Saturday, January 12, 2008 

Mysteries of Muscle Memory

When you learned to write, you trained the muscles in your arm and hand to create letters. It took time and concentration to do this, but with repetition it became automatic. Your hand developed muscle memory; when you write your name, your muscles remember how to move without focusing on the process.

Dancing, yoga, gymnastics and weight training are examples of other activities that require enhanced muscle memory. We can make the learning process easier and help establish muscle memory by using a few simple techniques:

* Visual images
* Repetition
* Slow motion
* Micromovement

Imagery

Using a visual image is an effective way to train your body to perform a new dance step or exercise. The best visual images are those which are familiar and detailed.

In dance, visualizing a movement helps you perform the step. For example, if a dancer wants to make an S-curving motion with her body, she can visualize a fish swimming, a camel walking, or a snake crawling. Since the best visual images are familiar and detailed, visualizing the color, texture, shape and markings of the image make it more vivid and effective. Likewise, visualizing yourself correctly repeating a new dance step or exercise makes the learning process easier.

many people find geometric shapes helpful. For example, you can imagine drawing a big circle to make learning a belly dance hip circle or circle step easier. A square is a useful image for learning a box step or hip square.

Repetition & slow motion

Repetition helps fix a new exercise or dance movement in your mind, so that the next time you perform it, you remember it more easily and perform it with less effort. Slow repetitions of a new exercise or dance step enable you to feel every nuance of the movement.

Rushing through a movement before youve completely mastered it skips over the important process of sensing every nuance of the movement; beginning dance students and exercisers often need to be reminded to slow down. Going slowly helps your muscles recognize precisely what the movement should feel like when performed correctly.

Micromovement

Micromovement means performing a movement in a very tiny way, using the least range of motion possible. For example, if you were writing the letter O ten inches high and then writing o in a script so tiny it could barely be seen, your O would require a much larger hand movement than tiny letter o, the micromovement. Using a tiny range of motion helps you sense subtle muscle movements which are occurring, but micromovements must be performed with awareness to get the full benefit. Going slowly helps.

Have fun with learning!

Select the movement or exercise you are working on, then answer the following:

Imagery: what animal, shape or object does it remind you of?
Repetition: what kind of music would help you when practicing this movement?
Slow motion: how many counts does it take you to complete one repetition?
Micromovement:what is the smallest range of motion you can use for the movement?

Ramona is the author of dynamic Belly dance, the Joyful Journey of Dancemaking and Performing. See free belly dance videos, read book excerpts and order an autographed copy at http://www.DynamicBellyDance.com

Copyright 2007 - All rights reserved worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article as long as you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article, give author name credit and follow the EzineArticles terms of service for publishers. Thank you!

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Golf Swing Troubleshooting

Every golfer player knows that in order to lower their scores they need to learn about golf strategy as well as tips on how to help with golf swing. Below we provide you with some golf swing troubleshooting tips which should help to ensure that you get the most out of your swing every time you play.

golf swing Troubleshooting

When it comes to aiming at a target a golfer can cause themselves to miss aim in a couple of ways. The first is because they place their body in such a position that it is this which is aimed at the target. What you should be doing in order to aim correctly at the target is to have your club sitting at right angles to the target which you align your body parallel left to it. It will take quite a bit of practice on your part in order to get you to align your body and club correctly when you actually play a game of golf on a course. The best place to practice this position is at the driving range where you can pick a target that you wish to aim at. Then you get another one of your clubs a few feet in front of you in line with the target. Then take another club and place this parallel to the first but in line with your toes so that it shows how your body is aligned. Then you just start to need hitting a few balls and after a while you will find that you are easily able to train both your body and eyes to accept the way in which you are aligning your body now.

If you are looking to get more distance and less loft out of your shot you need to spend time evaluating how you actually move through the swing to the stage where you hit the golf ball. If you find that your swing is quite steep it may be advisable to come lower the loft and if you are someone who finds that they have a much shallower steep swing then it may be worth your while actually raising your loft higher. By raising your loft you will be able to provide maximum low spin but it will launch the ball much higher when it is in flight. It is best that your launch angle should sit somewhere between 13 and 14 degrees at all time.

When it comes to using different golf swing troubleshooting tips it is important that you always relate the position of the ball to your upper body. A lot of golfers today will use their feet as a way of judging a balls position and this will in most cases actually give the illusion that it is in the correct position when it isn't.

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Six Branches of Yoga

Yoga is an ancient tradition from the Eastern world, and these oldest practitioners tended to look at yoga as a tree with six branches. What all six have in common are the asanas (the physical positions and movements), pranayama (the structured breathing or breath control), meditation and a strong moral code.

1. hatha Yoga

In Indian, "ha" means sun and "tha" means moon. hatha yoga refers to these twin energy channels in the body. Its goal is to prepare the body for the more pure state of meditation to come in the 2nd branch. Hatha yoga was brought to us by an Indian yogi attempting to purify the body to make it fit for higher meditation. western yoga is almost completely the Hatha yoga branch, and Westerners find mental and physical comfort in the first branch alone.

2. Raja Yoga

Raja and Hatha Yoga are highly interrelated. Raja means "royal" in Indian, and in the royal tradition, this branch of yoga has eight included branches as follows:

- niyama - self discipline - asana - positions - pranayama - breath control - pratyahara - sensory deprivation - dharana - meditation - samadhi - ecstasy

Raja yoga is often practiced by religious leaders and monastery dwellers. However, anyone can find benefits in the practice of raja yoga.

3. Karma Yoga

The basic teaching of karma yoga is that what we do and how we behave today will influence our happiness and fulfilment in the future, or a future lifetime. Understanding this cosmic principle helps us to create our current environment with love and positivity in order to forestall negativity in our future. Practitioners of karma yoga lead a life of selfless devotion and service to those less fortunate.

4. Bhakti Yoga

Bhakti is a Sanskrit term meaning love of God and mankind. Practice of bhakti involves controlling and channeling emotions and having tolerance for all who come into our lives.

5. Jnana Yoga

Jnana yoga is the branch of the intellect. Practitioners pursue scholarly paths, usually those of yoga masters or other spiritual traditions. In our western religious culture, the Jnana yoga practitioner may be likened to the Jesuit priest, the Kabala scholars or Benedictine monks.

6. tantra Yoga

tantra yoga prioritizes ritual as the best way to experience the divine. The Sanskrit word tantra translates to weave or loom. Rituals in everyday life lead to a recognition of the divine in everyday life which leads, in turn, to a reverent attitude in everyday actions.

tantra yoga is the most misunderstood of the six branches. The ancient book, "The Kama sutra" is a well-known example of this misunderstanding of the real goal of tantra yoga. It is a book of sexual positions and techniques, and in Westernized yoga tradition, tantra yoga has become associated almost exclusively with these published sexual practices. worldwide, however, most schools teaching this branch of yoga recommend celibacy.

When finally understood by Westerners, tantra's ritualizations of everyday events appeal to them. Western civilizations tend to make rituals of everyday events anyway - births, deaths, weddings, going to church, forming clubs, and all the many various ceremonies and celebrations commonly held are all tightly related to tantra yoga rituals.

One of the best things about the six branches of yoga is that you are not limited to just one, or to a series. You can pick and choose what you want to practice when. Follow your own path using yoga as your toolbox.

Michael russell Your Independent guide to Yoga

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