What does it mean to ‘engage’ my belly and back muscles? 🤔Should I do belly dance movements with or without tension in my belly? 🤔

These are surprisingly frequent questions among anyone who starts belly dancing. The concept of engaging your core muscles is not familiar or clear to many people, so let’s figure it out.👇👇👇

First of all, there is a huge difference between tension and engagement of your muscles. ‼️‼️For sure, there should NOT be any tension, because it always (and I mean, always) creates locks in your body.⠀

Now, by engaging muscles, teachers can mean a few different things. ⠀

1️⃣ On certain movements, like the hip circle or maya, you actually can increase the range of motion by activating your belly muscles and working them in the same direction as the main movement. For instance: pushing your belly muscles in and out on the circles, or bringing your hip up and down not only with the help of your knee, but by also engaging (activating) your side belly muscles and pulling your hip up.

2️⃣ However, when the teacher talks about engaging your belly or core muscles, it's mostly about keeping a nice posture. You must make sure that you are not 'sitting' on your hips while belly dancing. ☝️Your upper body should be supported by your core muscles to create "space" in your hips area in order to do any movements. Also, you should avoid swayback or a completely loose belly.

Muscles have to be engaged but relaxed. ☺️👉Imagine a super proud posture with open chest breathing with full lungs. There is no tension in such posture, but there is an engagement of all muscles: belly, back, open shoulders, upright head, etc. That's the feeling I'm talking about.⠀

So, if the phrase 'muscle engagement' doesn't give you any clear message, or confuse you, I would recommend to substitute it with 'muscle activation', or 'muscle awakening', but definitely not 'muscle tension'.❌

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🎶Song “Mashaal”

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