One of the most challenging aspects of our dance journey is to make sure we practise on our own. Here are a couple of tricks that I use to make sure I maximise the effect of my training time:

Have your practice plan in advance. How often you had a situation when you finally carved time to practice, got into your training outfit, and then spent at least half an hour trying to decide what actually to focus on? Or even worse, started jumping from one task to another without giving proper attention to any of them... Decide on your practice goals prior to the session. Are you gonna work a new choreo? Polish existing routines? Drill technique? A simple example can be: first 15 mins I work on loosing up my shimmy, then 30 mins to rehearse for an upcoming show, and then last 15 mins for a nice backbend stretch. Or whatever your goals are. Choose between 1 to maximum 3 tasks for each session depending on how much time you have available, but do it in advance. This way you don't waste neither time nor your decision-making energy, but invest them directly into improving your dance.

2. Put your phone away and on silence mode. Seriously. A phone is a huge distraction for all our activities. If you keep checking it during the training, it not only influences the physical process, since your muscles will have to switch from relaxed to engaged all the time, but also, your mind will wander all the time. Did you know that it takes between 5 to 15 mins to focus your attention back after any distraction? So what happens if you check your phone every 15 mins or so? Put it away. The world will not die if you spend an hour alone with your dance.

3. Video-record yourself. This is the best way of analyzing your own mistakes. I believe you most likely heard it many times already. But how to use it in practice, especially without involving a phone that, as I said, can be a huge distraction? lol. Even despite there are other devices to record your practice, such as iPad or laptop, phone is still my favourite. :) There are two thing I often do to eliminate harmful effects of touching my phone during my practice time. First is to record only at the end of my session, or before I switch to another "goal", like just before I do my stretching. And second one is to watch the video only AFTER the practice is done. So I don't waste time, nor loose my focus during training. Also, after watching the video I can come up with a better plan for my next training sessions: focus more on hip drops, clean this part of choreo, etc.

4. Use online resources. We all have those days when even despite we have scheduled a proper time for practice, we feel absolutely lazy and not enthusiastic about dancing at the moment. Here, my first sincere advice: push through, you will feel much better by the end of your training. However, if I feel that I'm dragging myself through the session, and it feels more like a waste of time rather than a productive workout, I often turn on some online video class. This way I delegate the decision-making task to someone else, and you'll be surprised how much easier it is to follow someone else's instructions rather than be a student and your own teacher at the same time. Luckily today there are plenty of online belly dance workshops to choose from, and they can be a great tool to make sure that you don't skip planned training, and continue developing your skills even during those down times. :)

Let me know if you found this helpful, and feel free to message me back with your tips on how you improve your own training without a teacher's guidance!

Also, I though you may be interested in checking my interview with Jasirah in case you missed that episode on the Belly Dance Life podcast. She gave a lot of useful and inspiring information about her best training habits: Ep 19. Jasirah: How to Practice on Your Own. Tips & Tricks

Keep shimmying, and thank you for staying in touch!

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Author: Iana Komarnytska
Photographer: Pedro Bonatto

The Iana Dance Club is your go-to place to make your daily dance practice happen! Find more information HERE.