Similarities between Yoga and Oriental Dance
Author: Eva Piçarra
‘The easiest would be to present differences between Yoga and Oriental Dance. To say Yoga is static and dance is dynamic; Yoga refers to your interior and Dance to the exterior... but these would be reductive definitions. The reality is both practices are a great complement of one another but present more similarities than we could ever suspect.
When I searched for Oriental Dance, I did it with the intention of doing something I thought was completely different from Yoga. Effectively, the rhythm, the choreography, the attitude that we work in dance nothing has to do with Yoga but when we deepen the dance’s bases, we start to find similarities.
Yoga and Oriental Dance work all parts of the body, with an identical rigor, with an attention to the details that takes us on a self-discovery process, of the physical body, of the energetic body and, above everything, of our own personality.
The approach to the body, to the energy and to the emotions are primordial aspects in both practices.
Both of them work body conscience, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head. In Yoga, we do very well sharped stretching that make us feel that expansion in our own skin; to take conscience of the existence of muscles that we didn’t suspect existed; to learn to be present in the moment; to individualize each part of the body, the hip, the wrists, the tip of the toes of the feet, the hands… And for dancers: who doesn’t recognize these actions in Oriental Dance?
In both practices, we encounter a big energetic work, the “rootening”, the hip movement, the focus on the abdominal and chest area, parts of our body extremely important due to the relation they have with some of the main energetic centers that are also very deepened in Yoga. We also find a constant challenge to auto-overcoming ourselves and, deep down, to take care of us, learning to love all our facets, our autenticity.
Yoga teaches us to listen to the bosy, to understand how we can challenge ourselves and even overcome without surpassing our limits, in a gradual evolution, in a constant self-discovery that allows us to expand our being; dance aldo takes us to that encounter, but in a more external approach where we learn to express what comes from inside, with a bolder attitude, exposing a part of us sometimes we repress - what is a great complement, because life is made of balance.
Common sentences in both practices:
Activate the toes of the feet;
Stretches the lateral part of the upper body;
Pelvic fit’
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