Throughout my life, I’ve been described by others as a “go-getter”, someone who “gets things done”. While I appreciate both the positive feedback and while I am grateful in my ability to get shit done, one other area I’d like to devote more time and attention to is the act of reviewing — reflecting. Sometimes I feel like life is rapidly passing by, and I have thoughts that I’m in a perpetual state of doing, constantly on the move (according to my birth chart, difficulties of sitting still can be attributed to my Gemini sprinkled everywhere).

But to repeat: I am appreciative of my capabilities that have gifted to me. Yet, sometimes I wonder if some of the challenges in life (e.g. disorganization) that I face in life can be better understood (and subsequently solved) simply by taking a step back, changing my perspective, and asking myself questions, turning inwards, instead of turning outwards.

Lately, the motivation to spend more time reflecting can be partially attributed to me watching a (recorded) video (available only to Waves of Focus members) with David Sparks, a “productivity” expert. In that video, he talks about the importance of reflecting in terms of building a sustainable productivity system

“I’m getting emails from people saying ‘I just can’t figure out why it’s not working’ … The difference — 99% of the time — is people who DO reviews versus people who DON’T make time for them.”

Dance Private Thoughts and Reflections

Because I live about 60-90 minutes away from the dance studio where the lesson was scheduled to take place, I had asked Mavinga if we could arrange for a 90 minute lesson instead of the typical 60 minutes, making the commute more worth it (to me). In retrospect, proactively scheduling a longer lesson was the right call especially so since the warm up (described below) ran for about 30-40 minutes. Had we not preemptively increased the 1:1 time, we would’ve only been left with less than 20 minutes on the actual dance portion.

“Warm up” and training to point of exhaustion

• Brutal because high intensity training is not something I’ve been focusing on recently
  • Historically, cardio and high intensity was my forte, my strength. However, apart from dance classes and at home technique practice, my attention (in terms of physical training) has been devoted to stretching and flexibility
  • In retrospect, the high intensity training has value for several reasons, among which is that I’d like to be able to sustain and train longer when practicing on my own. Often, limitation is on physical endurance and as such, cuts my practices short

Biggest Takeaway

• Someone there to motivate and push made a difference – during the
  “warm up” (love how she calls it this, because it really is more of like a high intensity interval training workout), there was more than one moment where I was gasping for air and ready to throw in the towel but she shouted “aller aller aller” (go go go) and that helped concentrate my mind
• The HIIT workout (above) was no doubt physical training, but also mental – in addition to her words of encouragement, she would say “come on, it’s in the mind. Let’s go let’s go”
• Hip hop vs House bounce – she was able to both demonstrate and point out the differences in the look and feel of a hip hop vs house bounce. Because I have practically zero experience with hip hop dance, I found this new groove challenging
• Compass exercise – we performed the bounce in multiple directions, performing the bounce in a variety ways; center of gravity still, center of gravity forward.
• In person vs remote training differs
  • The energy in the room can be felt
  • More motivating – difference between someone in the room saying “let’s go let’s go”
  • Ability to see small details – goes both ways, while witnessing her in person and her ability to see what I was doing
• “Be more precise” and small passing comments can have the most impact and lasting impact – during the compass exercise (above), after one of my rounds, she said “Be more precise” with the direction I was facing. She wants to be able to see the difference and the INTENTION.

After the training

• When I got home, I continued practicing the bounce in front of the mirror
  • I experimented with where I distributed weight
  • The step bounce feels (and looks) different when transferring weight to ball of foot vs distributing to entire foot
  • I feel the burn more in my thighs (a good thing I think) when transferring weight to the ball of foot, versus being flat foot
  • I can leverage my athleticism when deliberately transferring on ball of foot
  • That is, I can move with more speed
  • In retrospect, may have over-indexed with dancing with more “weight” this past year and recognize there are moments (like the bounce) where I might want to transfer weight to ball of foot
  • Bend BOTH legs during the step bounce, especially the back leg
  • Previously was only bending the front leg but when I closely watched Samantha Mavinga, I noticed that the heel of back foot lifted ever so slightly, indicating to me that she was engaging the back leg, though she did not explicitly or verbally state this
  • Watched about four to six videos on YouTube (e.g. Training bounce variations for hip hop dance, Mastering Hip Hop Groove), trying to analyze the step bounce