Find Your Center Wellness Arts

By Kate Feinberg Robins, PhD Embrace Your Ballet "Accent" I know as a linguistic anthropologist that languages are not made up simply of words, but of grammar, sounds, and cultural understandings. The same is true for ballet.  Ballet is not about what steps we can do. It’s about how we move.  If we know a few words (steps) and understand the principles behind them, we can communicate. If we know lots of words but don’t understand how they fit together grammatically, what they mean culturally, or how to pronounce them, communication is difficult at best. There is a myth that both ballet and languages must be learned in childhood.  Children’s brains and bodies do have greater plasticity. Children can speak new languages without a foreign-sounding accent. Their bodies can be shaped to the aesthetics of ballet. But anyone at any age is capable of learning.  Adults have a lifetime of experience that we can use to learn deliberately and purposefully. Whether learning a la...

By Kate Feinberg Robins Working on creative projects reduces stress and anxiety, and improves problem-solving skills. So that’s great! We should all do it, right? But for adults who don’t make art as part of our jobs, it doesn’t always feel so simple. Here are some tips. Focus on the process, not the product. Give yourself a regular time and place to do your art, where you can focus on the doing without judgement. This might mean closing your door, covering mirrors and cameras, or putting on headphones. Any kind of creative expression counts. Make a list of creative activities that you can easily do. Remember—focus on what you have the resources to do, not what you consider yourself good at. Your list can include things as varied as writing, baking, playing music, dancing, or designing inventions. Choose anything on the list that you’re in the mood for. Play and explore. Try letting go of things like recipes, sheet music, and choreography. Give yourself the freedom to play with your m...

By Kate Feinberg Robins How Do I Know I Have a Torn Back Muscle? Here are some signs that your back pain might be due to a muscle tear: You can remember the moment that it started hurting.   You feel lopsided, with one side of your back much tighter than the other. The pain gets worse when you try to use the muscle. How Did it Happen? Think back to that moment when your back started hurting. You might have torn a muscle if you: stretched abruptly without warming up. forced yourself to stretch further than you were ready for. lifted too much weight suddenly and with poor form. Any movement that causes a sudden strain may cause a muscle to tear. How Can I Prevent it from Happening Again? Always warm up before stretching . Make sure you’re doing the the right kind of stretching at the right time. Stretch gently, giving your muscles plenty of warmth, breath, and time before deepening the stretch. Practice proper form with resistance or small weights before increasing your weight load. ...

By Kate Feinberg Robins To find your center is to know and honor yourself . Knowing and honoring ourselves can sometimes be as simple as understanding what does and doesn't work for us in our daily routines.  Take a moment to think about one of your wellness practices. It could be capoeira, Pilates, social activism, or anything else. How are you approaching it now? What's working and what's not? What feels right and what doesn't? Are there adjustments that you could easily make?  Remember that we are all in constant flux, and what works for us now might not work next week or next month. Get rid of what's no longer helping you, and let new ways of being emerge!