Your body can do incredible things – as a dancer, you’ll know this more than anyone. But being a dancer can bring out some insecurities and preparing for a performance can exacerbate that. You might feel uncomfortable with everybody’s eyes on you – even if they are concentrating on your talent, not what you look like.
There are ways to combat this insecurity. Here’s a few ideas for building up your body confidence:
Focus on Your Love for Dance
When you’re dancing, try to focus your mind on how it feels. Start with your breathing – think about how it feels to breathe in and out. How do you feel when you’re dancing? From your head to the tips of your toes, focus on the fluidity of your movement and how dancing makes you feel. This kind of focus takes practice, but it helps to avoid negative thoughts, and helps you to truly live in the moment.
Find Your Role Models
No matter your body type, you might find it a challenge to find people who look like you. Try to find dancers who have a similar body type. Look at how they move and consider how talented they are: look at how beautiful their body looks as they dance. Having role models that look like you can help you to feel confident in your own abilities.
Remember to Be Grateful
This is really hard to do in practice sometimes but remember to be grateful for the physical capabilities of your body. Even if you can’t quite land a Grand Jete just yet, you can stretch, jump, run, bend, spin – and it’s easy to forget to be grateful. Some dancers only realise this if they have to have a break due to an injury – your body can do amazing things.
>h2>Make a List of What You Like About Yourself
Focus on the positives. What do you like about your body? It doesn’t matter how small – your eyes, your smile, the freckles on your nose, your cheekbones – make a list of the things you do love about your body. Focus, too, on what you’re good at. Perhaps you don’t have the exact body type that you like, but you have strong legs that are able to carry you through long practice sessions. Focusing on this will help you to move your mindset away from the negative thoughts you may have about your body.
You could even try telling your reflection what you like about yourself. Although it sounds cheesy, it’s an affirmative, positive thing to do for yourself if you’re feeling low.
Don’t Focus on Negative Comments
It’s difficult to deal with criticism at the best of times, but it’s especially hard when it concerns your body. If someone criticises you, consider what you can take from it (perhaps there might be some useful advice in there that could help you improve), and then forget the rest. It’s really easy to focus on negative comments instead of positive ones but try to put them into perspective.
We hope this has helped you to feel good about your body and the incredible things it can do.