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Teaching yourself “flow”
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go slow. Whatever you feel is the appropriate speed, slow it down.
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Slow it down…fully articulate through a move, " watch the movement…which means gaze at your hands or your feet..and when you move think of sliding and drawing circles with your limbs…extend and flex( arch and round)
women are naturally beautiful sensual creatures…we don't have to try…we have to "be"
crawls are great practice…when you crawl don't start to move the and forward until the knee comes up to meet it…draw a circle with your foot as you pull it forward and your hand as you pull it forward…you will know when it's right because you will feel like a cat on the prowl or a snack slinking through the grass.
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"Move the hand"
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Something that worked for me was practicing flow and mindfulness in other aspects of my life. It's hard to just turn it on while you're dancing if you don't practice it at other times, where you're less concerned about how you look. So the next time you go for a walk, coordinate your steps with your breath. If you do flexibility training, try to flow mindfully from one stretch to another and treat it like a form of dance. Or try tai chi or a "flow" form of yoga.
Another good exercise is putting yourself in a position and just playing around. It can be standing next to the pole, on your knees next to the pole, lying on your back. And just experiment. Think of as many ways in and out of that position as you can… and try them all. Don't worry about if they look silly, and don't take videos to start. That's not the point at first. Just get comfortable with the many different ways you can move your body. After a while, you will begin to learn which movements feel most natural for you. The body moving naturally leads to more "flow" than following choreography designed by someone else. Once you know your own body and its preferences, you can choose choreography that suits it, or begin to train yourself in new patterns.
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Runey can I also ask how often you are devoting practice time just to freestyle and how much time when you do? I ask because to give you a frame of reference, I’m not a trained dancer and it’s been over a year now that I’ve worked primarily on flow and learned only a handful of new tricks. In fact until recently I had essentially stopped working on tricks or drills/formal conditioning in my practices and spent all my time free styling and recording, watching the videos to see what worked, then tweaking the freestyles to use some things I “found” and liked and incorporating them back into the song, then maybe taking some of those movements to a new song, etc. It can be really hard for me to find that “connection” and in the first years of pole where I worked mostly on technique, I saw no or very little flow progress. I really had to make it my focus to see the results I wanted (and I’m really not there yet, not even close)
Anyway if you want to see some of how I learned to improve my flow, in my videos there’s two that show the process I described above, I believe they’re titled “one song, two ways” and shows how I would do a totally unplanned freestyle and then try to play with the happy accidents. Mayhe trying to work one song a few times like that could help you find the places in the music to play.
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Does anybody know the link to that sexy flow Rihannan Nicole’s please?
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@ive8899 ill inbox you
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Girl, I’m right there with you! I can string a few moves together & execute them but to me it doesn’t feel or look smooth or sexy. I still have deer in headlight moments & I never really know what to do with my hands & we won’t even get into sexy facial expressions while poling ugh! My goal for 2013 is to try & work at getting better at it though, through practice, practice, practice & by attending workshops that specifically teach sexy flow/transition flow. Don’t know if it’ll really help me but I’m going to try my hardest at it!
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Wanted to add that in my area there is cardio barre & bar method which are both like ballet, pilates & yoga all mixed together, which alot of pole gals that went to my studio took & it really helped them gain grace & limb awareness that transferred well when they poled too. I’ve taken one cardio barre class & loved it, would love to take more & will when I can afford it.
I’ve also heard great things about pop physique, which is on the floor cardio, light weights+ballet barre+pilates, which not only builds your strength, conditioning & stamina for pole but it also helps with your grace & form. Cardio barre & pop physique both have DVDs on the market too btw.
But the main thing that has really helped alot of gals I know is taking ballet.
At the studios around me the classes they have that help with flow & sexy are titled poleography, pole ballet, poletry & prose.
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A lot of great suggestions…and it's important to remember that different things work for different people because everyone has different reasons for their block.
I advocate the video taping and don't expect that to be successful right away either…video taping takes time to get use to and to not cringe every time you look at yourself. You also have to watch the video several times before you get past that gag reflex! LOL
Dramatic movement is helpful – I always tell my students the cornier you feel the better you look!
However, I don't think I saw this suggestion, the music you choose to dance is SO important when you're trying to unblock. Don't just pick your favorite song and dance to it…immerse yourself in it for a couple of days. If you have a song you really like, listen to it as much as you can in all your free time…THEN dance to it. You need to really KNOW a song to dance to it with feeling…and know where the dramatic parts of the song are so that you can anticipate them rather than just react to them!
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Hey ladies!
So much feedback! I'm really surprised 😉
Generally my routine is to start with freestyle, which is how I warm up…
And, in typing that, I just realized a problem. LOL!
Anyways, I'm going to fix that pretty immediately. My freestyle is no longer for warm up… because if I'm warming up, I don't want to do advanced moves, right? So I specifically refrain from climbing, from "strength" moves, and from more advanced spins. D'oh!
Anyways, I'll try to slow things down… and work on my floorwork. I've not done much at all, and I always love to see it! Someone told me once that she didn't like floorwork because she thought it was "too stripper-ish," and while this was in reference to Burlesque dancing… I suppose it must have leaked in and gotten to me. Comments like that tend to do so.
Video taping… I guess will come in time. Perhaps as I get more and more comfortable with my mirror (it only just went up a little while ago, and I still stare at it like it's an alien in my pole room), I'll get more and more comfortable with seeing myself dance and move around.
https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_heart1.gif You guys. Thank you!
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