Find Your Center Wellness Arts

Kate practicing 4th Port de Bras with Épaulement By Kate Feinberg Robins Back to Basics A Surprise Beginner Class This year, I took advantage of the first week of school to head over to the  School of International Ballet , a local studio here in Redlands, California that I'd recently discovered.  The Wednesday Adult Ballet class was taught by Ms. Barbara, a founding member of Ballet West (and retired psychologist, according to my classmate, Jennifer).  It was a lovely class, with only one other student that day, and it was nice to be back in a studio with space to move and a bit of an audience, both of which always motivate me. Jennifer and Barbara both warned me before class began that it was intended for beginners. I suppose they could tell by how I carried myself and walked confidently to the barre that this was not my first time in a ballet studio. They encouraged me  to come back on Thursday or Fr...

By Kate Feinberg Robins Pilates? Yoga? What Is It? Sometimes it feels like everywhere we look there's a Pilates or yoga studio. Every gym and community center seems to offer Pilates, yoga, or a combined Pilates-yoga class. Are they the same? Are they different? What are they? Mind-Body Practice on a Mat Pilates and yoga are both mind-body practices done on a mat. As mind-body practices, both Pilates and yoga focus on coordinating breath with movement. Because of the focus on mind-body connection, Pilates and yoga are typically done slowly, with careful attention to the details of each movement, position, and breath. Both tend to focus on flowing from one movement or pose to the next, with deliberate transitions in between. Like many mind-body practices, the principles practiced in the studio (such as harmony, flow, and centering) are intended to be applied holistically in everyday life. Typically, yoga exercises and sequences are done on a "sticky mat" or "yoga mat....

By Kate Feinberg Robins What Is a Back Spasm? If you’ve experienced a back spasm, you know it can be incredibly painful, start suddenly, and last several days. The good news is most muscle spasms can be managed through home exercise and over-the-counter medicine. (For more on causes and medical treatments, we recommend the Cleveland Clinic’s website .) A back spasm is basically when a muscle in your back contracts involuntarily and will not release. In our experience, it feels like sudden shooting and debilitating pain (usually accompanied by crying ☹️). Here are some tips we’ve learned that help get us through when it happens. 1. Slow Down Be patient with yourself. It can take weeks for the pain to go away fully. Often a spasm is (in part) your body telling you that you’re doing too much and forcing you to slow down. (And maybe next time, we can remember to slow down before it happens and avoid it altogether 🤔.) 2. Keep Moving This is the hardest and most important part. When it feel...

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 Warm-up stretching  should increase your mobility in preparation for more intense exercise, without putting yourself at risk of pulling a muscle. Be gentle and dynamic.  Move continuously rather than holding a position.  Keep your stretches small and your muscles in motion.  Cool-down stretching  decreases muscle soreness and tightness, and leads to long-term gains in flexibility. Sustain your position for several breaths or at least 30 seconds. Relax the muscles you're stretching.  Stretching for increased flexibility  requires repeated sustained stretches and lots of patience. Choose a moment when your muscles are very warm--like after a long walk or run.  Hold your stretch for several minutes, making sure not to put weight on the muscles being stretched.  Deepen your stretch gradually and with lots of breath.  The longer you hold the stretch and the more often you do it, the more gains you'll see in flexibility...

By Kate Feinberg Robins My rediscovery of ballet after retiring from a pre-professional performance career at age 18 has been gradual, to say the least. During my last couple years of high school, I was dancing lead roles with the Cuyahoga Valley Youth Ballet and preparing to audition for professional companies, or to continue my training at professional schools if I wasn’t yet good enough to be hired. At 5’ 1”, good enough to be hired meant good enough to be a soloist. No one would hire a dancer my height for the corps. I auditioned for American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, and unsurprisingly, didn’t make it. I made the second cut at Julliard, but didn’t quite get in. I finished high school prepared to enter Butler University’s ballet program on a merit scholarship. There I would stay, perfecting my skills until I could finally get paid to do what I loved—or so I thought. But during that summer between high school and college, I discovered that I no longer loved it enough to g...