Are you ready to PRACTICE?

September 28, 2015September 25, 2015Sophia Ravenna

Image borrowed from Nadira Jamal's website. — Image borrowed from Nadira Jamal’s website.

Remember earlier this year when I was taking Nadira Jamal’s How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit and I said it was awesome, and you wished you had signed up for it, too? Well now’s your chance! Nadira will be offering SPH again starting on October 9th and sign-ups are open now, until October 8th. And as an added bonus, I have a coupon code for you, which will give YOU a free upgrade to the Premium Package (which means you get to be part of an awesome, supportive FB group and get daily check-ins to keep you accountable), and I get a small commission fee. Everyone wins! But mostly you, because you’ll be taking an awesome class.

I really can’t recommend this program enough, it really helped me re-evaluate how and why I practiced, and taught me how to make practice a priority and make time for it every day. Although I backslid a bit after starting my job, recently I’ve taken steps to get my practice habit back, using the techniques I learned from Nadira Jamal. She’ll also help you decide what to practice, how to structure your practice, and how to develop a recovery plan to get your habit back after vacation, illness, or other setbacks. And the best part is it’s not all a bunch of one-size-fits-all solutions, she offers various ways of finding what works for you, in your life. You don’t even have to commit to practicing every day, you can say “I want to practice every weekday” or “I want to practice on Monday and Thursday” and use the same techniques to build your habit.

Sound good? I thought so! Here’s what you need to do:

– Go to the How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit info page at:
http://www.bellydancegeek.com/practice-habit/

– Add the PREMIUM package to your cart

– Enter coupon code SOPHIA in the shopping cart and hit Apply

(Then continue with the checkout process.)

FTC disclosure thingie: Coupon code provided for promotional purposes. I receive a small commission for any sign-ups that use my coupon code. The opinions above are my own. I am receiving no other compensation beyond the commission.

PS: I’m at 8 Elements Cultivation! Check back on Wednesday for a blog post about how it’s going so far!

It's great to hear that Nadira Jamal’s How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit course had such a positive impact on you, and now you’re sharing this opportunity with others! The flexibility of the practice habits that the course encourages sounds like a practical approach to maintaining consistency in your dance practice or any discipline, really.

For anyone planning to sign up, or if you’re managing multiple classes and commitments like this one, Latenode can be a fantastic resource. It can help automate reminders for course deadlines, track your practice sessions, and even integrate with social media platforms to share your progress. If you're coordinating with a group or managing a promotional campaign for similar events, Latenode can streamline these tasks. By setting up workflows that handle sign-up reminders, promotional postings, and personal check-ins, you can maintain focus on your personal growth and community engagement without getting overwhelmed by the details.

Plus, for those who are managing their own courses or workshops, Latenode offers tools to automate participant registration, schedule updates, and feedback collection, ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently. This can be especially useful for dancers and instructors alike, who want to maximize their creative time and minimize administrative overhead.

Why I push myself in practice

June 10, 2015Sophia Ravenna

So next week I’m going to do another Professional Ambitions post, and — spoiler alert! — it’s going to be about the importance of practice! But today I want to tell you a funny story that illustrates why I push myself to (and sometimes beyond) my limits during my personal practice.

I’m doing an improvisation challenge, and today the song I improvised to was one that I had heard enough times that I knew its structure fairly well, but not so well that I knew it inside and out. I don’t think I’ve ever danced to it. Anyway, as I was dancing I knew there was a part coming up where it would be really cool to do a turn sequence, and I knew it was going to be a fairly long sequence, but not just how long it was.

There I was turning, and turning, and turning. My spotting was pretty sharp, my hair was about to fly out of its bun, I’d changed arm positions a couple of times, and that part of the music was still going on. I didn’t want to stop turning, because the music was ramping up and demanded faster turns, not an absence of them. But I was bored of doing the same old turns, so I decided I would try that technique of spotting on your hand as you turn instead of a fixed spot in space.

Well, I didn’t do a very good job of focusing on my hand. My living room whizzed by me, and when the music finally allowed me to stop, I was DIZZY! I tried a couple of techniques to regain my equilibrium and it just was not happening. I stumbled around my living room as I tried to even myself out, looking like a drunkard, and then you know what happened? I literally fell down, you guys! I collapsed sideways onto my (thankfully squishy) couch and I could not stand up for several more seconds! I had to grip the seat of the couch for dear life while my house spun around me.

The best part? I caught it all on video! And it looks just as ridiculous as it felt. Because I was just dancing at home, and because I had a soft landing space, I didn’t freak out. I collapsed laughing and cried out “whoa!” and then got up and finished out the song once I knew I wouldn’t fall again. But there is no hiding the fact that I overdid it. I did not recover gracefully from that mistake!

My point is, if I had done that while performing, it would have been a huge embarrassment. I might have hurt myself, or somebody else. Because I tried that spotting technique, and that length and speed of a turn sequence in the safety of my own home, I learned what my limit was. I learned that if I want to take that song to the stage, and turn for that entire section of the song, I need to practice a lot more at home and test out various spotting techniques, arm positions, and other ways to make it dynamic.

That’s what I mean by pushing your limits in your home practice. You don’t have to approach it like an endurance athlete or a CrossFitter and dance yourself to the point of exhaustion every time you practice. I know you’ve got other stuff to do with your time! I mean that when you’re practicing, you see how far you can take it. How fast can you spin? How big can you shimmy? How long can you hold a sword on your head? How high can you lift your leg in an Arabesque? Test your limits at home, so that when you go on stage, you can stop short of those limits and not look like you’re over-reaching your abilities.

Note: Please take care of yourself while pushing your limits! Don’t push yourself so hard that you cause an injury, make sure you’re properly warmed up, and give yourself an appropriate cool-down! And maybe don’t spin yourself dizzy at the start of your day, because it will leave you off-kilter all afternoon and into the evening…

My 30 Day Datura Online Challenge

June 1, 2015May 31, 2015Sophia Ravenna

Lately I’ve been slacking off a bit on the dance practice, only doing this one daily challenge I’m part of, and then my hour at the studio each week. It’s not really a lack of interest in practicing, so much as a difficulty in straightening my schedule out ever since I got back from Tribal Fest. Of course, I kind of did this to myself by scheduling a bunch of appointments for the two weeks following TF, but that’s beside the point. The point is that I want to practice more, and there’s a lot of cool new videos, so for the month of June I’m going to do at least one Datura Online video a day, and try at least one new-to-me video per week. I’m really excited to try out some of the new full-length, hour plus classes from teachers like Sadie and Ashley Lopez, that’s for sure.

Check back every Monday for a brief rundown of which videos I did, and a review of one of my favorite new classes that I tried. Comment below if you have favorite DO videos that you think I should check out this month!

Final review of “How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit” by Nadira Jamal

March 24, 2015Sophia Ravenna

Sunday was the last day of the 9-week online course that I took with Nadira Jamal. I’m pleased to say that I only missed one day of practice during those 9 weeks, and it was while I was on vacation with my husband, so my schedule was completely out of whack. I managed to maintain my habit during Gem Show, a visit from my in-laws, and even 8 Elements, so I feel like maaaaaaaybe the course was a little helpful.

One of the things that really made this work for me was that the practices started small and got longer each week. Too often, I decide “OK, I’m going to practice for an hour a day!” and I’ll do okay for three days, maybe a week, and then fizzle out. Building up to it felt kind of like what I’ve read about the process of gauging your earlobes. You don’t go down to the piercing parlor and have them punch a hole the size of a dime into your ear (ow!), you start out with a normal-size hole and slooooowly, gently stretch your skin. This felt like that… I started by making a tiny 2-minute hole in my daily routine, and then sloooowly made that hole bigger until it was 40 minutes.

But wasn’t I aiming for an hour? Well yes, but then I went to Portland and Seattle for the last two weeks of the course and I fell back on the eminently helpful “Ridiculously low minimum.” On days when I was busy, I just had to do five minutes of practice. Maybe I could stretch it into 10 or 15 before I had to leave to catch the bus downtown, but if all I did was that five minutes, I could still count it as a success. This has been amazing for me! No more feeling like a failure when I’m too busy, tired, or sick to commit to that hour goal. As long as I still plant myself in front of my dance mirror or TV (depending on whether I’m practicing from my iPod or Datura Online) after breakfast, and give it my best for five minutes, I’ve maintained that habit.

What I love about this course is that it acknowledges that we live in real life, and teaches us how to work around the obstacles that real life throws at us. This isn’t a course designed for the full-time college student dancer, for example, who is able to eat-sleep-breathe dance. This is for the adult dancer who probably also juggles a few of these other things: a day job, a spouse, children, pets, chronic illness, old injuries, and more. As such, Nadira covers topics like how to know when you’re sick or injured enough that you shouldn’t practice at all, and how to get back in the habit when you recover. Or how to find a way to keep your children or roommates out of your hair when you practice.

Some people may not like the fact that this course expects you to practice on your own every day (or every weekday, or whatever schedule you’ve set for yourself). In the past my “daily dance challenges” have been flexible enough that going to class, a workshop, or performance counted as my dancing for the day. This is not the case here! This is about being self-motivated and doing your own personal practice, whether it’s at home, or at the gym, or at a studio. So yes, even when I was going to Studio Nia for 8 hours of 8 Elements, I still took a few minutes in my friend’s living room to do my own practice.

This has actually really helped me, because I have an incredibly bad habit of getting really busy on the day of a performance and not practicing, and then feeling bad that I didn’t squeeze in one last practice that day. This especially happens every first Thursday, because I get caught up in putting the finishing touches on the Open Stage playlist, plus getting myself ready, that I run out of time to practice. But thanks to Nadira, I challenged my assumptions and moved my practice to the morning, so I get a chance to run everything I’m going to perform before I do anything else, and I feel more prepared.

Although you’re required to practice on your own, Nadira does allow and even encourage the use of videos, which is great for those days when you don’t feel like figuring out what to practice on your own. I think this is especially important for newer dancers, who may not have worked out yet how to organize a practice at home (although structuring your practice is the topic of one week’s homework). I found myself doing a mix of self-guided practice and Datura Online videos, with plans to start hitting my DVD collection soon.

I’m really glad that I signed up for this course, because it helped me not only make daily practice a reality, but it also taught me smarter ways to organize my practice and make good use of my time. I’m also glad that I did the “premium package” which included a daily check-in and access to a private FB forum, because that really helped keep me accountable, and the forum was a good way to discuss things with my fellow students, sharing insights and encouraging people who were having a rough week.

If this sounds like something you’d like to do, you’ll have to wait a bit, but Nadira Jamal is planning to offer it again in the future, possibly as a self-guided course that you can take whenever you want. I definitely recommend checking it out when it becomes available!

Daily Practice Update

February 19, 2015Sophia Ravenna

This picture by Kyle Cassidy is a pretty good representation of my current mood about practice and life in general.

Today marks one month of participating in Nadira Jamal’s “How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit.” How’s it going for me? Well, today also marks one month of practicing every day, so I’d say it’s going preeeeeetty well.

I have to say, I almost didn’t sign up for this course. I knew that I’d be dealing with gem show, a visit from my in-laws, and trips to both Portland and Seattle during the 9 weeks of the course. I thought for sure there was no way I could possibly dedicate any time to participating in an on-line class. But then I realized that I always have something going on, and I always make excuses, and I end up missing out on a lot of things that could be helpful for me. So I signed up anyway, and I’m really glad I did.

You see, this course isn’t just about having a daily practice under ideal circumstances, but it also tackles the exact problems that always come up for me… Illness, changing work schedule, travel and house guests. We recently learned how to come up with a contingency plan for all kinds of issues, including how to determine when it’s really OK to give yourself a day off (can’t stand up without barfing? You don’t need to practice!) and how to get back into the swing of things after a planned or unplanned break from dancing.

So far I’ve only had two blips on my daily practice:

1- On the day of my photo shoot, we hadn’t really decided when I should come over. I woke up at 8am to an e-mail asking if I could be there by 9:30. I still had raccoon eye from Open Stage! So I had to quickly shower and put on my face and get my things together and put food in my belly. There was not time to practice, not even the 5 minute minimum! So after the shoot I picked up a smoothie for lunch, came home, drank it down, and did my allotted practice.

2- On the second day my in-laws were here, I slept in a bit and only had an hour before they were going to come meet us for breakfast. I was pretty sore and tired from being in Phoenix all day and dancing that night, so I was moving slowly. On that day, I took advantage of the “ridiculously low minimum” of 5 minutes of practice, and just did one five minute song and the 1.5 minutes of new troupe choreo that I had learned.

On a side note, the concepts I’ve been learning from Nadira Jamal have also helped me develop another habit I needed: Using the concept of “anchors” for habits, I now pour myself a glass of water after I put my oatmeal on the stove, and I have to finish the glass before I sit down to eat. This way I make sure I’m starting the day off with some hydration, because I never drink enough water. It’s been a really easy change to make. I’ll have to modify my anchor soon, as the weather is getting warmer and I’ll be switching to fridge oats instead of hot oats, but I am sure I can still make a glass of water in the morning a daily habit.

I’m already seeing results from the practice, too. I’ve been focusing a lot on omis, making sure that I practice them almost every day. Prior to this my clockwise omis were really clunky and lopsided, but thanks to daily practice, they’re now as smooth as my counter-clockwise omis, and I’m now working on making them both even smoother, walking with them, and increasing range of motion so they’re even more ooey-gooey. I’m also seeing progress with my taxims, and I’m finding myself more confident at troupe practice because I’ve been practicing our choreography more regularly.

All in all, I am very happy that I decided to sign up for this course, and I am feeling pretty confident that I’ll maintain my practice habit for my two trips next month, even if I end up just doing the ridiculously low minimum most days.

Sustainable Practice Update

January 28, 2015Sophia Ravenna

I’m about a week and a half into the 9-week online course “How to Build a Sustainable Practice Habit” with Nadira Jamal. In fact, tomorrow is the 10-day deadline for deciding if I want to drop out for a full refund, and I’m happy to say that I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth and I’m sticking with it for the whole thing. Some initial thoughts…

I enjoy listening to my weekly audio recording on Monday. Nadira Jamal’s voice is warm and friendly, and she speaks really clearly so it’s easy to follow along with what she says. I’ve also been using these recordings to practice my ability to focus instead of multi-tasking. For the half-hour that I’m listening, I don’t let myself load up my browser to check social media, or play on my phone.

Maybe it’s because I’m a huge NERD and maybe it’s because I was homeschooled and never did traditional homework as a kid, but I also really enjoy doing my homework on Monday. Any dance-related thing that involves homework makes me happy, because it makes me feel like I’m going the extra mile for my dance by putting in some sort of effort off the dance floor.

As for the practice itself, we’re still in the “ridiculously low minimum” portion of things. Last week was two minutes and this week is five. I usually go a little above and beyond. I still honor the intention of building the habit by starting small, but instead of searching out 2 minute and 5 minute songs, I stick with doing one or two songs as appropriate. Part of me is impatient to be doing more (and I might do a longer practice this Friday, since I don’t have any dance classes Fri night), but most of me is glad that we’re starting small, because it means I’ll still be working with small chunks of time when I’m fitting my practice in before working at the bead show!

So far, I’ve been sticking with having my practice in the morning right after breakfast. I’ve always resisted the idea of dancing in the morning, because I can’t function before breakfast and I didn’t want to dance right after eating… But I realized that was a dumb excuse, because I eat a bowl of oatmeal. It’s not like I’m having some giant plate of bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. I can dance immediately after eating without feeling like I’m going to be sick.

I’ve found a few pleasant side effects of practicing every morning: I start the day off with a sense of satisfaction. I don’t feel like the need to practice is looming over my head, followed by a sense of failure if I don’t manage to practice. And once I’ve started my day off with dancing, I’m much more likely to go tackle some chores or dance-related things. That little burst of energy from dancing helps shake me out of the desire to veg out on the computer until two in the afternoon, followed by a couple panicked hours of chores and maybe dance.

Because I’m practicing for such short amounts of time, and it’s only been 9 days, I can’t say that I’ve seen any improvements in my dance. However, I’ve been using these little practice sessions as a sort of check-in with my body, to see what movements need work, so I’ll know what to drill during my longer practices.

I purchased the upgraded package that includes daily check-ins and access to a private FB group, and I’m really enjoying that aspect of it, too. It’s nice to be able to chat with the other dancers who are taking the course, to support each other and work through our struggles, and also to post cute pet pictures, because that was inevitable!

Over all, I’m really happy that I decided to sign up for this and I feel like it is just what I need to learn how to really practice every day instead of squeezing in some belly rolls at bed time.

The Work Behind The Dance

December 10, 2014Sophia Ravenna

If there’s one thing that all artists seem to have in common, it’s that somewhere in our life, there’s someone who likes to snark about how it must be NICE to just be able to sit around having FUN all day. There’s this weird assumption that when you do what you love, you love every part of it, and there’s never any bad sides.

Even putting aside all of the work not directly related to our art that we have to do — self promotion, taxes, playing phone tag with venues, what have you — there’s a lot of work that goes into being an artist of any sort. You don’t just wake up one day and say “Welp, I’m gonna be a belly dancer now, I’ll just grab this costume that’s magically in my closet and put on an amazing classic 7 part routine!”

There’s a lot of learning and training that goes into being an artist. Not everything that a painter commits to canvas is going to be worthy of hanging in a gallery. When I made jewelry, I had necklaces that were so ill-conceived I had to rip them apart and start all over. A musician will play many wrong notes along the path to learning a song.

And for dancers, there’s drills. I can’t just put on music and “dance like no one is watching.” Especially since I’m in a troupe and have to perform specific moves at specific times, I frequently have to drill a single move, or even a single part of a move, to figure out why it doesn’t look right. No matter how much you love dance, there is nothing FUN about spending an entire 5 minute song practicing your pelvic locks. Either it’s boring, because you’re just doing it to stay sharp, or it’s frustrating, because you’re trying to figure out why you suddenly have no range of motion.

Likewise, I go to ballet class every week, and it’s not a bunch of twirling around in tutus. Most of the class is spent at the barre, repeating basic moves, and getting insightful corrections from the teacher on how to do it better, or why it hurts when I do this, or why I look all funny and crooked. At the end we might do a combination or two that feels like actual dancing, but it’s still focused on teaching us our basics and improving our form. It’s work. I enjoy it, and I see the value in it, but I wouldn’t say I’m having fun most of the time.

Of course, I do make sure to have a little fun in every practice session at home. If I have to drill a bunch of things, or practice a lot of choreography, I’ll make sure that I get to improv to at least one song, or play with my fan veils, or shimmy it out to some Apocalyptica. It’s important to remember why I just did all those snake arms or hip drops.

Lights, camera, BLARGH!

November 24, 2014Sophia Ravenna

I need to hide my shame behind this fan veil! (Photo by Carrie Meyer/The Dancers Eye)

I mentioned recently how I hadn’t been video taping myself practicing, and my performances were suffering because of it. Then even more recently, I tried to take video and learned an important lesson: to get video, you have to hit “record.” Well, I wasn’t about to let that deter me. Over the weekend, I decided that from now on, Monday will be my day to record myself practicing, that way I have a whole fresh week ahead of me to work on what I see.

Let me tell you, the only thing more difficult than watching a video of yourself is watching a bad video of yourself. No, I am not knocking my dance abilities, I am knocking my web cam. It’s simply not up to the task of capturing belly dance! The sound quality was awful, making it impossible to tell how well I was hitting accents, and any time I did something even remotely fast. Good luck telling what my arms are doing in a turn!

Next week I’ll try to use the camera in my new phone. If that doesn’t work, then well, I can finally justify the purchase of a video camera!

Anyway, despite the technical difficulties, I was able to at least get an idea of some of what is working in the new solo I’m developing, and a couple problem areas that I can drill this week. I think once I get the right piece of hardware set up, this will be really good for me. It’s just going to be awkward in the meantime!

Flash cards!

September 1, 2014Sophia Ravenna

Of course they're green. — Of course they’re green.

For someone who does basically everything on the computer, I have an inordinate fondness for fun stationary products. As such, when I was in the school supplies section of Target and saw these cute mini index cards that come on a binder ring, I knew I had to have them. One of the suggested uses was as flash cards, so I figured I could find a way to use them for dance practice.

Last week, inspired by my post about trying to get thrilled about drills again, I decided it was time to start my deck of flash cards. Midway through, as I approached the white section of the cards, I was struck by inspiration. While the green cards would be for different movements and isolations, the white cards would be for modifiers to apply to them! I started with the 11 movement attributes I learned in Amanda Rose’s workshop earlier this year, but there’s 25 white cards so I need to come up with even more! So far I’ve added “With a balancing prop” and “With zills” as those are both things that can be added to almost everything in the movement section (well, I’m not about to try chaine turns with a sword on my head), and I’m sure I’ll come with a few more.

Now when I don’t know exactly what I want to drill, I can pick a green card and a few different white cards to modify it with, or a few green cards and one white card to apply to all of them, or a few of each. Every drill session can be a little different! I’m pretty excited to try them out this week.

Looking for that thrill.

August 27, 2014Sophia Ravenna

A couple of months ago, my mother-in-law sent me this awesome mug covered with Andy Warhol insects. I love it because of the bugs, and the fact that it holds a lot of tea, and along the inside of the rim it says “You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.”

Great advice for a dancer, right? Especially once you’ve got a few years of dance under your coin belt. I mean, back when I started, every little thing was a thrill. A new move learned, a new way to move my body, aches in muscles I didn’t even know I had. Every new dancer I watched was the coolest ever, every new costume was the prettiest (except for Jillina’s snake costume, even baby dancer Sophia thought that was ridiculous).

Right now though, it seems like I only get a thrill out of going to festivals where I can take workshops and see top-tier professionals on the stage. Oh, that’s not to say that I never have a good time practicing at home or never see a really great performance from a local dancer, it’s just that sometimes it’s hard to overcome a sense of ennui.

I’ve reached that point where I don’t get to learn new things often (except in ballet class, since I’m a total newbie in that field), and any progress I make is slow improvements on what I can already do. As such, practice is often, well, boring. Ho hum, let’s drill some mayas and chest lifts to make sure they don’t get rusty, let’s run this solo I’m going to do at Open Stage, and now some chaines across the living room. Just another day.

So I need to find a way to be thrilled with drills. I need to remember to combine things in weird ways, or just enjoy the fact that I’ve got a body and it works pretty well. I need to find beautiful new music that makes me happy while I’m doing hip drops. I need to spend more time on YouTube looking for inspiring dancers.

After I tackle that, maybe I can find a way to be thrilled by housework and running errands. If I’m going to dream, I might as well dream big.