Letting Go & Letting Your Fascia Dance
Sarah Zielinski

In this class, we will get curious about the world of connective tissue--our fascia that connects every cell, organ, bone, and muscle of our beautiful body system. Dancers are some of the most determined and strong minded humans who push their bodies to extreme ranges and limits, sometimes resulting in injury, tension patterns, or perfectionist anxiety. This exploration will offer gentle ways to help ground our nervous systems, unwind restrictions, and open up more possibilities by tuning into our fascia-allowing it to dance by practicing letting go.  

Dancers are athletes. Athletes use their muscles quite often. Strengthening both "fast twitch and slow twitch muscles" by increasing the load asked and required. Stretching to increase range of motion all while asking to keep stability so there is control and proper alignment.  There is science to prove that putting the body under small increments of stress causes it to get stronger and more resilent. Dr. Hyman states, "Hormetic stressors are good stressors. These are actions that, in the right dose, have the power to lower inflammation, boost tissue repair and metabolism, and support our mitochondria. It’s like the saying goes: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Things like exercise and strength training, hot and cold therapies, light therapy, ozone, and others are all mild stressors that jump-start your body into repair and rejuvenation." But do we see a very important part of the sentence??? "IN THE RIGHT DOSE." Dancers are extreme humans. We ask for extreme things from our bodies, but are we getting the right support and training to prepare us? Do we have the time to do that? Sports have so much funding to support the training process and as dancers we have all heard of the "starving artist" stereotype. We can fall into that story that you don't go into the arts for the money or that we "must suffer for our art." We need to change that narrative. To support our arts community because arts help humans feel alive. Teaching them to feel and find creative play and human connection in an artificial intelligence driven world. Now more than ever emotions and being able to be aware of our emotions is a huge "science" part of our rewiring our brain and what happens in our body.  To stop over using those "suffer" muscles and thoughts.  If us artist keep falling victim and believing that story then we won't change, but we need to repattern our thoughts or create opportunities for neuroplasticity.

Dancers and athletes all hear about how important cross training is. Why? Because over using a muscle or group of muscles can cause imbalances causing the bones and skeleton structure to pull out of alignment. This puts pain responses to impinged nerves and compressed joints.  If we just keep releasing the muscles then sure they become less tight, but we also want to train the muscle to contract concentrically and eccentrically. Just like Dr. Hyman talked about above. We all hear things about "balance is key"  And there are tools to help access that and we want to take Action to help find the network of access, specifically for dancers. We need to practice being aware when things are out of balance because it happens all the time. It is not about perfection. Our body is an incredible thing! It is constantly trying to regulate and keep homeostasis.  Now, I am sure at some point you may have heard about the fight or flight response. Sometimes even the freeze response can be put in that category as well. It is the primal response of animals when they are under attack or have to fend for their lives. They either fight, flee, or sometimes freeze to protect themselves. This is their body's autonomic nervous system in a sympathetic state. It has all gears going to keep themself safe. Which is a good thing when needed! It is great! Often times when an animal is thawing out from these freeze, fight, or flight response it will shake. This is the other important side... letting their body come down from this. Allowing the natural balance system of the nervous system to go from the sympathetic, fight or flight state, to the parasympathetic state of rest and digest. The goal is not to avoid stressful situations-those will come up and that is life on this earth-the goal is to have the body be able to come down from stress. If the body stays in the stress state for too long- that is when the not so good things happen. Breath and diaphragmatic breathing is one of the biggest components of bringing the body back to parasympathetic state.  As a dancer who always just wanted to "make it" and push, push, push to get the gig, or the next gig, or the larger role or a move that doesn't quite feel right... It is difficult to hear do less. Or to stop and focus on breath. Uh, no thanks. I don't have time for that. Less is not lazy though. And this is why we need to make time and access to these tools-whatever they may be for that individual. And this is where Attack Theatre's partner concept is so beautiful and is not just a concept for partnering, but I belief a beautiful lesson for life and connection. It is not about trying less in fact I think it takes even more effort in a very intentional and humbling way. It is about unlocking what is blocked by over striving or toxic narratives, and letting the authentic connection move through with the use of physics! More science! That is anything less and certainly not lazy.  That is hard work there. Hard, not always visible work that makes the movement seem so effortless I believe - It is about becoming the most authentic version you can and being vulnerable to share the with another human.  That is hard work and not always physical. And every single human being is different with different experiences and past history so our paths and what works will be different for everyone. Curiosity for this better way narrative. So by practicing and being intentional about what seems like less-something like seeing where your breath is possibly imbalanced and taking intentional, unforced breath and thought there- your fascia can begin to unwind, tension can let go. And then little by little we can ramp up the strength and mobility training. But it takes culitvating the tools and access for such tools of mind and body.  Not everyone will connect with the same access or entry point.  It takes An Action Network for Dancers for this intention movement.

Of course the inner dialogue and what us dancers tell ourselves are key too. We are talking authenticness, right?No one knows exactly what narrative you are telling yourself except for you. But gosh does it make a difference in output. We can do the steps and do what seems right. Do 5 minutes of breathing, but feeling self critical, because we are not doing it right is only going to create tension. It is difficult, but letting go of perfection, lack of confidence is so intentionally important and unlocking. We hear a lot to "listen to our bodies" but are we truly doing that? It is a practice- a humbling one at that, but I believe in being humbly confident.

Our body gives us signals.  There are so many layers. Western medicine has tried to separate the body into specialties. It is great that there is so much learning over all the different systems, but we need to remember that all of those systems are working together for our body. 

Dancers are also artists. Artists who are required to tap into emotions to sometimes play difficult scenes with high and raw emotions that may be triggering.  I think sometimes dancers, in the past, have been stereotyped as "too emotional" or having unhinged emotions and labeled unstable. But emotions and being aware of our emotions is now a big thing that even science is looking at. Science and emotions-Yes! Artists are also asked to go to very deep places emotionally, but are they also giving the tools to enter and exit those "places" without "triggering" themselves? PK speaks beautifully about this and even the idea of what an intimacy coach truly could do here. It is not just with sensual or sexual scenes but scenes that ask artists to access very intimate and raw emotions. How can we protect our artists to share those raw and intense emotions while keeping themselves emotionally protected or having the tools to do that?  Many intense stories that bring so many necessary and poignant stories to the forefront but we don't want to do that at the expense of having someone feel untethered.