The Power of Your Mind

When we first start mentioning mind control in mastering your body, some people think that I am going to make them hum “Ohhmmmmm…” and stand on their head or tie themselves into knots!

Rest assured that you do not need to be a yoga guru or a Shaolin monk to harness the extraordinary power of your mind! While ancient eastern philosophies have known the power of mastering the mind for thousands of years, there are actually some really easy ways of starting to work in this way.

In The Front Splits Fast Flexibility Program we focus on first reassuring your mind by teaching you a little about how your muscles really work. Once you discover that the flexibility that you feel actually has very little to do with the length of your muscles, half of the job is done.

When we go into a stretch, especially if it is further that we have been before, our mind often tries to protect us by sending a message to contract the muscle a little. If we try and push through this, we start activating the ‘Stretch Reflex’ and our leg will start to shake as we pull it further and it contracts back. Learning how to take a muscle to the point of tension and then use your mind to let it go is a priceless gift to any dancer, gymnast, or indeed and person at all!

Learn how to master the use of your mind by getting your copy of Front Splits Fast! Today!

2 Responses to “The Power of Your Mind”

  1. Elizabeth Says:
    January 21st, 2011 at 11:34 pm

    Dear Lisa
    It’s my sixth year attending a Russian Ballet School in Poland. This year i have noticed a small push in my flexibility. My leg goes slightly above 90 degress but i realise that when i developee my leg i seem to block my hips, tense my shoulders ect. My teacher lifted my leg front, side and back with ease to my ear. My legs are quite strong as i did gymnastics when i was younger. What would you recommend?

  2. lisahowell Says:
    February 1st, 2011 at 6:53 am

    Hi Elizabeth

    Thanks so much for your question, and this is a very common one. If you have the flexibility to take your leg all the way up to your ear with someone holding it, but cant do it yourself, it simply means that you do not have the strength to hold it from the right places. If you are feeling blocking in your hip, and the leg is restricted at just over 90 degrees, then I assume that you are trying to lift with the muscles down the front of the thigh (rectus femoris) rather than the deeper muscles in your hip. Do you get cramping or muscle tension in your thigh with developpe devant?

    Lifting and controlling the leg in extensions is totally dependant on your deep core strength, and the control of deep muscles like your Psoas Major, and your deep external rotators. This is a very complicated topic, and hard to explain here, but there is an article explaining a little more here:

    http://theballetblog.com/articles/performance/126-how-to-get-your-legs-higher-with-a-developpe.html

    We do have a program that is designed to teach all about the hips that we ran as a 10 week course here in Sydney. Its called Training Turnout and we are re-developing this into a full program We do have the course manuals available for sale, and you can get these either by contacting us at the clinic or through the new shopping cart on The Ballet Blog…

    http://onlinestore.theballetblog.com/products/online-store.html

    This was purely designed to accompany the 10 week course, but it is a good start if you want to learn more about your hips!

    xx Lisa

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