Ballet Beautiful: Transform Your Body and Gain the Strength, Grace and Focus of a Ballet Dancer (3 page)
Authors: Mary Helen Bowers
The chapters in
Part III
give you the tools to put the mindset, the exercises, and the eating plan into motion and transform your lifestyle so that you strengthen and tone your body, lose weight, and stay in shape in a completely natural and effortless way. I will also give you a seven-day meal plan that makes it easy to shift to eating Ballet Beautifully, as well as my favorite delicious and easy-to-prepare recipes to enjoy along the way!
The secret to any successful approach to healthy eating and weight loss is satisfaction. I am adamant about the idea that only by finding satisfaction in how you eat can you achieve and maintain weight loss in a natural, healthy way. Here you will focus not on what you
cannot
eat, but rather on what you
can
eat. And you may be surprised by just
how much that is! You won’t be hungry or deprived because I’m not going to ask you to juice, fast, or practice drastic, low-calorie consumption. The Ballet Beautiful diet is a balanced diet, and it works!
I’ve included many easy-to-remember tips on how to shop and how to put together quick-and-easy meals using my “flash cooking” techniques and some delicious (but very simple!) recipes that make it easy and enjoyable to stick with this program. Rather than focusing on the negatives—using our energy to try to memorize or fantasize about long lists of forbidden foods—we’ll focus on the positive. Together we will open doors to incredible possibilities and achieve a healthy new way of living.
I’ve designed this program for real people living busy, demanding lives. I take into account the pressures and difficulties of a modern life because I am living one too. Ballet Beautiful provides a flexible, portable, and attainable program for health, wellness, and fitness, even on days when you are short on time. With Ballet Beautiful, true transformation is possible, and that is something that I am very excited to share with you!
BUILDING YOUR BALLET BEAUTIFUL MINDSET
Health, fitness, and an ideal figure are attainable!
The Genesis of Ballet Beautiful
A
s a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to become a ballerina. I danced everywhere I went, read every book on ballet I could find, and spent hours imagining what dancing as a ballerina in New York City might be like. My love for ballet has been a part of my life for just about as long as I can remember, and that remains true today. At the heart of the Ballet Beautiful program is the story of how my own experiences as a professional ballerina with the New York City Ballet led me to understand how to truly take care of myself—both my body and my mind—in how I live every day.
I began developing the fundamentals of the Ballet Beautiful method while recovering from an injury to my left foot early in my professional dance career. Because ballet is so physically demanding, I was used to dealing with pain in my body on a daily basis. I never really stopped to think about it. I adored dancing, and my focus was always on my performance; pain in my body was a minor and accepted irritation that I always found ways to work around. Blisters, strained muscles, and the terrible sensation of feeling the
floor with your toes in a dying pair of pointe shoes are all de rigueur for a professional ballerina—not to mention incredible stress from the constant fear that an injury will prevent you from taking the stage that night. In the world of ballet, managing these physical demands while remaining strong and healthy onstage is just part of the job.
During an early season with the New York City Ballet that was particularly busy and rewarding for me, I was dancing three ballets a night, six days a week, on top of ballet class every morning and a full day of rehearsals. These were long, hard, but also very happy days. I was dancing all of my favorite Balanchine ballets, including
Donizetti Variations, Mozartiana, Serenade,
and stark, neoclassical leotard ballets that have no story lines, fluffy tutus, or sets and whose focus is on the dancing and music only, like
Episodes, The Four Temperaments,
and
Le Tombeau de Couperin.
Performing this repertoire was artistic heaven. Almost nightly I danced a selection of the greatest ballets ever created, onstage at Lincoln Center. Life was almost perfect for me. As an artist, my soul was full! But over the course of the season, the grueling schedule began to take its toll on my body.
I was in constant pain. I wrapped my foot during rehearsals and for the shows, but no amount of tending helped me heal—I was often barely able to walk in the hours before the curtain went up or the next morning when I awoke.
As my injury progressed, it took more and more effort to rehearse and perform through the pain. I had to will myself to ignore the strong signals my body was sending me to take time off; sheer will and adrenaline carried me through every performance. In this way ballet can be like an addictive drug—I found it very hard to take time off even when I knew that continuing to dance was hurting me. The pain didn’t take away my urge to dance and perform. If anything, it magnified that desire and made it stronger as I considered what my life would be like without ballet.
Night after night the curtain fell, and I limped offstage and upstairs to the dressing room to cut off the ribbons on my pointe shoes and dunk my feet in ice. Finally, after weeks of pushing myself beyond my limits, I had to admit that my injury had become a serious problem. No dancer wants to leave the stage, however, and surrender her roles to another. Ballet is a very competitive world—there is always someone waiting in the wings to step in. I wasn’t happy about the idea that my physical weakness might alter or threaten my career and that other girls might get the chance to dance my hard-won parts.
Trying not to panic, I gave in to the reality of my injury when I realized that no amount of ice, ibuprofen, or warming up before a show would allow me to perform. I
had been living on my own in New York City since I was 15 years old, and I worried about how to get the right care for my foot and how to manage the stress of being replaced by another dancer while I was recovering. After I went to the doctor and was fitted for a giant boot, I stopped performing, taking class, and rehearsing every day. I began to focus on healing instead.
After a significant rest period, I was ready to get back in shape. I joined a health club in New York and started experimenting with exercise and training my body outside of a dance studio for the first time. I was worried about having taken off so much time, and it was hard to imagine being in good enough condition to perform again. I began trying different fitness classes and machines, always looking for a way to make the exercises work on my body as a dancer. I couldn’t risk overdeveloping my muscles or dramatically changing my shape. In a kickboxing class, I did jumping jacks to a grand plié in second position, never lifted weights heavier than three or five pounds, kept perfect ballet posture and included tons of stretching between exercises and sets. As I began to notice that working outside of a ballet studio made a difference in my performance ballet class, I discovered the incredible benefits of cross-training as my body got stronger. Old aches and pains in my knees and tendons went away, and soon I was performing at a higher level. Inspired, I began experimenting in my free time with creating new targeted exercises to build endurance and strength and to develop the muscles I needed for peak performance as a ballet dancer. It was a pivotal discovery, and the genesis for what became the Ballet Beautiful method.
Initially, I created core exercises in the Ballet Beautiful method as a way to support my healing, but as my foot recovered I soon realized that the workout I had devised for myself enabled me to return to the stage a completely different dancer: I was stronger, leaner, and more in touch with my body than ever before. Whereas before I danced with confidence in my technique, I now danced with a new confidence in my body, a confidence that felt almost effortless. I am grateful for the longevity that this workout gave me in a physically punishing career that can be frightfully short.
Several years later, after ten years of dancing with the New York City Ballet, I made the really hard decision to retire from the company to pursue my degree at Columbia University and other interests outside of dance. This decision was difficult because of what ballet means to me. I have a very deep love for ballet that is hard to explain. I can only tell you that I feel as if ballet is what I was born to do and that every step in my life
up to that point had propelled me toward dancing with the New York City Ballet. We were fated to be together! It was painful to leave the stage that I loved so much and worked so hard to dance on every night. But I had also begun to listen to another part of myself that wanted more balance, new forms of expression, and intellectual challenges.
I was also growing tired of the constant sacrifice that ballet requires. My childhood was very normal and happy—my mom is a retired children’s librarian, and my father is a CPA. I went to public school in Charlotte, North Carolina, before moving to New York to attend the School of American Ballet (the official school of the New York City Ballet) at age fifteen. Even though I have always had this wild and almost inexplicable love for ballet, I have also always known that somehow there would be more for me than dance. I certainly didn’t know what that meant when I retired from the company, or how ballet would remain an important part of my life down the road. Even as part of me mourned the loss of my dancing career and my beloved stage, another part delighted in the adventure ahead. I was finally ready to experience new challenges, set new goals, and discover a world and identity for myself beyond the stage.
I thought that making such a radical change might leave me feeling empty or depressed. The opposite happened: I was thrilled! After so many years of living and breathing ballet, I loved having freedom in my daily schedule and a blank slate for my future just waiting to be written. It was scary, for sure, but liberating too. And one of my first challenges was learning how to relax and enjoy myself as I focused on my studies and began building a new life.
When I started at Columbia University, I was ready for a break. I took a year off from dancing and working out to rest my body and my mind. I let this happen naturally—I didn’t want to work out and I did not push myself to. It came as no surprise when, without the daily workouts, my body softened and I got out of shape. I had to buy new clothes and jeans to fit my new curvy form. When I felt ready to start moving again, I did not want to go to the gym or back to ballet class. I didn’t freak out—I just went with those feelings and decided to back off and work out at home.
Slowly, I returned to the workout method that I had devised for my old injury, making adjustments as I went. Because my figure had changed, I was uncomfortable around other dancers. I enjoyed the privacy and solitude of working out at home. In my new life as a full-time student, not only did I drop the extra pounds, I got into the best shape of my life. As I developed new body awareness, I made changes in a slow and steady
way, experimenting with what my body needed, noticing how it responded to certain exercises, foods, and lifestyle choices. With no pressure to don a leotard and tights, I was able to take my time and think through my workout systematically. Because I was doing it just for me, I felt happy and excited when I would see a change. The workout became once again a program that was all about making my body fitter, stronger, and more efficient, not about having to look a certain way. I didn’t have to feel bad about gaining weight or wasting money on the gym.
This was a very creative time. Without any pressure or expectations, I refined the movements and added new exercises, tweaked my diet, and made adjustments as I went along. But what was truly remarkable was how good I felt—as if I had discovered a hidden secret. I had figured out how to take the strength, grace, and artistry of ballet—the elements of dance that I cherish and that I missed the most in my daily life—and apply them to my life outside of Lincoln Center. The results were amazing. I found myself more focused and confident, more energetic and productive. I began looking forward to my at-home workouts as a way to take some time just for me rather than as a punishment for having overeaten or as a boring, tedious chore. I also realized over time that my body was in better shape than it had ever been when I was dancing full-time—all without stepping inside a ballet studio. As I became leaner, more toned, and more confident, my friends and family wanted to know why!
Innovation and adaptability have always been an important part of Ballet Beautiful, at its inception and to this day. I began to share the program I’d developed with friends and fellow students at Columbia, and word of mouth took it from there. Women looking for a different approach to fitness, including actors and performers, high-profile working women, models, and celebrities began seeking me out. I officially launched Ballet Beautiful after graduating from Columbia. When I was later presented with the opportunity to travel to prepare Natalie Portman for
Black Swan,
my business in New York was really taking off. I would be away from my New York—based clientele for a significant period of time and needed to be able to stay connected to my clients no matter where I had to travel, so I developed a way to work with my students in an innovative online classroom, transporting Ballet Beautiful to wherever my students were—and wherever I was. I had to reexamine my location-based business model and think hard about scale in order to keep my business alive and growing. I leapt with delight into the rather unexpected role of technology entrepreneur as I began creating my own software for interactive, online
training via my website,
www.balletbeautiful.com
.
I love the way that my online classes also reflect the classic Ballet Beautiful ideals—they are portable, flexible, and cutting-edge. This is the future of fitness, and I’m proud to play a role in developing it!