Originally published on exercise.com, written by Lynda Salerno Gehrman.
“I don’t want to control. I want to let go,” are lyrics by the artist Pink, who I recently marveled at in concert. She learned technical aerial dance as an adult and can now literally fly over the audience at Madison Square Garden, which shows that being disciplined takes hard work, and freedom is the outcome.
Discipline requires balance. When it comes to your body, many of you need to learn how and where to be more disciplined, while some of you may need to be disciplined enough to actually stop being so disciplined!
Your body is an instrument that plays movement. The “sounds” you make — the way you walk, leap up the stairs, or the way you simply enter a room — will reflect the tuning of your instrument. But it’s not enough to be disciplined about taking care of your body. You have to apply specificity to your diligence if you want positive results.
Training and Trusting
My thoughts are inspired by a class with one of my favorite ballet teachers, Christine Wright. She compares us dancers to musicians, whose medium is sound. She coaches us through class to think and feel our medium of movement and then not to think so much.
This principle is true on many platforms: Your disciplined child can have extra time to play, or your disciplined dog can vacation at your friends’ beach house with the all-white interior without destroying it. But you don’t attain this freedom by yelling at your kids to do the right thing or repeatedly telling your dog not to pee on the floor. You teach them and teach them well.
Teaching your body is no different. You work on good form while training your body so that you can trust that form while performing. Your performance could be on stage, on the field, in your office, or at your home.
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