Why You're Still Holding Tension (Even When You're Doing Everything Right)

Are you doing everything "right" and still feeling stiff, tired, or in pain?

As dancers, many of us spent years monitoring ourselves, correcting ourselves, and trying harder. Over time, that effort can become your normal state, or your baseline: the level of effort and tension you use as you move through life.

In this video, I'll show you a simple way to begin changing that baseline so that you can move with more ease, more freedom, and less effort.

It's not about fixing yourself, it's about meeting yourself exactly where you are and creating the conditions for change. If you're a highly sensitive former dancer, I hope this helps you reconnect with the intelligence and artistry that have been there all along.

If you’d like to go deeper, I offer free consultations in which we can discuss what you need and how to apply this work to your body and your movement.

A transcript of the video is below if you’d prefer to read rather than watch and listen.

Hello, friend.

Are you doing all the right things, but you're still feeling pain or stiff or tired?

One issue might not be exactly what you're doing, but the baseline from which you're doing it. What I mean by the baseline is the base level of tension in which you move, in which you go through your day, in which you use your body throughout your life.

If you're a dancer and a particularly highly sensitive one, you can be monitoring yourself, correcting yourself and slowly upping your baseline of tension. Trying to perform, trying to achieve, trying to just be, trying to do things right.

And then that's what is in your life now.

So it can seem like you know I'm moving with the best posture. I'm moving with the best ergonomics that I understand, and things still don't feel that good. You can do that. But if you're moving from a baseline of high tension, that can still cause some problems and drains a lot of energy.

So, wherever you are right now, I’d like to invite you to notice, just stop for a moment and you don't have to change anything.

Notice what kind of tension is in your body that’s not necessary, that's not needed for where you are right now and what you're doing.

You might touch different areas to help bring your awareness there.

And maybe as you notice it, that tension starts to soften a little. If it doesn't, don't try to force it to leave. You don't need to try to let go of tension.

Instead, what we'll do is begin to change your baseline, to change your system as a whole so that the place you're operating from changes in your life. So you're not operating from this normalized state of tension.

How do you do that? It was built a certain way. We can build something else. You do it moment by moment.

So if I were to ask you to stand up to go for a walk, the first thing you do is pause just a moment. If you automatically do it, you'll be going from that same baseline that feels normal. But we want to change that.

So you stop first.

And you come back to your body where it is as it is right now. I talked about standing up, going for a walk. Come back. Remember, you have a head. It's way up here at the top.

It probably disappeared a little bit just from me saying stand up and go for a walk. You get to have shoulders. You get to have breath. You get to inhabit and be in the body where it is. Not in what you're about to do or how you're used to doing it, but just where you are right now with what's necessary for where you are.

Not what you think you will need. That hasn't happened yet. Where you are.

Take the time to come back here and that shifts your baseline. Then from there you might stand begin to walk.

You can do this before any activity. So, invite you to choose something you do in your day. Each time you're about to stand up, each time you're about to open a door, each time you're about to open a cupboard, each time you're about to type or you're about to pick up your phone.

That one probably a lot of us do.

Find just one activity in your day and before you do it, stop just a moment.

Here's the body. I have a head.

There's breath happening.

Remember the body as it is.

And then pick up your phone, open a cupboard, stand up, whatever it was, let that shift change your baseline.

And the more you do it, the less tolerance you'll have for that old baseline of tension. it just stops feeling normal and then you'll want to shift it even more.

Play around with it. If you need some help, if you want to explore something specific together, that's what I'm here for. Till we meet again, take care.