that is powerful and well connected to the ground. The swagger silly walk brings in the upper body to create a much more holistic and natural walk.The swagger silly walk is only silly if you want it to be, but making it silly can truly help your understanding of how your body moves holistically. In truth, a very refined version of this silly walk is how we should all be walking everyday, everywhere we go.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Nov 21, 2012 in Beginning, Challenges, Concepts, Posture, Practice, Visualization | 0 comments

Changing Weight and Settling

Here is an easy challenge to get a feeling for changing weight and settling into one foot and relaxing the other. It is so very simple, and yet so important. Changing weight and settling is what we should be doing with every step we take. We cannot stress just how important this is, or that you should practice it wherever you go. If you think about it every now and then throughout your day, you will find yourself doing it more and more frequently until it just becomes the way you shift your weight. The end result will be a more relaxed and stable posture and better tango.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Nov 15, 2012 in Beginning, Challenges, Exercises, Posture, Practice, Uncategorized, Visualization | 0 comments

Fine-tune your posture

This is a greatly expanded version of an exercise that we gave as prerequisite homework for our recent classes. Learning how to fine tune your posture is key to creating posture awareness which is very important in tango and in life. This also ties in nicely with a request for an awareness challenge from a friend in Turkey. Our friend had observed that after a shoulder adjustment, his hips and sacrum would sometimes respond in an unhealthy way. While this is far more than an awareness challenge, it does provide more comprehensive posture exercises to help bring awareness to the possible interactions that may occur as we adjust different aspects of our posture.

This is also one of the primary exercises I did many times a day when I felt my job situation deteriorating last summer. A timer on my computer told me to stand once an hour and this exercise is the minimum of what I did then and every other time I stood up from my desk. Doing this exercise many times a day can do wonders to correct the bad posture caused by stress, sitting too long, or time spent hunched over a desk or computer. Even better, do this exercise combined with a few stretches or even some exercise. Maybe a few sun salutations, some Bulgarian squats, or some push ups. Try it– your body will feel better and so will your mind!

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Apr 5, 2012 in Beginning, Challenges, Concepts | 0 comments

Finding circles and spirals in our walk

Becoming aware of the circles and spirals that happen in our body as we walk.

This challenge builds on our last challenge, Sinking into our Standing leg. We will use that same exercise, but apply it to every step we take as we walk. Walking down the street, the hallway, the grocery store, give this a try, but try not to think about it too much. Do this once at home, with focus, then do it whenever you walk somewhere, even if it is just for a few steps. Our goal is to become aware of the circles and spirals that our body creates internally as we walk. Ultimately we want to relax into a healthy balanced walk and remain aware of how our body is moving and how it feels.

Posted by Susannah on Apr 2, 2012 in Challenges, Concepts, Posture, Practice, Visualization | 0 comments

Sinking into our standing leg

Aligning our whole body, sinking into the ground through our standing leg

For those who come to TangoBreath, you have heard us often recall the image of Michelangelo’s David. We talk about sinking into the standing leg through the whole side body and dropping, or relaxing, the free hip. Much to our delight, when we were in Tuscon, Murat and Michelle Erdemsel showed a picture of David in one of their classes on alignments! They also shared a picture of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, which provides us a connection to the feminine form.

Posted by Susannah on Mar 10, 2012 in Challenges, Concepts, Practice, Visualization | 0 comments

Finding release in the pelvis

As a continuation of last week’s challenge, Finding stability in our pelvis, in which we perceived subtle engagement in the area between the sacrum and hip joint, we are going to concentrate on releasing this same area. Balancing the internal dynamic between engagement and release is important to achieve our greatest flexibility, strength, and resiliency in our joints.

Posted by Susannah on Mar 2, 2012 in Challenges, Concepts, Visualization | 0 comments

Creating stability in our pelvis

We love the pelvis!

We continue this week’s challenge with our focus on the sacrum and pelvis. For background, consider checking out the challenge from last week and the week prior.

This week, we will explore how we can use deep pelvic muscles to move our sacrum, specifically connecting our sacrum and tailbone to our hip joints.

Posted by Susannah on Feb 23, 2012 in Challenges, Posture, Practice | 0 comments

Aligning our sacrum

Last week, our challenge was to bring awareness to your sacrum and the ways that your sacroiliac joint moves.

Adjusting your sacrum in two easy steps.

This week, we have encouraged our students to make a more specific adjustment to their sacrum. This is a good exercise to do when you get up from being seated, when you are standing, and before you begin walking.

Posted by Eric Gebhart on Jan 3, 2012 in Article, Beginning, Concepts | 0 comments

Teaching and Learning Argentine Tango from a Different Perspective

We believe, instead, that everyone has to learn the same things, regardless of role.

In the last post I talked about the common expectations and perspectives that new students of tango have or are commonly exposed to, a perspective that focuses on steps and isolating “followers” and “leaders” technique, claiming that they have different learning curves. This approach can often leave students frustrated and does not give them the opportunity in the beginning to feel the beautiful connection and expression that keeps us all coming back to the dance.

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