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Dianne M. Buxton - EzineArticles.com Expert Author  

Dianne Buxton taught, directed and choreographed for professional dancers for many years. Her interests now include nutrition for ballet/sports/fitness and the mind/body connection.

[View Dianne M. Buxton's Extended Author Bio]

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  • Learn Ballet Arm Positions and Improve Your Ballet Technique
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Correct and elegant ballet arm positions depend on correct spinal posture, correct hold on the turnout, and correct placement of feet on the floor (and knee positions, if you are hyper-extended). It sounds complex, but ballet body posture is natural and allows for relaxed movements of the neck, head and arms. Following are a few tips so that you know how to improve.


  • How to Take Advantage of Household Waste and Garden Waste
    [Home-and-Family:Gardening] If you are just starting composting, the amount of information about household waste and garden waste can be intimidating. Yet, there are simple ways to learn about this topic. Delight in the fact that you can use up probably 50% of leftovers, vegetable trimmings, and other household trash. Garden trash that can go into your compost bin include twigs, and prunings.


  • Leftovers Into Compost
    [Home-and-Family:Gardening] Total weight of soil organisms per acre of healthy topsoil: about 4 tons. What does that mean? Mother Nature says "Trust Me".


  • Planning Edible Gardens For Your Off Grid Lifestyle
    [Home-and-Family:Gardening] Awareness of the world wide food shortage is increasing and many urban people with yards or other outdoor space have begun planning edible gardens. There is a lot to prepare for, especially if you are inexperienced. Whether you are aiming for an off grid lifestyle or simply want to create your own food supply, there is an abundance of information from seasoned growers to help you learn how.


  • How to Train in Ballet Before You're Too Old
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] High school age students have a dilemma with ballet training, and balancing the demands of the academic and the artistic. However, the structure of education is actually quite flexible. The easiest solution is to get accepted into a full time ballet/academic school, but that is not possible for many. Here are some ideas dancers and parents may want to explore.


  • Avoid Being Too Stiff For Ballet With Simple Resistance Stretching
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] A while ago when I wrote an article about office space workouts I was astounded at the high number of times it was read. I was aware that many recreational adult ballet dancers sit on a chair all day, or do some other repetitive or physically confining work. If you cannot sit on a physio ball, as I've suggested before, there are ways of getting more flexible with daily resistance stretching, sitting at your desk.


  • Exercises to Become More Flexible For Cheerleading and Recreational Dance
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Cheerleading] Today's cheer leaders, like recreational dancers, need a good conditioning program that focuses on strength, endurance, and flexibility. With this, a cheerleader will be able to sustain performing at peak levels.


  • The Difference Between Guarana and Caffeine in Brain and Heart Health
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] The Indians of the Amazon River Basin have been using guarana (guaranine) to prevent fatigue and increase physical endurance since before recorded history. Unlike regular caffeine, guarana is full of healthy fatty acids. The good fat gives guaranine a slow release. Its effect will gradually increase over a period of hours. It doesn't pick you up and throw you down like quick release caffeine. You don't get any of the nervous, jittery energy you do with caffeine.


  • Your Potential to Get More Flexible And How to Do Effective Ballet-Sports-Cheer Leading Stretching
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Those of us who were not born with that amazing flexibility to do the splits and perfect ballet positions can learn how to get more flexible with a simple yet truly ultimate stretching guide. For daily stretches, for example, even at an office space desk, the same exercises can be done discreetly to improve your comfort and efficiency.


  • "La Danse" - If You Dance and Love Ballet
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] "La Danse" - Le ballet de l'Opera de Paris is a wonderful dance film. By Frederick Wiseman, it gives you the role of a fly on the wall. I saw it with a friend, a real estate mogul, who is also a doll house maker and a seamstress.


  • I Want to Be a Ballerina - But I Need More Time at the Ballet Academy
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Finding a way to balance school requirements and the time needed at the ballet academy is frustrating for many young ballerinas and boys in ballet. Parents worry if grades drop and use dance classes as currency for academic improvement. What are the alternatives for getting a good education and still putting the time into classical dance training?


  • How to Improve at Ballet - Define Your Weaknesses
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The elegant art of ballet has a mechanical side to every position and movement. Understanding anatomy and which muscles create the movement you want, helps you enormously in knowing how to improve at ballet. You can learn to define your weaknesses in an impersonal way. Sometimes your weakness in ballet technique comes from just not knowing how your muscles work.


  • Learn Ballet to Speed Up Your Calorie Burning
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] There are different ways to speed up your calorie burning (speed up your metabolism). If you decide to learn ballet, you will benefit from the slowly executed high intensive muscle building that top trainers and natural health medical doctors now say is the most rejuvenating type of workout.


  • Learn Ballet Positions Faster, 3 Essential Tips
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] When you, especially if you are an adult beginner, learn ballet, there is a lot of information to absorb about basic positions. You might be dreaming about doing split leaps and beautiful elegant ballet arm positions. Learn the ballet basics slowly and carefully. You will progress faster with classical technique and movements by seeing, and reading about ballet.


  • The Immortality Gene and You
    [Health-and-Fitness:Anti-Aging] The pursuit of immortality brings to mind old Twilight Zone episodes where the seeker is offered eternal youth. Later it is revealed that he/she must pay a horrible price. Human beings have long accepted that we grow old and die. Yet, the pursuit of a longer and better aging process is rational and empowering. Understanding the health of our genes is a worthwhile endeavor.


  • So Many Nutcrackers - If You Are a Ballet Lover Support Your Local Ballet!
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The Nutcracker is a well-loved Christmas Season Ballet. There are many versions of this fabulous ballet fantasy for children and adults too. It's wonderful to see the biggest ballet companies and the greats among the world class ballerinas dance The Nutcracker. But if you have a local ballet group - why not support your regional ballet company and see the Nutcracker near home? Right now especially, ballet really needs your financial support.


  • Exercises For Pointe in Adult Ballet Classes - Warm Up and Awareness
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Most ballet exercises cover a lot of muscle groups, while exercises to prepare for pointe work, or foot work in general focus on the feet/ankles. Here is a simple exercise you can use as a warm up before class that will activate your posture, leg muscles, and foot muscles.


  • How Adult Beginners in Ballet Can Progress to Pointe Work
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Most adult ballet beginners I talk to are motivated to add home practice to their dance class schedule. If you want to progress to pointe work, you can save time and money by learning exercises targeted to prepare the foot muscles for pointe. An added bonus to this focus is, that the same exercises enhance your balance and all your ballet footwork.


  • Learn Basic Ballet Positions - Can You Learn on Line?
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] For the curious adult beginner, or younger student wanting to learn ballet, there are many offers to learn ballet on line. Is this really possible? There are many articles and you tube videos showing basic ballet positions. Even if they were all perfect, how would you learn ballet at home? Maybe your body can do ballet positions easily, maybe not.


  • Exercises For Pointe - Basic Ballet Positions Matter!
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Exercises for pointe work are not going to result in grace and ease when you dance ballet in pointe shoes, unless your basic ballet positions are correct. Spinal posture, well-held turnout (no matter what degree you have naturally), and powerful demi plies will give you strength and power in pointe shoes.


  • Exercises to Prepare For Pointe
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Every young ballet dancer wants to get into pointe shoes. And every ballet exercise, done properly, will prepare you to dance ballet in pointe shoes. Yet, there are special exercises you can add to your home practice that will prepare your foot muscles to do pointe work. There is a special gentle way (or two) that you can get more flexible in the ankle joint, if you need that.


  • Ballet Christmas Presents - Start Your Shopping List Now!
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] For those who have ballerinas and men in ballet in their lives, there are ideas for ballet Christmas presents that go beyond new leotards, books and movies. Though, I am sure those items would be well received, the following shopping tips may help you choose (or ask for) a slightly different but relevant holiday dance gift.


  • Improve Your Ballet by Learning How to Train Your Brain Waves For Creativity
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet dancers and all creative artists who have more Alpha brain waves suffer less tension and anxiety. The artistic lifestyle of competition and daily pressures produces stress, which suppresses your immune systems, diminishing the physical strength you rely on. If, in the teen years, during ballet training, you could train your brain and become familiar with Alpha waves and producing positive emotions, your adult years in ballet would be much more fulfilling.


  • Using Basic Ballet Barre Exercises to Improve Your Muscle Tone
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] If you an older ballet beginner and are still figuring out the reasoning behind your ballet barre exercises, (never mind all the French words for ballet), following are some explanations. Understanding the focus of each basic ballet move, will help you learn basic ballet positions, and improve your muscle tone.


  • Stretching at the Ballet Barre to Improve Basic Positions
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Stretching at the barre is necessary even when you are first learning ballet. Opportunity to stretch comes in between exercises while your ballet teacher describes the next exercise. Often a teacher will give a stretching exercise at the end of the ballet barre workout, in order to take advantage of the warmed up muscles, and also to give the ballet students a brief rest from the most strenuous moves.


  • Fitting Ballet Pointe Shoes - Some Extra Tips
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] It is exciting when your dance teacher tells you that it's time to start dancing ballet in pointe shoes. New, shiny, pink satin pointe shoes are beautiful. Every student has to have an idea of what they should look for in getting exactly the right fit. Hopefully the ballet store will have an area of floor for fitting ballet pointe shoes, and a ballet barre (bar) or chair back to use for support.


  • To Power Your Mind and Change Your Life Direction
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Being aware of our thoughts and how they create our life - is part of recognizing our psychic powers. Learning how to power your mind will change your life direction. Yet, if you are a nervous person with lots of anxiety, how do you stay open to everything in order to be creative?


  • Learn the Secrets to Manifesting Mind Power, Abundance and Prosperity
    [Self-Improvement:Abundance-Prosperity] The current phenomenon of successful vampire themes in books, television and films, is amazing. A lot of mind power goes into the vampires being "good guys" who don't bite humans. Their psychic powers enable them to blend into society, manifest abundance and prosperity, and exert their mind control over innocent humanity. (And all we humans get is a Staples EASY button. Ha).


  • Real Mind Power Secrets to Maintaining Positive Emotions
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] The hidden powers of the mind can be revealed and learned. What would you call your default state of mind? Where does your mind go when it is not directed by an outside force? What program starts running if you don't decide? Read on, because the topic of ultimate mind power is amazing.


  • How to Eat Right For Early Ballet Training, Ballet For Adults, and Cheer Leading
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Serious music students buy the best instrument they can afford, and learn to take the utmost care of what they select. However, ballet, recreational dance and cheer leading students don't account for the fact that their bodies are their instruments. Those who learn how to eat right in early ballet training, or in learning ballet for adults or for cheer leading events, will benefit for the rest of their lives.


  • Ballet For Adults and Barre Exercises
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Basic ballet positions, technique and movements are taught through barre exercises. To discover and increase your turnout, and improve your natural dancing abilities, you need to understand the purpose of each barre exercise. Adult ballet beginners can progress faster with an understanding of ballet barre work.


  • Power Over the Mind As a Realistic Goal
    [Self-Improvement:Goal-Setting] For thousands of years factions in human cultures have worked on having power of the mind - for conscious, subconscious, spiritual, or political purposes. Many individuals are attracted to the idea of having power over their own mind to make more money, or achieve a better state of mind.


  • How to Improve Your Ballet Technique - Avoid Ballet Injuries and Eventual Arthritis
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The fastest way to improve your ballet technique, no matter what style of dance your ballet conservatory teaches, is to learn what is anatomically correct and what is not. You can improve your turnout by understanding the type of hip joints you have.


  • Use the Ballet Barre to Improve Your Balance and Strengthen Your Ballet Technique
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Be in pointe shoes as much as you can. Once you've gone beyond beginning pointe work, wearing the shoes for barre work is a good habit.


  • Get Good Basic Ballet Positions - For Beginning Adult Ballet Or Young Beginners
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Basic ballet positions begin with how you stand naturally. Before you get into first position, what is your posture, potential turnout, and how are your feet resting on the floor? Without getting into anxiety, review the basics. Then set your goals for ballet, perhaps getting into pointe shoes, losing weight, and building strength to prevent dance injuries.


  • Easy at Home Stretches For Your Ballet Or Cheer Leading Moves - Position to the Side
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Doing the splits to the side, or a la seconde, can be improved with patient stretching after a sufficient warm up. Basic ballet positions can be used to highlight cheer leading jumps, and landings, into the splits.


  • Wise and Healthy Aging - The Primal Force of Life
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] Xeno-estrogens act like estrogens in the body. Found in our drinking water, our food (from pesticides, herbicides, etc.,) these chemicals suppress fertility, sex drive, and general optimum health (absence of heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, etc.,). If living to hold your children (or grandchildren) is a primal force in your life, a natural remedy(ies) may be your easiest method.


  • Making Progress in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes by Understanding Basic Ballet Positions
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Understanding basic ballet positions, to most people, means the five positions of the feet. Yet, a position more basic than those, is the position your body is in when you are standing with your feet parallel, in a comfortably held good posture. Understanding your personal starting point will help you progress faster.


  • How to Become More Flexible For Cheerleading
    [Health-and-Fitness:Exercise] How to improve your flexibility is an ongoing challenge for cheerleaders, dancers, and those doing gymnastics. Safe stretching is a learned art. It's especially important for those who are not in dance classes learning ballet technique, to learn proper warm up, and proper stretching positions.


  • Get More Flexible With Safe Stretching and All Natural Nutrition
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] Stretching is stressful to your muscles, joints, tendons, and ligaments. How do you know if your diet is sufficiently full of the necessary building blocks which contribute to elasticity, strength, and the overall functionality of your bodies' tissues? What do you need to recover from the constant wear and tear on the soft tissues that you also depend on for strength?


  • The Best Organic Health Care Products For the Heart
    [Health-and-Fitness:Heart-Disease] Congestive heart failure is a lethal type form of heart disease that everyone wants to avoid. If a heart can't pump enough blood for the body's functions, fluid congestion may result. At that point there is risk of your vital organs such as lungs, brain and kidneys closing down.


  • Easy at Home Stretches For Your Ballet Or Cheerleading Moves - Position to the Front
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] If you are a beginner in ballet classes, adult ballet classes, or with a cheer leading team, safe stretching is an important factor in your training. Following are some safe easy at home stretches with which you can become more flexible. Whatever aspect of ballet/sports/fitness you participate in, these stretches will help.


  • Natural Vitamin D and Cancer - Lower Your Risk
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] What is an explanation of cancer risk in layman terms? How about a vitamin deficiency? Many studies already show that cancers are related to inflammatory conditions, which can be relieved with omega 3 fatty acids, minerals vitamins, and co-factors. It turns out that Vitamin D is a natural remedy, reducing cancer risk by as much as seventy percent.


  • How to Understand Overpronation and Knee Pain If You Have Flat Feet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Overpronation is the inward roll of the foot while standing, walking, running or dancing. Allowing the foot to roll inwards causes noticeable internal rotation of the lower leg and knee and can influence the body's posture. This can result in extra strain on the lower body and can cause foot pain of the arches, heels and ankles, knee pain, leg pain, and lower back pain. A ballet student only needs to understand this, and can correct a flat foot by developing the sole of the foot muscles.


  • A Positive Vibration Helps You Embrace the Dreams of Your Spirit
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] You can think of your dreams when you're feeling poor and miserable. Yet, you are vibrating with not having the reality you're wanting, instead of vibrating with having it. Worry, stress, overworking, and disorganization can deliberately create more of all that you do not want. Where can you start to manifest a change in your life direction?


  • The Care of Shin Splints - Or Prevent Shin Splints by Building Strong Foot Muscles
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Understanding shin splints requires knowing how to use your foot muscles properly. This affects all your ballet positions and movements. Even more basic, is understanding where your weight should be on your standing foot/feet. If not drawn back too much on the heel, the calf muscles and tibial (shin) muscles do not have to strain even before you've made a move. To avoid shin splints altogether, check how you're standing in parallel, and how your feet are positioned on the floor.


  • Use of the Theraband For Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] There are many uses for the therabands, so I'll discuss a few here, focusing on the feet, toes and ankles. If you are already doing pointe work, these exercises will enhance your precision of technique, save your calf muscles from over-work, help prevent shin splints, and increase your gracefulness in pointe shoes. Most ballet stores carry some brand of stretchy bands, and they can be ordered on line as well.


  • Ballet Pointe Shoes and How to Control Your Professional Footwork
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The advantages of developing your intrinsic foot muscles (the ones that are in your feet and are not extensions of leg muscles) are: Your calf and tibial (shin muscles) will not be over working and holding extra tension because of weak foot muscles. Your Achilles tendon will not be prone to injury due to tense calf muscles.


  • Ballet Shoes and the Perfect Pointe Muscles
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Both young and adult ballet beginners wonder when they can dance in pointe shoes. The process of training foot muscles begins in your very first ballet class. Learning accurate ballet technique from day one is your best way to get into pointe shoes faster. Following are a few tips for ballet training.


  • Maintain Positive Emotions by Remembering the Good Moments
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] How can you maintain positive emotions at the end of a day when so many things went wrong? Disappointments, disagreements, fatigue, stress and anxiety, negative emotions in others, the bad economy - all these elements can certainly ruin your day. Take a deep breath and start remembering the good moments.


  • Men in Ballet Working in Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Many men in ballet talk about dancing in pointe shoes and whether it is appropriate or even possible. Pointe shoes are made in men's sizes for the few classical ballets where pointe shoes for a male character are used. More importantly, developing foot muscles for ballet using pre-pointe exercises is an excellent idea for men in ballet classes.


  • Your Power of Daydreaming to Envision Your Dreams
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Here you are again, your own life coach. Good for you! Let your dreams turn you away from failure, doubt, worries, stress, and dissatisfied emotion. Envision your dreams with the power of daydreaming. Not so much self-improvement as self-empowerment, daydreaming for a few minutes a day can bring you to a vibrant enthusiasm.


  • Improve Your Deliberate Creation
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The Law of Attraction is working for you every second of every moment. Don't you wish it would stop when you were vibrating negative emotions? That it would just tune out when you are feeling poor and miserable? I know you want to get the most out of your deliberate creation of a rich mind life strategy. You want ALL your active thought processes to maintain positive emotions. The good news is, you do not have to be perfect at this manifesting process.


  • Maintaining Positive Emotions
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Manifesting and creating goes on every day. You do it, always. So do six billion other people, and you're all in the same blender. How do you unleash your potential self in that? Will your inner giant awaken and run you through the gauntlet of manifesting a miracle when someone else just gets the best parking space?


  • "How to Improve My Ballet" Is a Big Issue For Dance Recital Prep
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] If you study dance for more than ballet fitness, and recital preparation bumps the stress levels, there are different ways to make this rehearsal period easier. Classical dance, hip hop dancing, jazz dancing and much more is now included in contemporary dance school demands. Avoid dance injuries by preventing over training, especially now.


  • Would-Be Adult Beginners in Ballet Classes Suffer From Needless Self Doubt
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] A quick survey of articles on the internet show that articles read by adult beginners in ballet outnumber those read by the (somewhat) more self-accepting younger ballerinas and men in ballet. Many older would-be dance students worry that they are too old to get anything out of taking ballet.


  • Is Seeing Believing Or is Believing Seeing - You Must Know How to Tell
    [Self-Improvement:Abundance-Prosperity] I know, I really get it. The Law of Attraction works for "everyone but me". And yet, you can increase your spiritual connection and see your life change direction. Right here, right now, you start all over. You bring with you all your past good. To manifest abundance, prosperity, and even what you consider a miracle, you start right now, vibrating with whatever your ideal life scenario is.


  • Calm Your Mind and Increase Your Spiritual Connection
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] Attracting abundance involves ways to increase your spiritual connection with - you. Reaching beyond financial security (in order to get back to it), breathing, walking, swimming, or gazing out a window are accessible ways to calm your mind. Spiritual rejuvenation is accelerating for you already.


  • Easy to Feel Poor and Miserable If You Fail to Attract Money
    [Self-Improvement:Self-Esteem] Through personal growth you may arrive at a self-awareness that temporarily makes you feel poor and miserable. Keep your motivation and look back at the successful goal setting that got you living consciously. Self improvement evokes reflection on things you don't want. Yet negative emotions have value. They inspire further commitment to you improving your well being.


  • A Positive Attitude Will Improve Your Vibration
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Sometimes a whole lifestyle change is needed to improve your vibration. If you are feeling negative emotions a lot of the time, then you need to get into a positive attitude. To change your life direction and to learn to feel more positive emotions, you need a plan. Abundance and prosperity will reflect your spiritual wealth.


  • How to Manifest Abundance With Deliberate Creation and Improve Your Intuition
    [Self-Improvement:Abundance-Prosperity] No doubt you could improve your life if you attract money. However if you fail to attract money, take stock of all the goodness in your life. People, work, goodness from others, it all matters. Many believe that your Higher Self knows what you need to know. For many, focusing attention on their inner dialog can help improve their intuition.


  • The Inner Self Knows How to Attract Money
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] It is discouraging if you have been applying the Law of Attraction for a year or two, and despite other successes, you fail to attract money. If you accept or are willing to consider that the Higher Self knows the secrets to attracting money, then you need to have a plan to access a metaphysical or spiritual realm in order to make contact, or get power from your Higher Self.


  • The Spiritual Nature of Prosperity and Abundance
    [Self-Improvement:Abundance-Prosperity] This is a tough one. Is there a spiritual nature to prosperity and abundance or do the truly spiritual just not focus on it? Do they manifest by not focusing on manifesting? Superior business or technical skills can manifest wealth. Immaturity, addictions and high risk investments can lose it. So what does manifesting wealth mean? If The Law of Attraction is truly a Law, and we don't have what we want, how can we be so inside-out, upside down and opposite to our true self?


  • Zen and the Art of Dancing For Artistic Fulfillment
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Most of the dancers I hear from are recreational dancers or adult dancers or adult beginners who are just getting started. The professional students have most of their problems solved by their environment. For the non-professionals, dance is also a soul expression, a creative outlet, resulting in the daily life becoming more artful. For what dancer does not do something everyday relating to their dance experience?


  • Doomed With My Body Type in the Dance World
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet students in general have two strikes against them when they start ballet. I have heard so many in the ballet world say "I am doomed with my body type". Some are correct. With the wrong proportions and genetically bulked up muscles, only a few awesome talents break the ballet body barrier. The second strike is that dancers are their own worst critic, regardless of genetic luck.


  • The Path of Least Resistance
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The Law of Attraction works for us if we know how to give up resistance (negative emotions) and focus on positive emotions. One of the human factors that makes this difficult is that the emotional bottom line perpetuated in our society is we are never good enough, everything is our fault, and only perfectionism is tolerated. If this were not true, we wouldn't have therapists, depression, cults, or even religions. We would love ourselves as God does.


  • How to Lose Some Weight and Keep it Off For Your Dance Recital Or Ballet Exams
    [Health-and-Fitness:Weight-Loss] Writing this in mid-April, I'm thinking back to the tension that begins leading up to the end of the term ballet recital and ballet exams. And after that comes the summer swimsuit. Do you look long and lean enough? Dancers never think so.


  • Completely Disillusioned - Get Your Edge Back
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] If you feel like you have lost your edge on the art of deliberate creation, your act of power is to turn away from financial disasters. Get grounded again and recover the vibration, the feeling, the essence of you creating a miracle now.


  • How to Avoid Losing a Positive Attitude
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] It's understandable that your goals for focusing on a healthy motivation for staying positive nowadays may only trigger a feeling of anxiety and helplessness. If your conscious attitude for staying in tune with your visions of success is not working so well, or maybe you are fearing failure, try to refresh your approach.


  • Non-Toxic Baby Care For Low Impact Organic Living
    [Home-and-Family:Babies-Toddler] Avoiding baby products with toxic chemicals in them is not possible since the poison PDBE's and phthalates don't have to be labeled. PDBE's are chemicals used for flame retardants in bedding and clothing. Some chemicals have been banned in bedding, yet some remain. Plastic products are handled and chewed on by babies, and chemicals are ingested. The impact on the environment starts with your baby's body.


  • Going Back to Ballet Classes - Join the Adult Ballet Dancers!
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Recently I've talked to older dancers who want to get back to ballet classes after five, ten and even 27 years! Good for them! Ballet is excellent fitness, excellent exercise, and if approached with patience by a healthy adult with experience, or an adult beginner, artistic fulfillment can be achieved too.


  • So Many Pointe Shoes, Only Two Feet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Being able to dance ballet in pointe shoes is the result of years of careful practice. Young dance students in their first ballet class have visions of tutus and pink satin pointe shoes as they struggle with their first battment tendus, or ballet foot exercises.


  • What Ballet Dancers Need to Understand About Weight Loss and Calories
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] To gain weight is still the nightmare of serious dance students, even as they work out hard a few days a week. It doesn't make sense, except in the light of what has become the staple industrialized-nation diet. Too many fats, nutrition-free carbohydrates, and factory made cheeses dominate the fast food landscape. Sugar (if you're lucky) or high fructose corn syrup in every mayonnaise, tomato sauce or BBQ sauce on those sandwiches or hamburgers. Even in salad dressings.


  • Taking Advantage of the Brain Body Connection in Ballet, Sports, & Fitness Training
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Classical technique takes strong, long, lean muscles and a healthy brain. Ballet/sports/fitness goals are demanding and time consuming yet can be life's inspiration even on a recreational level. Understanding and using a natural posture of the spine in any style of dance classes actually supports healthy brain function, which in turn governs many chemical messenger processes that result in body strength and elegance and the enjoyment dancers and fitness buffs seek.


  • Each Ballet Barre Exercise Gets You Closer to Dancing in Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] In the first couple of years dancing ballet, every little girl dreams of dancing in pointe shoes. Those students who have a good ability to concentrate have a head start at getting into pointe shoes with a better dance technique. The better the foot muscles are trained, the better the whole leg functions. And the better your first pair of pointe shoes will feel.


  • How to Start Stretching For Adult Beginner Ballet Classes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Why is back pain so common among adults? Even among adults with no history of injury or back strain, low back pain especially can become a chronic problem, mild or severe.


  • Breaking Tiny Foot Bones and Getting Back Into Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet dancers and other athletes can develop shallow cracks, or stress fractures in their tiny foot bones. Inaccurate training, a suddenly increased practice schedule, badly fitting pointe shoes, or a change in flooring can cause this type of dance or sports injury. These injuries must be treated properly if you want to be getting back into pointe shoes as soon as possible.


  • How to Tell What Makes You Fat
    [Health-and-Fitness:Weight-Loss] The idea that eating fats will make you fat is a basic mistake. For most people, excess insulin makes them fat and not the fat itself. Where does excess insulin come from? At what age are you susceptible to be cursed with excess insulin?


  • Improving Basic Ballet Positions For Ballet Split Leaps
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] What ballet movements and ballet positions will result in clean accurate split leaps? The first exercise at the ballet barre, demi and grand plie, your posture, the placement of your weight and the strength of your turnout, is the foundation of your ballet positions and ballet movements. Your split leaps, and even fancier allegro depends on it.


  • Safety Standards in Family Bedding
    [Home-and-Family:Babies-Toddler] The safety standards of the chemicals used for fire retardants in family bedding have been challenged by consumer groups, but change is slow. There are no labeling requirements to disclose exactly what you are inhaling, or absorbing, even though these chemicals have been shown to accumulate in your blood, cause respiratory irritation, and disrupt hormonal activity.


  • How to Tell If Your Children's Bedding is Safe
    [Home-and-Family] It is not clear to many people what is safe children's bedding. Safe in what way? If you choose organic wool bedding, is it safer than conventional bedding that is treated with fire retardants? Ah, the amazing magic of natural organic wool. Wool is fire resistant! Naturally so.


  • Why Choose Organic Beds?
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] After reading about the horrible health consequences of breathing in PBDE (flame retardant) laden dust from almost every household object, I was momentarily relieved to read that all PBDE's except the least harmful, 'deca', are now banned in the US. I say momentarily because a few lines later, came the information that "However, under certain circumstances, deca can break down into more toxic forms of PBDEs, including the banned octa-BDE."


  • Develop the Perfect Foot Muscles For Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Is there a perfect foot for ballet - or can any foot function perfectly if the ballet dancer has the correct understanding of how to use their foot muscles in pointe shoes? Even men in ballet want to work in pointe shoes to develop the fine foot muscles that will enhance balance and virtuoso allegro. Strengthening and stretching the hyper-mobile (very flexible motion) body and hypo-mobile (tighter motion) body requires accurate ballet movements.


  • Children's Bedding and Flame Retardants in Bedding - Baby Boomers Too
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] Why choose organic bedding? The $2.9 billion flame retardant industry fares well in that the toxins (PDBES) in upholstery, carpets, baby seats, and computer plastics do not have to be labeled. Children, the elderly, and baby boomers are considered to be at a higher risk for disease. Yet, everyone, regardless of age, is exposed to toxic flame retardants every day, everywhere.


  • A Worry That Forcing the Splits Or Dancing in Pointe Shoes Can Damage Growth Plates
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] In ballet, the common injuries such as sprained ankles or knee injuries, will more likely be torn tendons, muscles or ligaments. Starting with the splits, is there an impact on the hip bones that could damage growth plates? If young children practice vigorous or unsupervised stretching to do the splits, what is likely to be injured, if anything?


  • Core Control and Ballet Movements
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] While preparing for dancing ballet in pointe shoes, lack of core control becomes evident right away. The men in ballet training for virtuoso petit and grand allegro, and the more gymnastic strength that modern ballet choreography calls for, also need incredible core control.


  • Making Progress With Dance Fitness Or Ballet Tutorials to Enhance Your Ballet Instruction
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] In the quest to learn how to do ballet better, get into pointe shoes faster, or get cast in better roles for ballet recitals, many ballet students seek coaching from ballet tutorials. It is simple to improve your dance fitness with the wealth of information available. I didn't say easy, but simple. The following tips may help you.


  • Ballet and Sports Fitness - Magnesium For Your Muscle Tone
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] For success in ballet sports and fitness, strong muscle tone must also result in fluid movement. This requires the minimal tension needed to execute a ballet movement, or position, or a physical move as required in sports training. Magnesium is a nutritional super star. It improves function in the brain, bones and muscles. In team sports, advanced ballet in pointe shoes and pas de deux, magnesium is part of the nutrition that enhances ballet/sports/fitness success.


  • What is Your Protein Requirement As a Ballet Dancer?
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I talk to both athletic (mostly ballet dancers) and non-athletic dieters frequently. It seems that both groups do not know how much protein they should eat every day, or every meal. If your goal is burning stored fat, cutting down on food intake should not be done carelessly. I am not a weight loss expert, but here is some general information to help you sort out your own dieting decisions.


  • The Many Exercise Benefits of Ballet As a Natural Remedy
    [Health-and-Fitness:Alternative] If we review all the benefits of any exercise, ballet provides them all, with many bonuses. Since studies have shown that high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and many inflammatory conditions such as Ulcerative Colitis for one, are improved using exercise as a natural remedy, why not dance ballet? Gaining muscle and losing weight is another great side effect.


  • How to Learn Better in Ballet Class
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] How do you increase your concentration and learn better in ballet class? This is important for you to learn faster, make faster progress and increase the strength and accuracy of your ballet technique.


  • Some Highly Effective Tips For The Ballet Summer Intensives Auditions And The Nerves
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] There are many ballet summer intensives to choose from. Some will require auditions, and at the least, DVD or VHS auditions. Be prepared to pay an audition fee, and bring a photo of you dancing, and perhaps a head shot, to leave at the audition, if requested. Audition nerves can be a challenge, but you can train your brain out of those if you know how to.


  • How to Set Priorities With Your Corrections in Ballet Classes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Whenever you get corrections in class, how do you set priorities for fixing them? For example, if you get a correction while doing demi or grand plie, that's a priority to fix, because it will affect everything else you do.


  • Injuring the Hamstring and Patience With Rehabilitation in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Patience with rehabilitation is not easy for ballet dancers. Muscle pulls are rarely serious, but without proper treatment and rehabilitation, they can become a chronic situation. With the hamstring muscle, which is involved in every ballet position and ballet movement in the lower body, special care is needed to keep it relaxed and stretched properly after ballet class.


  • A Chiropractor's Role With Neck Pain and Stiffness in Ballet Training
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet training can bring on pain and stiffness that does not go away in the muscle recovery period, which is rarely sufficient. Once a pattern of tension is established, a ballet dancer must follow a specific routine to reverse the harmful trend before arthritis sets in. Neck pain, back pain, and unresolved muscle tension will lead to ballet injuries if left untreated.


  • Don't Get Depressed Because You Can't Study Ballet Yourself and Learn at Home
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I hear significant discussion about learning ballet dance at home without a teacher. Even by persons who aspire to professional ballet performance, starting at a late age. This is thinking in a bubble. Instructional ballet videos, and ballet theater performances are excellent learn-at-home guides, if your own ballet is done in a dance class.


  • New Dance and Ballet Resolutions - Get Some Tips For an Extra Advantage
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet dancers tend to be self-critical and my intention is to help dancers progress faster with a light-hearted and keep-it-simple approach to new resolutions for their quest to excel in ballet class. Solving technical roadblocks may result in the extra advantage of a new understanding and enthusiasm that will take the "chore" out of making New Year's goals for your ballet training. So here are a few tips.


  • Ballet Positions - Use of the Eyes in Ballet Training and Revealing Your Talent
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Ballet dancers don't usually think like other entertainers. They don't think in terms of "sell yourself". Belief in talent starts inwardly for a ballet dancer. All the long years of training, enduring corrections from good teachers and criticism from less nurturing teachers shows belief in one's talent. How to mesmerize your audience is a quality some are born with, and yet doing a good ballet audition is not necessarily a result of that.


  • Adult Ballet Brings the Ethereal and the Grounded Together With Ballet Exercises
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] If you take the big step and find a dance studio that provides adult ballet classes, how do you prepare yourself? First, go and visit the ballet school, and observe the dance instruction in the adult ballet section.


  • How to Prevent Knee Injuries in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] If you are among those dancing in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, knowing why ballet technique is the way it is will help you prevent ballet injuries. Healthy knee function is not possible without healthy foot function. Also, in learning how to prevent knee injuries, understanding the function of the foot, knee, hip and spine connection is useful, at least in a general sense.


  • Joint Pain and Pointe Shoe Pain Solutions in the Nutcracker Season
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ballet dancing pains like joint pain and pain from dancing in pointe shoes can seem worse in cold weather. If you are doing lots of rehearsals for the Nutcracker or some other holiday season dance concert, you need to take special care of your joints, muscles, and feet. Wool legwarmers, snug sweaters and water-proof snow boots all contribute to a better holiday season if you are a ballet dancer.


  • Too Old to Start Ballet - Don't Underestimate Yourself
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The discussion about when you're too old to start ballet is ongoing. If you want to do ballet, don't underestimate yourself. If you have no dire medical condition, and are under 75, I say go for it. Many things in life are about finding the appropriate challenge. If you can find the right ballet classes, dance and enjoy!


  • Many Nutcracker Versions Are Loved by Ballet Fans Around the World
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Professional ballet dancers typically work through the holidays performing one of the Nutcracker versions, up to ten ballet performances a week. If you are a ballet student rehearsing for your local Nutcracker, get those pointe shoes ready! Always have an extras pair broken in and ready to go. If you are a ballet fan, get your Nutcracker tickets now. Check for group and student rates at your theaters, and consider giving Nutcracker tickets for holiday gifts.


  • Prevent Ballet and Dance Injuries in Your Nutcracker Season
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Learning how to minimize the chance of dance injuries is an acquired skill. Warming up, having healthy snacks in your dance bag, and perhaps having an extra pair of pointe shoes ready to wear, will help you avoid ballet injuries.


  • Ballet Positions, Ballet Techniques and Ballet Movements
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There are many many books and ebooks published on ballet positions, ballet movements and ballet techniques. If you are a new ballet student, how do know what you are looking at? Which ones might you choose to learn from? There are different ballet techniques. Which one is right for you?


  • Nothing Original, Yet No Bad Review on the Zillion Law of Attraction Articles
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] I read a lot of Law of Attraction articles every day. They are all good. Many review the basic premise, which is, like attracts like, you manifest what you put your attention on. Many remind us of how we get drawn into little gossipy conversations, diminishing someone, anybody, or grumble about the weather or how long the week feels. So how can we improve our social reactions and small talk to keep ourselves vibrating with what we want?


  • Walking Wounded Dad Succeeds With the Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] I'm not going to talk about the story details much because I don't want to give it away if you haven't seen it. It is a charming, funny and poignant story. Our dysfunctional dad in this story has a few key elements in place despite his mental illness history, incarceration, and displacement from everyday realities.


  • A Professional Attitude For Ballet and Dance Students
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Whether you are in a professional ballet or dance school, a dance college, or a recreational ballet school, having a professional attitude is the best thing for you to grow with. Later in life, whether you perform, become a ballet or other dance style teacher, or go into another profession, your professional attitude will take you a long way. Just what is that?


  • Supplement Your Nutrition and Increase Your Chromium in Food
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Some studies have noted that chromium has a benefit on lowering heart attack risk, and may help boost HDL levels. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has stated that an Adequate Intake (AI) for chromium is 25-35mcg per day, which was concluded by estimating the average amount of chromium a healthy American obtains from the foods they ingest. The AI for chromium is substantially lower than the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) of 120mcg.


  • A Cozy Little Chat About Pointe Shoes With a Nice Cup of Tea
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I hear a lot from students whose local ballet store does not stock more than a couple of brands, Their pointe shoes feel terrible. So who's in control - your pointe shoe or foot muscles? If you are one of these troubled pointe shoe ballet dancers, get a nice cup of tea or a Starbucks latte if you prefer, and we'll have a cosy little chat about pointe shoes.


  • Too Busy to Plan Meals Yet Being Healthy Matters
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Do you feel guilty if you are too busy to plan meals for your family? Or just for yourself? How do you find natural vitamins or find natural health supplements online? When being healthy matters, and you know about the anti-aging, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory components of nutrition, how do you make it up to yourself or protect your loved ones from disease?


  • You Can't Stand Green Vegetables Yet You Want Strong Ballet Muscles
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I know there are many talented ballet dance students and young people training to win in the different sports arenas who do not take nutrition seriously. Until they get injured, or until their recovery periods no longer suffice to recover in. Green vegetables are number one on their "can't stand" list.


  • Cruciferous Vegetables Are Super Foods - But I Can't Stand Green Vegetables!
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] On a search for the phrase "can't stand green vegetables" a quarter million sites showed up. I read a few posts about this - some very humorous and some adamant that these veggies are not meant for human consumption. Burping and intestinal gas are frequent complaints.


  • Noni Leads the Partnership With Superfood Berries
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Anti-oxidant berries and fruits from both northern and tropical areas give us an edge on our wellness. New super food mixtures containing phyto-nutrients, vitamins, flavinoids, enzymes and co-factors lead the partnership with omega 3 oils, green vegetables and salads, and lean proteins, to create our optimum health.


  • Let Your Manifesting Miracles Simmer in Delicious Anticipation
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] If you are practicing deliberate creation, you are reviewing all your lists, appreciation lists, gratitude lists, improvement lists, and so on. Right now especially, continue to let those reality creations simmer so you can keep up that delicious anticipation.


  • Manifesting a Miracle With Peaceful Detachment
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Can you watch the current news about the global financial crisis with peaceful detachment? About the man who killed himself and his family because of financial loss? The human drama and emotional energy is charged up to the max for some people. And the people who have nothing, every day, are they up to manifesting a miracle?


  • Reviving Positive Emotions by Tapping Your Best Memories to Optimize the Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] One thing that fascinates me is what I am thinking just as I wake up in the morning, the very first thoughts as I drift out of sleep. Have I been changing my life direction while sleeping, while dreaming? Have I been tapping into my best memories? Or have I been dreaming to illustrate some negative emotions or complexities that can be simplified?


  • Get a Grasp and Try to Let it Go
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] For years we were told to "get a grip", grasp the situation, already. And you need to get boundaries. Then we learned we have to let go. Stop hanging onto stuff. But that's after you got a grip and thoroughly understood what you were hanging onto.


  • Guaranteed Returns With the Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Remember "The Twilight Zone"? Many of the stories worked around the idea of people getting what they wanted - or what they thought they wanted, or said they wanted. Guaranteed returns, in The Twilight Zone. That's the same for all of life. Fortunately the process of deliberate creation, and the delayed time factor allows us to get into the vibration of what we want. That way the details will match your true desires.


  • The Transformation of Your Life Into a Dream Vacation - In Vibration
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Can you remember a time when you were a child and your family was preparing for a vacation? Can you recall the excitement, the feeling of expectation of the fun and adventure you were going to enjoy? Buying your airline tickets, or shopping for camping equipment - whatever your vacation was, maybe getting out the fishing poles?


  • How to Learn a Ballet Style Workout at Home
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] A concern many dance teachers share is the learn-ballet-online concept. Learning ballet from scratch without a teacher is simply not a realistic goal. In fact, the chance of avoiding a dance injury is almost nil. If you cannot get into a ballet class, there are many styles of full body workouts that fulfill the healthy requirements for building muscle, flexibility, and rejuvenating yourself.


  • Using Visuals to Create Reality With the Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Stimulate The Law of Attraction with positive ideas and your use of your imagination, collecting photos and pictures from everyday sources gets you ahead. We are so deluged with images all day long, and we usually do not select the ones that are useful to us. However,selection of images is a new strategy with which to continue to clarify your goals and change your life direction.


  • How Can You Trust Enthusiasm to Guide You to Manifesting a Miracle?
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] How can you trust your own vibration to manifest a miracle in your life and change your spiritual direction? One way is to notice what you appreciate every day. Observe all the things in your life that you can feel appreciation for, and you will be experiencing the vibration of enthusiasm for those things.


  • Procrastinating Moves, Self Denial, Self Sabotage and Reaching Your Goals
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] You know how it is when you decide to get in a corner of your office or closet and get rid of the clutter? There is way more stuff packed in that little space than you could believe. It can be like that when you aim at reaching your goals and start using tools like The Law of Attraction to get rid of anxiety, depression, anger, stress or other kinds of self-sabotage. There is more junk in the way than maybe you thought.


  • How to Create More Flexibility in the Ankle Joint For Ballet and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] For the less flexible ankle joint, safe stretching can be done daily to get you closer to the perfect look in pointe shoes. Avoid pain and muscle strain by ignoring some of the drastic measures you will see dancers do. Do not put your toes under the piano, for example, and pull your knees straighter. You are heading for foot injuries.


  • Ballet Pointe Shoes For the Lower Arch
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Many young would-be ballerinas are reaching for the top in their dreams, for the beautiful pink satin pointe shoes and Swan lake tutus. Then they get into ballet class, and eventually into pointe shoes and their feet just don't look quite right. Did something go wrong? No, but they just bumped into the wall of Fashion in ballet. And then they go on to learn...


  • Ballet Shoes, the Movie, With Emma Watson
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Movies-TV] This is great entertainment for children, with theater, dance, music, competition, and fierce family devotion. The drama, based on Noel Streatfeild's novel, the costumes, the characters, and the sets are wonderful. For Emma Watson fans, this is her first film outside of the Harry Potter series of films.


  • Healthy Fats For Ballet Dancers and Other Athletes
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Dancers, ballet and otherwise need a balanced diet rich in complex carbohydrates, found in unrefined foods, proteins, and healthy fats. What are healthy fats? Saturated fats constitute about 50% of your cell membranes. Cholesterol is needed to rebuild cell walls, even more so when inflammation is present.


  • How to Lower Your Cholesterol With Natural Remedies
    [Health-and-Fitness:Heart-Disease] Remember, this is all about the omega 6 oil- omega 3 oil balance. Cutting down on fat from dairy products meat products and adding fats from oils such as olive, walnut, avocado, and purified cold water fish oil creates the balance.


  • How to Prevent Foot Injuries in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes, Or Without Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] How to use the foot properly in ballet should begin with the first lesson. With small children this can be taught sitting on the floor with the legs stretched out in front. The proper line in the stretched foot can be seen and understood easily. With older children, a short anatomy lesson on the foot explains why classical ballet technique is finely detailed and exacting, in order to build strength and prevent foot injuries throughout dance training.


  • Train Your Brain and Activate the Body-Mind Connection by Watching the Best Ballet Movies
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] When schedules are tight, dvd movies can offer a wonderful form of entertainment and escape. Whether you're in the mood for action adventure, romance, comedy, drama or the grueling technical moves and ballet positions, the world of ballet movies provides all.


  • Everyday Spirituality and Your Miracle on a New Earth
    [Self-Improvement:Spirituality] To manifest your own miracle and contribute to a new earth, how simple can you keep your everyday spirituality? To change your life direction, evoke transformation, inner peace, and send love into the world, do you just add it to your "things to do" list? What is the least overwhelming approach to increasing our daily routines and managing the finer details? Can we just let go and let God?


  • The Nervous Anticipation of Going Back to School For Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] You have a lot of things running through your mind. Will the same students be in your class? Do your new pointe shoes look okay? Never mind are they exactly the right fit? Is your ballet wear cool? You know you're going to be really sore after that first class.


  • The Amazing Cause and Effect Reality and a Miracle of Peace
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The Law of Attraction teaches us humans that we create our own reality. Cause and effect is perpetrated on us, by us. That does not always sound like good news. If we are unconnected to our peace of mind, and haven't created any quiet inner spaces recently, positive thinking exercises can feel some what irritating. So what next to do?


  • How to Track Your Progress in Using the Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] You might be asking yourself, what signs of improvement should I be looking for? Have I changed the way I am achieving goals, or the way I am measuring success? Am I using The Law of Attraction better yet?


  • How to Understand Ballet Stores and the Pointe Shoes They Do Or Do Not Carry
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I am so happy to hear from the many would-be ballerinas of the world. Many of the concerns I get asked about have to do with pointe shoes. The local ballet store may not carry many brands, and ballet students may have trouble finding exactly the right fit.


  • The Fastest Way at Failing to Change Your Life Direction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The fastest way at failing to change your life direction, is to miss the simplicity of The Law of Attraction. To manifest a miracle in your life, you need to get that you have to some degree created things you don't want. How? By careful planning. Be it worry, or "predicting problems", "foreseeing disaster", which you are taught to do to become a mature person, that is exactly what has created the unwanted reality you are in right now.


  • Highly Effective Tips For Understanding How to Prevent Knee Injuries in Ballet and Dance
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Anatomical information is going to help any ballet dancer survive better. Less pain, less struggle, and better results. How to prevent knee injuries in one area worthy of study. There are four ways a leg (hip,knee,ankle) can deviate from the postural plumb line of the body.


  • Avoid Confusion in Self-Improvement and Change Your Life Direction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Self-improvement is considered to be a good thing. We can evolve, we are optimistic, we are humble, we can be and do better. The inner critic can really thrive on this if it is not modified by focused intention on our goals, in reference to what we want rather than what we don't want. To change your life direction and avoid confusion, define things for yourself and don't get caught up in dumbed-down re-education systems that capture your focus with slogans and catch phrases.


  • How Can I Improve the Basics of My Ballet Training Without a Professional Ballet School?
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] How to improve the basics of ballet training can be done with the help of professional technique manuals. A student cannot train in pointe shoes without an experienced teacher. However, there are currently several good sources of basic ballet technique in text, photo and DVD form. The finer details of posture, turnout and placement can be understood and learned. Stretching safely can produce great improvement, whether or not you end up doing the splits.


  • Some Tips to Understand Your Motivation, Clarify Goals, Organize Your Life and Nurture Your Spirit
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] I couldn't make the title shorter. The concepts in it seemed to be necessary to form the holistic thoughts I have included in this article. The use of The Law of Attraction, gratitude, or positive prayer, can improve how you organize your life, and nurture your spirit. To understand your motivation for self-improvement is to understand and clarify your goals, increase your personal and family time, affect how you make money, and stay connected to your soul.


  • Back to School in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes - Organize Your Life and Nurture Your Spirit
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Omg there is so much to worry about! Back to school fashions, getting in the best courses, a new schedule, a new ballet class schedule, and how much it is going to hurt after that first back to school ballet class. If you've had a month off, or even two weeks, you know you will hardly be able to walk up and down stairs the day after you start ballet again. Or was that just me.


  • To Get in Synch With What You Really Want - Clarify Goals
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] Reality creation is what you do, you are doing right now. If you can answer "what do I really want" with certainty, you are on your way to empower yourself with focused intention. Improvement in your personal growth and personal esteem will follow. Once in synch with your true passion and life direction, you will begin manifesting your miracle.


  • Better Self Care in Ballet Training
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The virtue of patience sounds like one of the many spiritual gifts we may have, or an element of character education, or just one of those things our parents and teachers like to bother us about. If the quest for art drives you toward toward seeking perfection, being the best, or unreasonable weight loss, I hope the following body image tips and self-education tips help you improve and modify your self care in your ballet training.


  • How to Avoid Overuse of the Achilles Tendon in Sports and Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] One of the too-common dance injuries is that of the Achilles tendon. Runners and other athletes in sports training also suffer some over use inflammation, and even rupture of the Achilles tendon. This tendon depends on muscle strength in the calf and the foot, to retain proper use. Following are some self-care tips that will help you avoid overuse and injury of your Achilles tendons, and encourage courageous patience in better rehabilitation.


  • 7 Highly Effective Tips on How to Change Your Life Direction and Your Spiritual Direction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] How to achieve your goals with wealth training, changing your life direction and spiritual direction, is what many of us want to accelerate. How do you just 'get it'? To be a better entrepreneur, life partner, parent, teacher, home business owner, how to be successful in any way, can seem frustrating sometimes. Small lifestyle changes can alleviate that frustration.


  • Understanding Muscle Function and Correct Posture in Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Understanding how one can build strength in ballet class, stretch safely, and get the core muscles correctly applying classical ballet technique, enhances the amazing potential you have to enjoy and effect health and weight loss or gain. Every ballerina has done the same things you can do in ballet, to progress as far as your physique and dedication will allow. Ballet is a full body workout, but some aspects of technique are commonly not presented with clarity as to what the anatomical factors are.


  • How Do You Do That Manifesting a Miracle Stuff?
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] If time is money, what is the cost of living in your every day life in regards to time lost in moments of stress, worry, and then recovery time? The process of using deliberate creation, and the law of attraction, could result in a miracle every minute, to replace those lost moments of stress or anxiety. But how do you do that?


  • Easy Learning For Middle Aged Women Who Want a Natural Approach to Health Issues
    [Health-and-Fitness:Womens-Issues] I hope that you are among the middle aged women reading this, who remain free of a mid life crisis. Even if not, I'm attempting to provide some easy learning for you, to understand a natural approach to health issues. As prevention, and also as a supplement to medical treatment, with your doctor's agreement.


  • How to Decrease the Appearance of Wrinkles Using a Natural Remedy
    [Health-and-Fitness:Anti-Aging] While beauty is only skin deep, and wrinkle decrease skin cream can cost a fortune, or be a cheap cosmetic you wouldn't want to use as an anti-ageing skin care, omega 3 fatty acids are a healthy beauty treatment. As many people in medical studies, or on their own, are adding ultra purified fish oil to their diet to prevent or treat high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and many other debilitating conditions, they are finding that their hair, skin and nails are improving too.


  • Learning to Develop Lean Muscles in Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Any would - be ballerina suffers from the fear factor in developing big butts or big thighs instead of the long lean look. Especially if that shape runs in the family. Especially when human genetics are discussed as though no one can escape their fate. The good news is, your genetic shape is modified by what you eat, and how you exercise.


  • How to Maintain Emotional Intelligence and Positive Thinking in the Ballet World
    [Book-Reviews:Dance] Author Deborah Vogel has written many books for the student ballet dancer. Most of them have to do with anatomy, and solving the conflicts between ballet's anatomical farfetchedness and the capabilities of the human body. "Train Your Brain: A Teen's Guide To Well Being" goes beyond tissue and bone into the wondrous creative realm every student experiences, and sometimes loses direction in.


  • Preventing Bone Loss With Omega 3 Fatty Acids - Amazing Natural Health Remedies
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] There are many studies to show that adding omega 3 fatty acids to your diet preserves your bone density. The phenomena of losing bone density in older people, or at the beginning of menopause for women, is related to inflammation. Since omega 3 oils can decrease inflammation throughout the body, it seems especially important to eat omega 3 oils daily. Amazing and natural remedies for your health are easily available.


  • Shocker - Sugar and Inflammation Make Life Less Sweet
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Even though I have long been aware of the detrimental effects of sugar, while reading articles on sugar and the resulting inflammatory havoc it causes in the human brain and body, I found it to be a real shocker. Not sweet at all. Blood sugar, insulin and insulin resistance, chronic inflammation and many resulting degenerative diseases are all part of this picture.It is not news to me, but the info overload I found on sugar and inflammation was amazing.


  • Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's Disease and How to Reduce Inflammation With Omega 3 Fatty Acids
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Ulcerative Colitis is one of several chronic inflammatory diseases, usually of the large intestine, in which ulceration and wearing away of the intestinal tissue can cause severe diarrhea and some blood loss, as well as a weakened physical condition and weight loss. Treatment with omega 3 fish oil supplements have entered the medical arena, and the following is some of the information about that.


  • Preparing Chaine Turns For Ballet Dancing in Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Chaine turns are best perfected in soft shoes first. Every would-be ballerina wants to excel at turns on pointe. But pointe work depends on the accuracy of your ballet teacher, your basic classical ballet training, and the accuracy of your own class work. And the ballet positions for chainee turns are very simple.


  • How to Avoid Developing Chronic Joint Pain If You Are a Dancer Or an Athlete
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] It is vital to understand the role of inflammation in the body, for anyone, but especially would-be ballerinas, men in ballet, and athletes. Whether you are looking for a career builder or just enjoy the challenge of training, it is important to know how to maintain the soft tissues of the body that get worn out on practically a daily basis. To prevent ballet and sports injuries, good training and good work habits are required. For better rehabilitation, once an injury occurs, adding omega 3 oils to your nutrition is a tremendous help to diminish the natural inflammation response.


  • Balance the Omega 6 Fatty Acids and the Omega 3 Oils in Your Diet
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] We read about "good fats" and "bad fats". People attempting weight loss reduce their dietary fat, so it's important that they get the "good fat" only. And now that studies show that arthritis, depression, asthma, cancer, and diabetes are related to chronic inflammation in the blood and soft tissues, the balance of your intake of omega 6 and omega 3 fats becomes a bottom line factor of health.


  • Heart Disease, Natural Health and Understanding Inflammation Factors
    [Health-and-Fitness:Heart-Disease] A connection has been established between inflammation, heart disease and using yoga as an exercise that people with chronic heart failure can do to reduce inflammation in their blood. Since people with high blood pressure suffer shortness of breath and lose their physical stamina from lack of exercise, yoga provides a gentle aerobic workout. Doing yoga, you add a natural health regimen that can support your medical treatment.


  • Does Recreational Ballet Dancing Exclude Dedication in Dance?
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Recreational dancing and recreational ballet dancing come up in the top ten of many national sports and recreational lists. World wide, people love to dance. There is intense dedication in dance with students, including adult ballet students, that adds quality to their lives, and quality to our cultures in general.


  • How to Define Talent Vs Knowing Your Talent
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There is a great deal of argument on how to define talent. When investigated, the topic is more discussed amongst management (whether artistic or business) than among artists. For an artist, the thoughts on this topic are very personal. Between awareness of their gift, and awareness of functioning in a huge arena of gifted colleagues, the challenge for you, the artist is one of knowing yourself and knowing your talent.


  • Parent Volunteers Can Help With Natural Stage Fright Before Ballet Recitals
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Parent volunteers for ballet recitals are the support every ballet academy needs. Sewing tutus, dyeing pointe shoes, help in the dressing room with hair and makeup, are the many tasks that need to be done. The excitement of performing sometimes becomes fear - a natural stage fright that some children need help with.


  • The Technical Cornerstone Or Key to Advancing in Classical Ballet
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] If a student of classical ballet has a reasonably suitable physique, a reputable ballet school, and access to at least two classes per week, what might be the key to advancing faster? Is there a technical cornerstone that builds strength and supports the progress of the finer details?


  • How to Buy Nutritional Supplements Online
    [Health-and-Fitness:Supplements] Some people are still hesitant to trust internet shopping. It does create inconveniences when you have to send something back. If you don't like something and even get to keep it, you have to go through getting your money back. But, for many, that is still more convenient than going back to a store. Shopping for nutritional supplements on line takes a little reading and checking out the quality of vitamins, omega 3 oils, diet shakes, etc.


  • Ultra Health Ocean Pollution and Purified Omegas
    [Health-and-Fitness:Nutrition] Ocean pollution is something to be concerned about. Mercury is an ongoing problem. It is created every day from burning coal. It ends up in the ocean, and in the fish. While we respond to nutrition education by adding more fish to our diet for anti-inflammatory effects, we pollute our brain's health with mercury. Our alternative is purified omegas, if we want to move forward to ultra health.


  • The Synchronous Mechanical and Quality Development in Classical Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The mechanical, or technical aspects of classical ballet technique(s) are always interrelated with the quality, or traditional grace of ballet. Ballet movement, and positions, while analyzed mechanically in detail for children and adult beginners, are not meant to be taught without the accompanying elegant quality that defines classical ballet. Whether professional or recreational, classical ballet is a source of elegance for our culture.


  • Natural Anti-inflammatory Foods and Irritable Bowel Syndrome Or IBS
    [Health-and-Fitness:Home-Health-Care] The causes of irritable bowel syndrome are unclear. However, the Western diet full of refined and chemical foods, is implicated. Emotional and stress related factors are also as issue. If you suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome some of the following information may help you improve your situation.


  • Elegance in Ballet Depends on How You Build Strength in Core Muscles
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Making classical ballet dancing look effortless and elegant is the goal of any dancer, including for men in ballet. Effortlessness indicates strength , and men in ballet must strive for elegance while showing muscular prowess as a rescuing prince or charismatic villain. Ballerinas strive for fluidity in their arms, upper back, and other movements requiring suppleness, yet depending on the strength of their core muscles.


  • How to Stay in Shape and Keep Your Muscle Tone While on Vacation
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] For athletes and dancers (classical ballet and others too), time off without a daily class brings the double-edged sword of relief and anxiety. Relief to have relaxing time, and anxiety about not staying in shape and keeping the muscle tone they've worked so hard for. So without turning time off into a working vacation, here are some suggestions for daily routines to help stay in shape.


  • Anti-Aging Nutrition and Alzheimer's Research
    [Health-and-Fitness:Mental-Health] UCLA scientists have confirmed that fish oil is a deterrent against Alzheimer's. Many Alzheimer's researchers have stated that fish oil, whether taken in the diet from salmon, tuna, mackerel or other fish, or by nutritional supplementation, is an easily available and inexpensive food that may delay or prevent this degenerative disease.


  • Improve Your Diet, Understand Fatty Acids and Help Your Asthma
    [Health-and-Fitness:Asthma] Researchers now suggest that the epidemic of childhood asthma is associated with a change in the omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratio in the diet. It used to be around 5:1, (omega 6 to omega 3) but is now closer to 15:1. The researchers found that children who regularly consumed fresh, oily fish (such as mullet, orange roughy, Atlantic salmon or rainbow trout which contains more than two per cent fat) had a four times lower risk of developing asthma symptoms than did children who rarely or never ate oily fish.


  • Healthy Eating Habits During the Stressful Time of Ballet Rehearsals
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Ah... the final realization of all that work in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, or your other dance styles. The ballet recital, lights, costumes, the audience. Healthy eating habits matter even more during the stressful time of the final ballet rehearsals. An athlete's food choice is critical for your long classical ballet rehearsal hours. And aching limbs can bring on sleeping problems without the intake of proper nutrients.


  • Professional Footwork, Muscle Memory For Ballet, and Neural Pathways
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Improve your ballet dancing and pointe work, and even your tennis footwork. Tennis players learn ballet to refine their professional footwork, too. By understanding the part of the foot in finely reflexive movement, you will prevent muscle exhaustion in the lower leg. Muscle memory will be precise, and your neural pathways will be well built for all that ballet traffic.


  • How to Improve the Basics of Pirouettes For Pointe Shoe Exercises
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] The basics of classical ballet technique need to be thoroughly understood to build strength for pirouettes, and later for ballet classes in pointe shoes. Knowing the finer details of your daily routines gives you an extra advantage to the use of your core muscles in stabilizing your ballet positions and movements.


  • Men in Ballet - How to Get the Most Out of Your Foot's Demi Pointe - and Then Your Pointe Shoes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] I am going to cover a few of the finer details in strengthening, stretching, and maintaining your foot mechanics, and health. You want to get the most out of the joints and muscles that you have in your foot for your demi pointe. If you are among the men in ballet, you may choose to try some work in pointe shoes.


  • Anti-Aging Nutrition, Anti-Aging Education and Brain Healing
    [Health-and-Fitness:Anti-Aging] Studies show that anti-inflammatory Omega-3 fats help to protect your brain from degeneration, and your bones from osteoporosis. How to choose the right fats is an important part of your anti-aging education. There is good evidence that if you eat these 'good' fats that are a ruling factor in influencing the rate of bone breakdown, you will be contributing to preserving your bone density. And the health of that precious brain.


  • Technique For Pointe Work - Including For Men In Ballet
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] There are several famous male ballet dancers who have practiced classical ballet in pointe shoes. Some required it in their roles - for example, for the donkey Bottom in A Midsummers Night's Dream. Some choreographers have put on pointe shoes in order to empathize with their ballerinas. And many men in ballet want to take advantage of the opportunity to stretch their ankles and build strength.


  • How Can I Improve The Basics Of Pirouette Exercises - Especially In Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Even if you are never going to dance ballet in pointe shoes because of gender, casting, dance style or because you are starting ballet at a later age, how to improve pirouettes is important. Pirouettes are fun, showy, and prominent in classical ballet choreography as well as other dance styles.


  • Better Rehabilitation For Ballet and Sports Injuries By Exercising Neural Pathways
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Understanding "mirroring" in the brain has lead scientist to conclude that better rehabilitation could occur for injured athletes if they keep watching the actions they are restricted from performing. Doctors have written about this for 20 years! Those who write about "creating your reality" affirm that what one manifests starts with thought. This certainly is an idea to investigate.


  • Learn To Dance Ballet And Eventually Start Pointe
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] People of both young and older ages dream that they might learn to dance ballet. They picture the tidy look of the black leotard, the pink tights and the satin pointe shoes. Hip hop, modern and ballroom dancers learn ballet technique to build strength and avoid injury. And some adults who start late work hard to eventually start pointe. Needing to understand basic classical ballet, is what they all have in common.


  • Safe Stretching To Avoid Injury In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Safe stretching needs to be taught to all athletes. In school, safe stretching needs to be taught for physical education classes. For classical ballet, safe stretching helps you avoid injury. Once soft tissues are torn, you will have inflammation and scar tissue will form. In ballet shoes and pointe shoes, you want uninterrupted training. Whatever kind of dancing you love, you can build strength, stretch, and avoid dancing in pain.


  • Musicality In Ballet Class Facilitates The Difficult Aspects of Dancing
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There is a lot that is difficult about classical ballet. Musicality in ballet class training makes it easier. What exactly musicality is, can lead to lengthy discussions about music, personality, and more.


  • Ballet Is Difficult - Prevent Injuries in Your Classical Ballet Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] It is no secret that ballet is difficult. Years of training are carefully planned so that you can prevent injuries and get optimum results from the clever planning that professional teams of teachers assess and re-assess for their students. If you do not understand something in your ballet classes, communicating is necessary.


  • Improve Your Classical Ballet Work The Simplest Way
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] If you want to improve your classical ballet work, the simplest way is to first check your normal standing position. Before you put on your pointe shoes or soft ballet shoes and go to the barre, try this. In ballet wear so that you can see your posture, just stand in front of a mirror, relaxed. You'll see the qualifying factor and know if there is something basic to correct to improve your ballet classes.


  • Common Misunderstandings About Ballet Stretches And Doing The Splits
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] I am flabbergasted at the misunderstandings being perpetuated about doing the splits. Ballet stretches taught properly help with muscle flexibility. Ballet exercises in soft shoes and pointe shoes all require the correct posture and alignments. Doing the splits for a jete or a penche does not come naturally to many dancers. So how do they make it look right?


  • How To Build Strength For Hyperextended Knees Before You Dance In Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There's a lot of discussion about hyperextended knees - how to build strength and how to hold the legs correctly. Understanding neutral spine, neutral leg, and understanding the support system of your core muscles is vital. Every ballet exercise requires a neutral standing leg. Dancing in pointe shoes, especially, requires a strong neutral leg and perfect alignment.


  • The "Too Old To Start Ballet" Age - And Build Strength To Dance In Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Who is too old to start anything? How to choose a ballet teacher is more the right question. Some dance studios have classes for older teens and adults to start ballet, and some do not. Some teachers enjoy teaching older beginners and some do not. So maybe an older teen/young adult can start and even build strength to dance ballet in pointe shoes. Do not let fears about weight, age and muscle tone hold you back.


  • Dance Injuries Can Be Prevented By Pre-Training For Ballet In Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Common dance injuries such as sprained ankles, inflamed Achilles tendons, and shin splints can be prevented. To build strength in the foot muscles, a deliberate and separate routine of practice can be included in your daily routines. Strong foot muscles prevent muscle exhaustion in the calves, and in the feet.


  • Clever Planning and A Step By Step Approach To Reaping Rewards With The Law of Attraction
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The thing is with The Law of Attraction is that you are always using it. It is integral to our existence. You cannot NOT use it. Actually, it's almost like it uses us. We collectively create our world.


  • Productive Routines - A Step By Step Approach To Pointe Work
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Whether you are a beginner in ballet classes and you are under ten years old, or a young adult beginner, you can start some clever planning to achieve your goal of dancing in pointe shoes. Productive routines done at home, with a step by step approach, will help you build strength for all aspects of your ballet technique.


  • The Pursuit of Perfection Vs Striving For Excellence In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] The pursuit of perfection is not the same as striving for excellence. If you do not understand the difference, and are becoming a perfectionist in your ballet training, you will jeopardize your progress in different ways. Ballet technique must be excellent. But you need a healthy viewpoint to be consist in your advancement.


  • Your Self-Assurance In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes - And How To Build Confidence
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Ballet training is rigorous, exacting, and the finer details of technique all count. Keeping up your self-assurance is challenging. Things that are wrong about what you are doing in your ballet training are mentioned repeatedly. Most teachers want to help their students build confidence. Ballet students worry about their progress, their pointe shoes, their ballet wear, and how they compare to everyone else.


  • How Can I Improve The Basics of Ballet Exercises and Build Strength For Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] The basics of ballet exercises begin with posture, turnout, and flexibility. While being able to sit in the splits is not a prerequisite to advancing in ballet, enough flexibility to stand with a neutral spine is an advantage. And what does that have to do with the finer details of ballet technique that lead to dancing in pointe shoes?


  • Staying In Shape Over School Breaks From Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] School breaks are always welcome - whether you're going on a trip or just hanging out and relaxing, it's a pleasant change. But staying in shape is a challenge. If your ballet school is closed too, here's some tips for not feeling completely out of shape when you get back.


  • Planning Muscle Rest Time With Complete Training In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] The way of ballet training does not always provide ideal recovery time for your muscles. At professional schools, there are 5-10 classes a week. Out of necessity to complete training, this is planned for 7-8 years.


  • Ballet and Sports Jumping Injuries Can Be Prevented By Education and Your Ability To Concentrate
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Most sports or ballet jumping injuries result in ankle sprains or knee injuries. Ballet well taught, will prevent injuries through the proper use of turnout and placement to support posture and changes of direction. In sports, athletes are coached to keep their knees lined up under their hip joints, but in the guidelines I found, there is no mention of how the feet are aligned, or placed on the floor or ground.


  • Ballet Pointe Shoes Depend On You Building Strength and Understanding Ballet Technique
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Gaynor Minden pointe shoes are preferred by some dancers. The shank does not wear out, and the platform and box are built so that they will not soften and allow the dancer to go up and down from flat to pointe while sickling the ankle. The most common ballet injury is a sprained ankle, so this is a helpful shoe.


  • Ballet Turnout Prevents Knee Injuries Suffered By Soccer and Volleyball Players
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] "Knee muscles are capable of protecting ligaments and preventing injury," says Edward M. Wojtys M.D., professor of orthopaedic surgery, U-M Medical School, and Director of Sports Medicine at UMHS (University of Michigan Health System). "Female athletes are two to eight times more likely to tear their anterior cruciate ligament because they may not able to achieve the same muscle stiffness across the knee joint." Both female and male athletes could benefit from ballet classes, to learn the principles of turnout. Pointe shoes could pose an equal risk for dancers, because of the extra demand for strengthening turnout.


  • Grand Battement Builds Strength - A Full Body Workout Ballet Exercise
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] The grand battement supports posture, grand jete en tournant and in the splits, and grand allegro such as sissone. In sissone, both legs do a grand battement, the body travels, and the posture must be maintained. The daily routines of grand battement is a full body workout of the feet, legs, torso muscles, with exacting and strong arm movements.


  • Myomouse Builds Strength and Simulates Controlling Weight - News For Retired Dancers and Athletes
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] A study that appears in the February 6th issue of Cell Metabolism was conducted with Myomouse - a mouse type that was genetically engineered to produce Muscle II fibers. The kind he would have built using barbells, or in the slower press up type of pointe shoe exercises. The resulting gene adaptions showed that his chemistry could then reverse fatty liver disease, insulin resistance and other aging conditions.


  • Higher SAT Scores From Ballet Class and Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] In a southern California newspaper, a report by Chris Moran says " The College Board annually releases a report showing that the more arts and music courses students take, the higher their SAT scores are. Sweetwater Union High School District's survey of its own students five years ago found that students enrolled in visual and performing arts classes had higher grade-point averages than those who were not. The correlation is an admittedly chicken-and-egg argument over whether the arts make students smarter or smarter students pursue the arts. "


  • Chunking and Imitational Learning In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Please let me explain. "Chunking" is a new verb. It is a scientific word. It means breaking down a movement into its series of mini-movements so that someone learning it can learn it more accurately and faster, and build the right neural pathways. Like a ballet class, or a ballet exercise. Neuroscientists use this word. Try not to think "chunky" because to a dancer "chunky" is a very threatening idea.


  • Not Stocked At The Ballet Store - Your Ability To Concentrate
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Advancing in ballet, and into pointe shoes is determined by some finer details other than size, experience and muscle strength. Your ability to concentrate, to form neural pathways (learning new things through concentration and repetition) and to create the correct muscle memory will show that you can go on to pointe work. You must be able to work safely, with no distractions. If you are a little tired, or having an "off day" your ability to concentrate will get you through.


  • Build Strength For Ballet Technique by Understanding Your Core Muscles
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] There are many good articles on the internet about your core muscles and how they stabilize the body and prevent injuries and low back pain. To enhance your ballet technique, and your grace, in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, the following tips will help. When you build strength in your core, you support high extensions, pirouette and fouette positions, pointe work and grand allegro.


  • Bringing Forth Your Own Healing Energy And Your Most Positive Thought Patterns
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] What is the key to manifestation for tapping into a balanced life where you can make money, and augment your positive emotions? Do you find yourself bringing forth conflicting emotions in envisioning spiritual vs material goals? Don't waste time changing limiting beliefs - it is easy to learn how to tap into your own healing energy.


  • Build Strength In Your Center With Preparation Ballet Exercises
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Syllabus classes like R.A.D. and Cecchetti present only the exercises to be done in the exams. Many months can be spent working up to new and difficult movements. You can build strength in your center with preparation ballet exercises, whether in ballet shoes or pointe shoes. This adds up to well-executed combinations and helps to prevent injuries.


  • The Key To Manifestation and Feeling Positive Emotions - Even If You Imagine Them
    [Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] There is a stimulus response mechanism prompting both our positive and our negative emotions. The key to manifestation involves being responsive in a positive way more than in a negative way. We all have our emotional baggage, and we always will. But we can let go and change our response to that too. We first understand and then practice the key to manifestation, our positive emotions and our imagination.


  • Ballet Versus Football Or A Pas De Deux Without Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Many people think that ballet is only heavily stylized dancing, and that especially male dancers are not very strong outside of their art. However, it is actually a complicated practice that involves advanced physics and mathematical principles. Although the years of ballet exercises allows the dancers to make it look effortless, it is an extremely difficult, disciplined, and enchanting art form. "American football is a sport hardly known for its grace and poise, but many players have swapped their pads for points, to do ballet."


  • Are There Genetic Differences If You Dance In Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] "Are Dancers Genetically Different Than The Rest Of Us? Yes, Says Hebrew University Researcher ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2006) - What makes dancers different than the rest of us? Genetic variants, says a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem." Part of dancing in performance is transporting the audience to where YOU are while you're dancing. They are not just looking, they are going with you. You change their brain chemicals!


  • Don't Waste Time Wondering - Set Realistic Goals For Getting Into Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Every dance student wants to get onto pointe. How old do you have to be? How strong do you have to be? What are some realistic goals to work towards? Can you even tell if you're ready to get into pointe shoes?


  • Don't Waste Time - Learn To Self-Assess Your Ballet Technique
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] If you are a dedicated student who is willing to do some reading about the finer details of correct ballet technique, you'll acquire good ballet exercise tips and you'll know if you're working accurately in class. No author of ballet technique can see you and your work. However, you can find the information you need about ballet standards, pointe shoes, and you can build strength and the correct muscle memory to advance with optimum results.


  • Build Strength For Long and Lean Ballet Muscles - Highly Effective Tips
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] To build strength for the long and lean muscles every dance student wants, here are some highly effective tips to achieve optimum results. The finer details are both physical and conceptual, and will improve all your ballet exercises. These tips will also help your pre-pointe homework exercises.


  • Fitness and Nutrition Programs For Working in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There are many aspects to nutrition for athletes - and everybody else. Since the topics of flexibility (especially the splits) comes up often, and since stretching is necessary for good muscle tone, I'm going to talk about a vitamin/mineral combination that relaxes muscles, builds bones, and helps aching dancers get a good night's sleep. The finer details are in the proportions.


  • Get Exactly The Right Fit - Whichever Way Possible
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Once you have gone to a ballet store and purchased the best fit you can get, you still might need to make some modifications. Pointe shoes that are hand made have tiny variations in the finer detail of the shoe, and one pair may not feel as good a fit as another, even if it is made by the same cobbler.


  • Get Exactly The Right Fit and Avoid Dancing Ballet In Pain
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Avoid dancing in pointe shoes in pain. If you get exactly the right fit, the most pain you should ever feel is a spot where your tights were not smoothed out, or where your protective padding slipped. Foot injuries are avoided by a good fit, good training, good floors, and being strong enough in the first place. There's a volume of info around now that will help you aim toward the perfect pointe, pain free.


  • The Ultimate Ballet Line - Arabesque - and Other Extensions
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] A high arabesque and other high extensions is an important goal in ballet exercise as you get more advanced. The finer details need to be understood to build strength, and get the most out of your daily routines. To sustain high extensions while on pointe, as in pas de deux, takes years of consistent practise.


  • The Finer Details of 'Fouette' - French Ballet Word - And Build Strength For Turns
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Every ballet exercise is geared toward an advanced difficult movement. The finer details can be taught in early levels, which will develop the muscle memory and build strength for the later advanced movement. Also, some adagio in the center can be taught wearing pointe shoes, even if no movement onto pointe is included. This gets the students used to standing, balancing, and shifting the weight, in pointe shoes, which requires finer tuning of the ankle and foot muscles, and more strength in the core and legs.


  • 7 Highly Effective Habits For Using Every Ballet Exercise To Develop The Perfect Pointe
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] In ballet, every exercise is designed to build strength and most ballet exercises approximate a full body workout. The accuracy of your daily routines determines how you build the best muscle memory, and affect how well you progress to the perfect pointe, just for one example. Consider battement fondu, A French ballet word meaning melted, referring to the quality of the movement.


  • Setting Realistic Ballet Goals In Preparing For Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There are some highly effective yet simple exercises for preparing for the perfect pointe-strengthening exercises. Even before you explore getting exactly the right fit, or the brand of pointe shoes you will look for in the ballet store, choosing your daily routines carefully will give you an edge in the competition of the ballet field.


  • Build Strength by Doing Ballet Barre Exercises Without the Barre
    [Recreation-and-Sports:Dancing] Choose some daily routines from class, and do them without the barre. I used to implement this early on in a class' development. After a few months, when every student understands and executes correct technique in plies, battment tendus, battement degages, and battement frappe, I would have them do those exercises periodically, all away from the barre. Weaknesses and misunderstandings show up this way. This is one way of working smarter, as in pre-pointe exercises, to assess exactly the right level of progress for your self, or your class.


  • Daily Routines In Ballet With One Leg Shorter
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There are several accurate assessments that I've read recently of the problem of a dancer having one leg shorter and finding difficulty standing in an even position in ballet class. One thing I have not seen addressed is the spinal, or back misalignment, or any joint misalignment that can affect the leg lengths.


  • Battement Frappe - A Finely Detailed Effective Exercise To Build Strength
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Frappe is a French word for ballet meaning "struck". The inclusion in daily routines of a striking movement of the foot along the floor, to a sharp point, is one of the best ballet exercises to build strength towards jumps and pointe work. The optimum result is muscle memory that contributes to a precise and sharp push into a finely detailed jump, such as battus in all their forms.


  • Setting Realistic Goals in Daily Routines To Improve Your Ballet Exercises
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Sometimes working smarter means doing less. For daily routines, realistic goals may be achieved by picking one aspect of your ballet exercises. Optimum results for muscle memory may come from a super slow motion repetition, such as press ups, maintaining your postural plumb line.


  • Working Smarter At The Finer Details For Pirouettes and Fouettes En Dedans
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] I've written considerably about the finer details of pirouettes en dehor and fouettes, and turns a la seconde. For pirouettes en dedans, the daily routines of securing a straight up and down press up or releve, with relaxed arms, head and shoulders, is the basis for turns en dedans too. The following analysis is to help you with working smarter, developing the correct muscle memory, and attaining optimum results.


  • Finer Details in Daily Routines for Optimum Results in Turnout
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] This is an exercise you can do separately from class in daily routines at home, and also use as a focus in your ronde de jambe a terre in class. Even if you're not working in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, this will get you optimum results in strength and muscle memory utilizing primarily the rotator muscles. Recommended for all styles of dance, it is almost a full body workout.


  • More On The Multifunctional Degage
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] A lot of focus on footwork goes to pre-pointe daily routines. Here is an addendum to the multifunctional degage ballet exercise. In working the toes to give a sharp, strong quality to jumps, as well as to pointe work, you help build strength in the foot muscles, relieving the calf muscles of overtraining and residual tension.


  • Daily Routines With Ronde de Jambe A Terre
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Every ballet exercise can be broken down into tiny parts. A good dance technique is in store for you if you can get the correct technical information on every basic exercise. If you select one exercise, or one component of an exercise, to put into your daily routines, and rotate the selections that relate to your particular technical weaknesses, you'll have an ongoing regimen for building strength. Here is a little analysis that you might not find in a book at the ballet store.


  • Muscle Memory and Daily Routines While Not Overtraining
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Developing daily routines for ballet exercises requires some organization, to avoid overtraining. Rotating the muscle groups you are focusing on is one way to build strength in a balanced way. For example, changing off on turnout strength-building with developing strength and correct muscle memory in your core muscles, is one way to enhance your ballet exercises in class. Also remember, getting enough sleep and a eating a good diet can prevent overtraining, or simply put, muscle exhaution.


  • The Multifunctional Exercise of the Battement Degage
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] The battement degage is also called battement glise and battement jete. It is like a tendu, but it leaves the floor, and it builds strength a little differently, and is an important elaboration on the tendu. Quick, sharp degages done with poise in the upper body will build the strength to do battus without showing strain, as well as many other jumps requiring the legs to change positions in the air while the upper body retains its postural plumb line.


  • Tendu A La Seconde and A La Arriere - More French Ballet Words
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Your positions a la seconde and a la arriere in battement tendu are the basis for building strength and good dance technique. The accuracy of these positions will carry over to your pre-pointe strengths, your adagio, to......everything you do in a ballet class! Learning correct body placement and fine foot work in these exercises will also help prevent injury.


  • The Perfect Battement Tendu - French Ballet Word For Stretched
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Tendu is one of the French words for ballet. It means stretched. Usually, that means you have pointed your foot in a front, side, or backward direction from a closed position. Whether in soft ballet shoes or pointe shoes, the technique is the same. Tendu prepares the muscles for releve and saute.


  • 7 Additional Effective Habits For Improving Your Strength and Dance Technique
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Every exercise you do up until you get into pointe shoes, is basically pre-pointe. However, using the term to focus on the basics that will help you work well in pointe shoes, is how we currently emphasize that there IS a regimen for improving your strength build-up towards pointe work. For boys, these exercises will improve your technique too.


  • Building Strength, Your Age Profile and The Perfect Pointe
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Regardless of your age profile, you can build strength and good dance technique toward doing pointe work. Ballet shoes naturally lead to pointe shoes, and although there is no guarantee that you will do pointe work, repetition builds strength, and correct instruction creates good dance technique. Precision and detail are required to achieve this. Education prevents injury. A whole new world opens to dance students with the correct information!


  • The Perfect Pointe - Not More Homework!
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] There is more homework you are going to love. Why? How do I know that? Because I know that young dancers are serious, and usually quite organized. And they beam with satisfaction when they can do something that was extremely difficult a week ago. Learning new information is quite thrilling when you may have been wondering "why don't my feet arch over as easily as hers"? Or "how can I get my foot into a pointe shoe when my toes are such different lengths?"


  • Having The Power of Being Thankful For Your Untapped Potential
    [Self-Improvement:Attraction] The nervous system has actual gateways - tiny points on our surfaces, that can be stimulated to reverse a nervous response to something. An allergen, an idea. A negative thought! The one that dominates, even when you suppress and "out-think" it with positive affirmations. Being thankful is a start to having the power to tap into your untapped potential. Your dominant fears and inhibitions are the keys to your success.


  • Adding Turns in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Building strength and good dance technique has to happen long before you get to multiple turns. Once there, increasing your turns is not too difficult. The feeling of spin is controlled through good spotting, musicality, and the same old practise, practise and practise!


  • Self Empowerment To Release Negative Patterns
    [Self-Improvement:Empowerment] There are processes that tune the nervous system to its energetic source. There are fantastic healing techniques out there that move energy and balance the body. Some reverse the nervous system's response to a food, inhalant, feeling, or thought. Rather than just moving things around, it's an awakening that takes place within the body. Symptoms, whether they are physical, emotional or spiritual, are an attempt by the body to communicate.


  • Building Strength For Strong Pirouettes In Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Ballet students often have a stronger side that shows up in something like pirouettes. If the mechanics of the movement is the same on each side, then the weaker side simply needs more practise - maybe twice as much - as the strong side. But if a pirouette is being wildly thrown off on one side, several problems originating in basic technique, or incorrect training, need to be addressed. Once you get into pointe shoes, you will not be able to control any off balance turns.


  • Building Strength for Good Dance Technique
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Students who wish to advance more quickly toward pointe classes need a plan. They just long for the pointe shoes in their ballet store! When children do start classes, their parents sometimes wonder and worry if they are truly ready. Who knows for sure until maybe something goes wrong? How can students avoid dancing in pain?


  • 7 Highly Effective Tips for Fouettes in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] On a ballet forum, I'm seeing discussions about fouettes, spotting, and travelling during the series of turns. This is usually a problem of posture and muscular tension. Sometimes pointe work has started too early, and the required technical strength is not present. Here are some tips for correcting technique and building strength for fouettes, and also turns a la seconde.


  • The Best Ballet Wear in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Every student wants to get the most out of every class. Every ballet store provides the kind of ballet wear that teachers want to see. Whether you are taking ballet for weight loss, for exercises and strengthening, or for a career builder, selecting the simplest traditional ballet wear is the best choice.


  • Ballet for Weight Loss
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Ballet creates muscle mass, even when taught for elongation and not bulk. Therefore it is a calorie burning activity that increases the metabolism and can contribute to weight loss long after class has ended. Some of the super-slow motion exercises are like the serious fitness regimes, creating the same enzymatic activity in the cells.


  • Recovering From Injuries in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] While preventing injuries through good technique and knowledge of anatomy is a good start, recovering from injuries is helped by researching for yourself. Your doctor can give you a basic understanding of an injury from doing ballet. Your physiotherapist, if she/he has experience with ballet dancers, can give you more understanding. But search for yourself while you're icing with your foot up.


  • Wearing Pointe Shoes at The Barre
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Why wear pointe shoes at the barre instead of soft shoes? It's very strengthening. Wearing pointe shoes is resistance training for the foot, ankles, and metatarsals. In fact, all your muscles have to work harder to maintain your quality of movement. Check at your ballet store for the best padding for your pointe shoes, so you won't get too sore.


  • Taking the Next Step to Realistic Goals
    [Self-Improvement:Goal-Setting] Whether you're career planning in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, wrestling with the Law of Attraction, fighting cancer by practising smarter wellness, or contemplating on how to save the world, are you setting realistic goals? How will you succeed at taking the next step to a result?


  • To Dance or Not To Dance - In Ballet Or Pointe Shoes
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Whether in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, barefoot, in Irish dance shoes, Scottish dance shoes, clogs, boots, or... to dance or not to dance? Is it a smarter way to spend your time or your life?


  • Global Impact Charity Engages With a Broader Vision
    [Finance:Wealth-Building] How can you be involved in a global impact charity with a broader vision? One that goes beyond the tangle of multinational (i.e., no specific national or cultural moral boundaries) companies, war strife, hidden political agendas and first-world oblivion/helplessness? Most families in the more comfortable countries in the world are struggling just to keep the family economic unit intact.


  • Work At Home Moms Homeschoolers' Financial Management Course
    [Finance:Wealth-Building] Wouldn't you love to teach your children the Law of Attraction and give them real-world follow up? Would you like to teach them entrepreneurship now and provide a way for them to save for college, or become wahps themselves? Home-schoolers and all kids need this education.


  • How To Know When To Start Pointe Work
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Sometimes a parent is concerned about their child starting pointe work if she is younger, smaller, or newer to ballet than the other students in her class. The following is a guide that will help you determine how she is progressing in ballet shoes and pointe shoes.


  • What's In Store For You In Pointe Shoes?
    [Arts-and-Entertainment:Performing-Arts] Who is the most important person in a ballet store? The one who can help you get exactly the right fit in pointe shoes. What is a good exercise to strengthen your feet for pointe shoes? What will give you that cat-like quality?


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