#55: Belly-dancing

My hips hurt from belly-dancing last night... Angela helpfully pointed out that when doing hip arches, my feet were too wide apart... so I put them closer together and now my hips hurt! It was quite uncomfortable having my feet close together, but apparently it looks better. Ang said it's uncomfortable for her as well, so it must be right. Gelinda (our teacher) seems to do it, no problem; I guess it's just one of those things that takes practice till it stops causing pain. Probably makes my hips more flexible, they seem to have difficulty twisting and bending at the moment... at least in the ways that Gelinda seems to think they should!

I have really enjoyed the belly-dancing class. It's weird to focus on moving one part of your body while keeping the rest of it still... last night, in one particular leg movement, Gelinda warned us to make sure our heads and bodies weren't moving, only our legs and hips... I looked around curiously, and the entire class was just bobbing up and down, completely out of time with each other.

A few mornings-after, my hips have felt a bit sore; but it's encouraging that everything's getting easier, except for those damned shoulder shimmies... I think a more appropriate description would be shoulder twitches, as Gelinda described it last night.

I love the fact that some days I've started unthinkingly belly-dancing around the place, just at home... when I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'll do hip arches or hip circles around the kitchen; when I'm sitting at the computer, I'll do rib circles and attempt (and still fail) shoulder shimmies; and so on. I don't know that this impromptu practice actually helps my belly-dancing at all, but it amuses me.

Yesterday's belly-dancing class fell on the same day as Dan's and my three-year anniversary! In the end I did go to class, and Dan and I met up afterwards. Until yesterday afternoon, I hadn't even realised that this meant I would have completed another task on my list; I have to complete about one task every ten days, so it was a good feeling to get my second task completed on Day 26. Now to complete another task within 4 days... hmm. Script Frenzy?