Atéa’s Belly Dance Blog

Bellydance is an exceptionally good workout for your entire body and is especially beneficial for your core. However, if you wish to intensify the exercise benefits for your legs, belly dance moves that utilize level changes and ‘floor work’ need to be added to your routines.

When you do belly dance moves that bend your knees and lower your center of gravity, your leg muscles get increased activity. To further intensify this effect you can do floor work, which is dancing while kneeling, sitting, or reclining on the floor. The deeper your level change and the closer to the floor you get, the more strenuous the leg exercise becomes (and the more difficult it is). Of course, as with all our belly dance moves, it’s always important to pay close attention to your body and not push yourself to the point of injury.

Many belly dance moves can be done either with the knees straight or with the knees bent. Bending your knees up and down as you do hip moves, torso isolations, and arm or upper body techniques, will add variety to your bellydance as well as target your leg muscles. Bending the knees to the point where one knee or both knees touch the ground brings you into the realm of floor work (best done on a carpet). While kneeling with both knees touching the ground you’ll notice the intensified effect in the upper legs and glutes as you do hip twists, shimmies, circles, etc., especially if you raise and lower your hips as you do so. Doing torso undulations in this position also deeply works this area as well as effectively working your core.

There are many other floor work techniques in the kneeling, sitting, or reclining positions that you can do to thoroughly sculpt your legs and glutes. So if you wish to focus on more than just your core and upper body, get down on your knees and bellydance.

While talking with a musician friend of mine recently, he told me about a little ‘trick’ he uses to get himself to practice his guitar more often. Like most of us, he has a very busy schedule and often feels too distracted to think about practicing. To overcome this, he’ll leave his guitar in a very conspicuous place in his bedroom so that he sees it often and can easily pick it up to play it. This trick works well for him and he finds that he does practice more regularly because his guitar is not ‘out of sight and out of mind’.

We bellydancers can do the same trick using the tools of our trade. For example, belly dance hip scarves are beautiful with their colorful fabric and shiny coins. Draping them nicely in a noticeable area of our dancing space will catch our eye every time we enter the room. This will make it more likely that we’ll take a few moments to put our hip scarf on and dance a bit (and every little bit helps for exercise and stress reduction!).

We can also display our veils and finger cymbals where we can easily access them. They add a wonderful and exotic touch of décor to our living space and they help remind us that we are beautiful bellydancers. When our belly dance accessories are not ‘out of sight and out of mind’ they seem to call to us and to say, “Put me on – let’s belly dance!” And because they’re so much fun and so beautiful, we usually do.

Almost every week I hear of some new medical or scientific research confirming the importance of incorporating exercise into our lives. There seems to be no disputing the fact that exercising on a regular basis is absolutely necessary if you wish to be healthy, happy, and youthful.

Perhaps the hardest part of putting together a regular exercise regimen is finding a workout that’s effective (for me, it’s bellydancing), something that’s enjoyable (bellydancing again!), and finding the time to do it. Many Americans have less leisure time than ever, and it’s really challenging to fit exercising into a life that’s already too hectic. I talked about this a bit in my blog ‘3 Minute Belly Dance Workout’, but sometimes we can’t seem to fit even 3 minutes into our schedule. This is where multi-tasking comes in handy, and boy, some of my fellow bellydancers and students have come up with some very creative ways to multi-task with belly dance exercise. Here’re some of the ways they’ve managed to work out a bit without taking any extra time out of their day.

Driving: Many people spend a great deal of time sitting behind the steering wheel of their car. Some bellydancers use this time to practice small isolated movements like ribcage slides, lifts & drops, ribcage circles, belly rolls, and even stomach flutters. The idea is to work the muscles deep, but in small moves. This way you don’t affect your driving negatively, yet you still can exercise the core of your body in a full range of motion.

Sitting at a desk: As with driving, you can exercise your core with isolated ribcage and belly techniques as you sit. You can also do head slides & rolls and shoulder rotations.

Watching TV: Sometimes you just feel like you have to turn off your brain, collapse on your sofa, and turn on the TV. Yet this doesn’t have to be non-productive time. While you’re watching the tube you can sit up and do all of the belly dance moves I already mentioned. You can also do arm techniques such as arm waves (snake arms), hand waves, wrist rotations, and finger ripples.

Cooking: While you’re standing at the stove or microwave waiting for the water to boil or food to heat up, you can practice any standing belly dance technique such as hip moves, shimmies, and level changes. Why just stand there doing nothing?

Walking from room to room: If you’re home alone (or if you have family members/roommates who won’t laugh at you!), practice your traveling steps like the basic walk or walking shimmy. If you’re going to go from the living room to the kitchen, get a little exercise while you’re at it.

Standing in the checkout lane: This one is popular in the colder climates. If you’re standing in the checkout lane at the store and you’re covered in sweaters and a heavy coat, you can practice your belly rolls. If you do the belly roll correctly, no one will even notice you’re moving (I’m originally from Wisconsin and it’s true, we northern girls do it in our fur parkas!).

Showering & bathing: It’s fun to do torso undulations in the shower. Place your back under the showerhead and undulate your torso vertebrae by vertebrae. The water will massage your spine sequentially from top to bottom and it feels great! While bathing and reclining in the tub, you can practice belly rolls and stomach flutters. Many students have told me they’ve mastered the flutter this way, probably because the warm water made them so relaxed and comfortable.

It’s fun to think up new ways on how you can practice your belly dance moves while you’re doing other activities. By multi-tasking, not only do you ‘sneak’ in a little exercise, but you’re also training your body to do belly dance moves better. That’s because the more you repeat a movement, the more it becomes an automatic part of your muscle memory. A little practice ‘here and there’ really adds up. You can have a healthier body and become a more accomplished bellydancer without taking any extra time out of your busy life.

There’re no hard, fast rules about what type of footwear must be worn for bellydancing. However, the fact that bellydancing is thousands of years old tells us that originally dancers did not wear high heels. The oldest depictions of bellydancers show dancers in bare feet or sandals and in fact, many modern day bellydancers (myself included) prefer to bellydance this way. Dancing with bare feet is natural and comfortable and is the healthiest for your body. When it’s not practical to bellydance bare footed, sandals or low-heeled shoes are the next best things.

Some times belly dance students are surprised and somewhat confused when they see a bellydancer performing in sky-high heels, or when they see photos of models in belly dancing costumes wearing tall stilettos. They can tell that it’s not a comfortable way to dance and isn’t based on tradition. While stilettos may look ‘sexy’, they can take a tremendous toll on your body. Here are some of the conditions that wearing high heels can cause: foot deformities (hammertoes, corns, calluses, “pump bump”), back problems, knee osteoarthritis (a painful, degenerative joint disease), ankle sprains and breaks, pain in the ball of the foot (metatarsalgia), and nerves tumors between the toes (neuromas). How sexy is that?!

I tend to look at the excessive wearing of very high heels as a modern version of Chinese foot binding. Because of the discomfort, pain and damage stilettos can do to the body, the only reason most women wear them is that they’ve been conditioned to see high heels as ‘sexy’. There’s nothing wrong with being sexy, but there’s a time and place for everything. So maybe for the occasional party, nightclub, or bedroom love fest, stilettos can be fun. At least in the bedroom, if they have the desired effect they won’t stay on your feet very long!

For bellydancing, your costume choices are yours to make. But if you recognize that a healthy body is what’s truly sexy, then you may want to ditch the stilettos. I imagine that someday in a more enlightened future, people will look at the fashions of today and wonder why women chose to totter around on the balls of their feet with sticks under their heels. I don’t want to be one of the women they shake their heads in bewilderment at. Especially when I’m bellydancing, I like to have my feet flat on the ground.