“We take better care of our smartphone than ourselves. We know when the battery is depleted and recharge it.” — Arianna Huffington

It’s getting to the silly season. For some of us, it’s already here and we’ve been treading neck-deep in commitments for weeks with no seeming end in sight until January. Perhaps those nagging telltale signs are starting to creep up on you like a cheap bra. Perhaps, like me, you’re desperately trying to power through, buoyed simultaneously by cheery optimism that you won’t crash and burn, while also vaguely aware that your shoulders are seizing up, your short-term memory’s shot, and you’re doing ‘stupid things faster with more energy’ and only because of caffeine.

Welcome to early burnout.

It happens to us all at some point and while this is hardly an exhaustive list of fixes, here’s 5 quick ideas how you can take better care of yourself when the going gets manic.

1. Take a nap

While taking a nap can feel like an indulgence you can ill afford, it’s a definite way of boosting your batteries to last that bit longer. And hey, famous busy people have done it. Churchill napped two hours every day while he was dealing with World War 2 (!) and brainy boy Einstein was apparently a huge sleeper, clocking in daily naps in addition to 10-hour sleeps at night. A Harvard University study found that 60 to 90-minute naps could “charge up the brain batteries as much as eight hours tucked up in bed”. So sleep tight.

2. Take a walk

Or a run. Or a swim. Or put some crazy music on and dance it out. No surprises here: movement shakes out the cobwebs in the head and heart and body. It also gives your mind a proper break, which brings us to our next related point…

3. Unplug

Get off the electronics for a chunk of your day. This is as much of a PSA for me as it is for you, because I really love my technology. But if you’re feeling the burn, it’s definitely time to press the soft reset button. Don’t check your emails. Leave the phone alone. Give your poor bombarded senses a rest.

4. Rework your plan

Doing the work of thinking in advance can save time and energy when you’re in the thick of the action. So if you haven’t already done so, try putting together a plan of how your priorities will fit into your day. Above all, be realistic and always put in fat.

But be warned: every time I do this, I realise quite quickly that I’ve overcommitted and it forces me to either rearrange priorities or do what can be the most difficult thing of all. (See next point.)

5. Something’s gotta give

If you’re burning out, you’re simply doing too much. In the words of Michael Gungor, “Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.” So know your limits and call for reinforcements. Remember that time, energy, and money are all finite resources and you can’t save on one without expending on the other. So you might have to order takeaway dinners for a bit. Or turn down a task. Or delegate a chunk of work to someone else. Or let the house go wild for a bit.

Drop something, give yourself the grace and space to do so, and heal. This way, you’ll live to sparkle for a long time more.

“Because of poor posture, practically 95 per cent of our population suffers from varying degrees of spinal curvature, not to mention more serious ailments.” — Joseph H. Pilates

It’s no secret that dancers have great posture — and it’s not just to exude elegance or confidence; good posture is crucial for overall balance and body control. And that’s because posture has to do with the proper alignment of our spine. A good posture sets your body up for less wear and tear as you get older, as muscles are engaged more efficiently and there’s less stress and wear-and-tear on the ligaments holding the joints of the spine together.

Conversely, slouching and poor posture has far-reaching consequences for our bodies, capable of causing back and neck pain, muscle fatigue, breathing limitations, arthritic joints, digestive problems and mood disturbances. It also affects first impressions whether you’re getting a job, starting a new relationship, or making new friends.

Poor posture isn’t always a result of a bad habit of slouching. As we get older, our muscles get less flexible which then decreases our range of motion. Muscle strength also affects balance in various ways, which is why core muscle training is so important for maintaining a ‘sturdy central link’ between our upper and lower body.

Thankfully, it’s possible to achieve better posture through balance and strength exercises. All of us — experienced dancers included — suffer from some form of muscular imbalance which then affects good alignment. It’s why dancers focus on stretching and strengthening the body correctly. And why dance and fitness classes help guide you away from unconscious mistakes you might make with the way you hold your body.

Here’s a few tips for improving your posture, whether you’re on or off the dance floor:

• Stand with your body weight forward, mostly on the balls of your feet.
• Distribute your body weight evenly between your feet.
• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
• Try not to lock your knees.
• Stand tall, with shoulders square and relaxed.
• Keep your head in line with your spine, eyes straight ahead.
• Hold your chin parallel to the floor.
• Keep your neck long and stretched upward.

Here’s to standing taller!

“There is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There is a trained memory and an untrained memory.” — Jim Kwik

With our gadgets and gizmos aplenty, we can tend to be less reliant on memorisation as a means for information retrieval. After all, why commit mobile numbers to memory when your smartphone will?

Yet memorisation — or memory learning — remains hugely beneficial to our brains. It trains our brains to remember, and improves neural plasticity and agility — especially in ageing brains. Repeating poetry and rhymes drum in a sense of rhythm that also trains our balance and teaches symmetry, while rote learning facts and figures frees up time and saves brainpower. A strong memory ultimately helps us learn; how else can we go from easy to complex if we’ve already forgotten the foundation blocks to a problem along the way?

Dance and dance fitness definitely demands memory work, and it is just as much of a workout for the brain as it is for the body. Whole studies are dedicated to working out how dancers imprint movement on their bodies from their minds, until at last that magical connection between the two is so powerful that dancers no longer have to think — they do. And it’s only when the body knows what to do that the mind is finally free to let the imagination take flight.

That’s where the magic really starts to happen.

“People who laugh actually live longer than those who don’t laugh. Few persons realise that health actually varies according to the amount of laughter.” — James Joseph Walsh

Ah, Jolly Father Christmas. I got to thinking about his iconic Ho Ho Ho laugh the other day (while groaning inwardly at the imminent workload that comes with the festive season,) and then got curious about the calorie burn rate of laughter. Ten minutes later down that rabbit hole, and I found out that 15 minutes of laughter a day burns 10-40 calories — depending, of course, on the quality of the joke — which is enough to lose up to 2kg a year. Jolly good cheer, indeed.

Laughing also brings blood pressure down and is even more successful at doing so than listening to music. It suppresses stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine, and reduces heart disease. Part of it must have to do with the physical act of laughing: a really good guffaw increases our heart rate, our respiratory rate, and induces us to take in more oxygen — all similar effects with exercising. It’s even credited with reducing artery inflammation and promoting the production of ‘good cholesterol’. Laughing, as it turns out, quite literally protects the heart.

There’s also the psychological benefits, of course. Social laughter engenders trust and builds friendships. It can even elevate our pain threshold. Of course, having a good sense of humour is all part of it, and building one includes learning how to take ourselves less seriously. It’s as much to do with building resilience and honing our coping mechanism to take on the hard knocks in life, and it’s no wonder that humour is also attributed to improved optimism and self-esteem.

‘Tis the season. It’s the home stretch now till the end of the year, DC Fitters! I raise my fortifying wine glass to you and wish you many moments of good humour and bellyaching laughter.

“We take better care of our smartphone than ourselves. We know when the battery is depleted and recharge it.” — Arianna Huffington

It’s getting to the silly season. For some of us, it’s already here and we’ve been treading neck-deep in commitments for weeks with no seeming end in sight until January. Perhaps those nagging telltale signs are starting to creep up on you like a cheap bra. Perhaps, like me, you’re desperately trying to power through, buoyed simultaneously by cheery optimism that you won’t crash and burn, while also vaguely aware that your shoulders are seizing up, your short-term memory’s shot, and you’re doing ‘stupid things faster with more energy’ and only because of caffeine.

Welcome to early burnout.

It happens to us all at some point and while this is hardly an exhaustive list of fixes, here’s 5 quick ideas how you can take better care of yourself when the going gets manic.

1. Take a nap

While taking a nap can feel like an indulgence you can ill afford, it’s a definite way of boosting your batteries to last that bit longer. And hey, famous busy people have done it. Churchill napped two hours every day while he was dealing with World War 2 (!) and brainy boy Einstein was apparently a huge sleeper, clocking in daily naps in addition to 10-hour sleeps at night. A Harvard University study found that 60 to 90-minute naps could “charge up the brain batteries as much as eight hours tucked up in bed”. So sleep tight.

2. Take a walk

Or a run. Or a swim. Or put some crazy music on and dance it out. No surprises here: movement shakes out the cobwebs in the head and heart and body. It also gives your mind a proper break, which brings us to our next related point…

3. Unplug

Get off the electronics for a chunk of your day. This is as much of a PSA for me as it is for you, because I really love my technology. But if you’re feeling the burn, it’s definitely time to press the soft reset button. Don’t check your emails. Leave the phone alone. Give your poor bombarded senses a rest.

4. Rework your plan

Doing the work of thinking in advance can save time and energy when you’re in the thick of the action. So if you haven’t already done so, try putting together a plan of how your priorities will fit into your day. Above all, be realistic and always put in fat.

But be warned: every time I do this, I realise quite quickly that I’ve overcommitted and it forces me to either rearrange priorities or do what can be the most difficult thing of all. (See next point.)

5. Something’s gotta give

If you’re burning out, you’re simply doing too much. In the words of Michael Gungor, “Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.” So know your limits and call for reinforcements. Remember that time, energy, and money are all finite resources and you can’t save on one without expending on the other. So you might have to order takeaway dinners for a bit. Or turn down a task. Or delegate a chunk of work to someone else. Or let the house go wild for a bit.

Drop something, give yourself the grace and space to do so, and heal. This way, you’ll live to sparkle for a long time more.

“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.” — Amelia Earhart

We just survived a very full weekend walking through over 700 students wearing over 1000 costumes at our full-dress rehearsal and photoshoot. It’s part and parcel of our preparation for the End of Year Show and it’s absolutely crucial: our dry run is where we test out if the running order in our heads works just as well on the ground. Through this, we find out if dancers have enough time between pieces for costume changes, if the flow of the show can be improved, if set pieces are ready.

Whether it’s an event, an IT development project, or dance and fitness, preparation really does matter. In project management, they say planning needs to take anything between 6-20% of the cost and time to be successful. And when it comes exercising, setting yourself up to succeed takes time and purposeful consideration.

The real workout starts way before the scheduled exercise class because the mind needs to be prepared as much as the body.  Be sure to schedule your exercise classes — make a meeting with yourself! Prepare what you need the night before, and remember to take a light snack and hydrate plenty about one to two hours before your workout. In other words, set the momentum within yourself so you’re ready and raring to go when the workout begins. Procrastination, that naughty minx, that take a hike then.