3 Reasons for Dancers to Practice Yoga: Part I -- Physical/Technical

The dance and yoga worlds have true connections; many dancers practice yoga, and some have even become yoga instructors. True, the goals at hand and context in which they each evolved greatly differ. Yet yoga can be a space to explore, discover, and grow through the body -- just like dance! Dancers often find in the practice another space for that process -- calling upon the instrument of the body that they know so well -- without the pressures of performance or the competitiveness that’s all too prevalent in the dance world.

Like many who come to yoga, dancers often do so for its physical benefits -- as a way to cross-train (it’s a great way to balance strength, flexibility, and overall fine-tune one’s dancing instrument). As they get deeper in the practice, dancers (and the general public) find that there are parts about yoga that deeply resonate with them that have little to nothing to do with physical fitness. Dancers can also find unique benefits for their craft within yoga practice.

In this first of a three part series on benefits of yoga and mindfulness practice for dancers, we’ll look to that area that’s often the doorway in -- the physical and technical. Stay tuned for subsequent parts of the series!

Yoga can be a space for dancers to better understand

the body and refine its capabilities

Cross-training and conditioning customized to unique needs

A wonderful thing about yoga is just how adaptive it is; there are literally hundreds of ways to do a single pose. That brings the ability for dancers to customize their practice according to what they need (or don’t need) from practice.

For instance, a male ballet dancer might need strengthening work to safely and effectively partner ballerinas. Yoga can offer that! A ballerina he’s partnering might not be naturally flexible, and that’s something that she needs to work on in her dance training and conditioning (in a safe, anatomically-informed way, of course) -- and yoga can offer that too!

Just like with choreographing and working on technique, yoga practice can be an ever-evolving practice in which we leave behind what doesn’t work and improve upon what does work (ideally it is, really!). Through that process dancers can learn more about their bodies and themselves as artists. That awareness is a powerful thing for dance artists to have.

Gaze

Dancers need to spot to turn, right? Gaze is also an important part of challenging movement vocabulary such as renverses, tilts, and acrobatic movements. The gaze is a key director of the head, which weighs a lot (surprisingly a lot) -- so the physics at play intimately involve the head. You might be able to guess what I’m going to say next -- the same is true in yoga!

For example, with arm balances, the placement of the head can determine whether one is able to hold the pose or if they end up faceplanting (no shame, it’s part of the learning process!). It’s the same with inversions like Headstand or Pincha Mayurasana, and standing balances like Tree Pose or Dancer Pose. These poses offer dancers a low-stakes, low-pressure chance to work on how they use gaze for stability, for a balance of grounding and lift (“pull up and push down,” right?), and much else that's going on when it comes to executing challenging movements. What's more, there's time within these poses to do that work.

Further, focused gaze leads to mental focus. One can’t stay in a standing balance pose if their mind is going off in a hundred other directions (again, no shame for falling out!) -- just like a dancer can’t cleanly execute a challenging turn, balance or extension while thinking about something else. Both in terms of physics and finding mental focus, refined use of gaze can be a game-changer for not only technique, but for artistry. With the latter, integrated technique and mental focus can allow one to go deeper into the work at hand.

The use of gaze is key in both dance technique and yoga posture practice

Body awareness and how to move more efficiently/effectively

Much of refining dance technique is learning what to activate and what not to activate -- for safety, clean execution, and efficiently using energy. Guess what, you’ll be so surprised (wink, wink) -- it’s similar in yoga! Additionally, yoga offers even more space and time to feel and understand what’s activating when -- and why.

As yoga instructors cue engagement and release of particular body parts, yoga practitioners can become more and more attuned to what’s engaging in their bodies, when, and -- again -- why.

Dancers can therein keenly develop that skill of interoception (one’s perception and understanding of bodily sensations and feedback) -- keenly enough to put it into action even in a quick barre sequence, a complex hip-hop choreography phrase, or high-pressure situation like an audition or crunch-time rehearsal. That can be another game-changer!

Within yoga practice, dancers have reflective space and time to better understand the

how, what, when, where and why within their movement