Ballet Beautiful: Transform Your Body and Gain the Strength, Grace and Focus of a Ballet Dancer (4 page)
Authors: Mary Helen Bowers
And the rest is history!
For me, Ballet Beautiful is about the process of overcoming obstacles and achieving dreams. Whether it is recovering from an injury, finding a healthier approach to food, or creating a way to share Ballet Beautiful with women all over the world and stay connected with my clients when I am on the road, I have learned that having a smart, systemized approach and mindset is everything. I’ve also learned that anything is truly possible within the principles of Ballet Beautiful! I feel incredibly fortunate to have first achieved my dream of becoming a ballerina in New York City at such a young age. Now I am excited to share my dream of taking all that I have discovered in Ballet Beautiful and sharing it with you. Through Ballet Beautiful, you too can attain the artistry and athleticism of a dancer and embrace your own inner beauty. You too can become Ballet Beautiful.
The Key to Health, Happiness, and Success
T
hough I was born with a natural gift for dance, my mindset has always been a work in progress. For this program, mindset is key: it is the way you approach your life. It is your inner voice that helps you shape your goals and imagine your dreams. It’s your attitude about yourself and your capabilities, a reflection of how you see the world around you. Mindset is also the part of you that kicks in when you have to overcome an obstacle or solve a problem, and ultimately it is your mindset that keeps you on course to succeed. Your mindset is a compass for living your life, a critical inner guide to achieving your full potential and reaching your wildest dreams.
As a dancer, your body is everything. Every exercise, stretch, step, and gesture is thought about, measured, and calculated to make you look your most beautiful, elegant, ethereal. But what about the way you feel? Your mindset can be hard to define: it is both emotional and intellectual, and it has a physical meaning as well.
Why is mindset important? Because it is the crucial piece connecting your body to your mind, allowing not only my Ballet Beautiful program but your life to work for you as a harmonious whole.
When I was younger, the connection between my body and my mind was completely natural; I think that is probably true for many of us. I ate when I was hungry, drank when I was thirsty, and danced because it made me happier than anything else in the world. I didn’t think about all the pieces because my life was working so well naturally! But as I got older and began absorbing some of the destructive behavior of the girls around me at the theater, I lost this natural connection to my body and the way I ate. As a ballerina, I felt a lot of pressure to be perfect, and sometimes that took its toll.
Even though I came to understand the importance of training my body outside of a dance studio, my diet was a mess. It took time for me to connect how I felt with some of my not-so-healthy behaviors. With a lot of patience, introspection, and willingness, I began to understand the impact that my mindset had on my body. When my body was off key, more often than not my mindset was somehow standing in the way, preventing me from performing at my best and treating my body with the love and care it deserved. As I tuned in to my mindset, I started to realize that my metabolism had slowed down because I wasn’t always eating enough, or that I didn’t necessarily need to train 70 hours a week in a ballet studio to be in terrific ballet shape.
These connections made me realize that having a limiting mindset can produce a negative outcome, and that a positive, forgiving, and very open mindset helps me relax and better connect to my body. Learning this has been very empowering, and it has totally changed my life.
It’s been a process of discovery, and I can tell you firsthand that before you begin the Ballet Beautiful movements or change the way you eat, it’s crucial that you become aware of your mindset so that you can truly believe in yourself, your future, and your ability to change. It will make a world of difference in the results.
It wasn’t until I retired from the New York City Ballet and stopped dancing every day that I fully realized how much more I needed in my life to feel complete.
Katherine on Mindset
I
love the fact that Ballet Beautiful fits so easily into my life. If I don’t have an hour, I do shorter, 15-minute Blasts throughout the day. I maintain my strength but, more importantly, I don’t lose my momentum and get discouraged. Because Ballet Beautiful is accessible in so many different ways and in many varying time increments, I always fit it in. It feels good to accomplish something every day, be it big or small, toward my goal of staying healthy and strong.
I loved finding another intense way to express myself as I transitioned into a full-time student at Columbia University—reading and discussing great literary works of art with fellow students provided a new way to find that balance. By changing my environment and daily patterns, I was able to begin building a new identity on top of the old. My time at Columbia helped me find a way to express myself verbally and intellectually that was really a relief. It was nice not to depend only on my body for my art. With ballet, I often felt like a body without a voice.
I took time to relish my freedom, relaxing into a new schedule that did not begin each morning in the dance studio and end onstage. I could go to the movies, stay up late, see and hang out with my friends for longer than a half-cup of coffee, or even sneak away for a long weekend with my boyfriend. Because I wasn’t dancing in more than 45 shows of
The Nutcracker
each December, or training up to 70 hours each week, I now could travel home to North Carolina to see my family for the holidays. I instinctively knew that I needed a serious break from the ballet world, for my body and my mind. I stopped dancing and working out altogether, giving my body a chance to rest, recover, and find a new normal. My shape changed, my muscles softened, and I put on weight. I ate and enjoyed foods that I had once thought were forbidden.
As the months passed and I began adjusting to my life as a student, I began to slowly realize that I missed the connection that I had always had with my body. My body craved movement, and when my mind felt ready again, I started slowly and didn’t put pressure on myself to get to the gym. As I began getting back into shape, I began to clarify my understanding of the power of mindset and what it could do for me.
I figured out that what I wanted was to work at my own pace from home, without the pressure of others around me. So several days a week, I would lay down a towel or a
yoga mat in my apartment, picking up again with the exercises and stretches I had created for myself while dancing with the New York City Ballet. After spending 10 years dancing 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I was amazed to see my body’s response to this new workout program that took just 45 minutes a day. My muscles came back, tightening and toning up even as I was eating foods I had once thought to be off limits—pasta, dark chocolate, cheese. I was doing things differently, exploring a new way of working out for the first time, and seeing my life through a new lens, one that was forgiving and positive. With my previous mindset, this would not have been possible. Because I was developing a mindset that was flexible, and giving myself the opportunity to take a break and start over, I was able to create Ballet Beautiful, but this did not happen overnight. I spent a lot of time making mistakes and figuring out exactly what worked for my body and, even more importantly, my mind.
If we are open to it, life is full of those moments—big and small—and they offer incredible possibility for growth.
Developing the right mindset is not just about being positive or putting on a happy face. Have you decided to try my program because you just want to learn how to cut out a few calories so you can lose a few pounds? You should know right now that building your Ballet Beautiful mindset is both simpler and more profound than that.
When your mindset is positive and empowering, you trust yourself. You also learn to believe in your own ability to reach a goal, no matter how difficult that goal may seem or how many times you may have failed in the past. When you’re feeling negative or doubt yourself, no matter how much you want to make a change, some part of you will undermine your goals and stop you from believing that real change, progress, and personal success are possible. How do you learn to overcome bad habits, negative thoughts and behavioral patterns that seem impossible to change? You face them head on. You reflect on yourself, dig deep, and learn to set clear, simple goals that you adjust along the way to reinforce your own success.
Developing a mindset that will sustain and empower you to change is ultimately about learning to believe that, yes, you do deserve the health, beauty, and grace you desire. Let’s start with a few simple questions:
1.
Why did you pick up this book?
2.
Do you feel inspired to change the way your body looks and feels?
3.
Do you feel inspired to change the way you feel about your body and your health?
These are three simple but important questions to keep in mind as you think about beginning the Ballet Beautiful program. You may even want to write down both the questions and your responses. At first, the answers to these questions may seem obvious, but if you take a moment, you will find a subtle power to them. Sometimes we rush through the busyness of our days, bothered by how we look or how we feel in our clothes. We have racing but fleeting thoughts such as,
If only I could lose 10 pounds
! or
I have to get in better shape
! There is nothing wrong with these thoughts; they are perfectly normal. But if you don’t take the time to stop and consider them more specifically, you can unknowingly set yourself up for failure. You might rush out to buy the latest diet pill or the magazine offering a program that promises a weight loss of 10 pounds in two weeks, skip meals to cut calories, or you may overeat later. In our longing to get to the finish line, we often look for a quick fix—which 9 times out of 10 only leads to failure.
The bottom line is simple: extreme dieting and working out is unnecessary punishment. It ultimately hurts your body and mind and distances you from positive goals.
Sure, a cabbage diet may make you lose the promised 10 pounds, but can you maintain it? The return to normal (that is, regular eating) after an extreme diet is punishing; the pounds come back at record speed, leaving you frustrated and angry. This sort of behavior and your body’s response is incredibly damaging to both your body and your mind. So how do you turn thoughts about your body and food into constructive behavior when you no longer have that natural relationship? You develop and rely on a more positive mindset and trust that your natural relationship with your body, food, and eating will follow.
I have used determination, focus, and a belief in my dreams and goals to create my program, and now I’d like to inspire you to embrace this empowering lifestyle for yourself. When I started using this approach in my own life, everything changed. In the past I might have thought about and obsessed over how I
looked.
Now I am interested in how I
feel.
Looking good doesn’t mean much unless you feel happy, balanced, and satisfied.
What does your mindset come down to? An attitude premised on growth, change, and a belief that working hard will help you to live better. Without this mindset, any exercise or diet program will fail. In short, you can’t truly have strength, grace, and elegance on the outside if you don’t cultivate it on the inside.
Jenna on Mindset
D
oing Ballet Beautiful makes me feel like a far more balanced person. I’ve become a lot more positive. I also feel like I’ve become more feminine through the process. I’ve been an athlete all my life, and I even walk differently now—Ballet Beautiful has changed my walk! I feel more confident, a little lighter—like I’m floating!
TUNE OUT THE NEGATIVE VOICES, TUNE IN TO YOU
Have you ever found yourself thinking,
My body has changed . . . I’m getting older . . . My metabolism just isn’t what it used to be . . . I hate my body . . . I have no self-control
?
All of these negative statements are attached to a voice that you don’t want to listen to as you plan your goals and set out to achieve them. There is no room for this undermining rant in your Ballet Beautiful life.
This voice could be the one that tells you to eat the extra scoop of ice cream because you are already fat so what does it matter. Or maybe the voice is a reflection of an emotional injury from years ago that is still tied to your self-esteem. Whatever its source, this voice could doom you to failure.
I had to work hard to learn to tune out negativity in my own life, so I appreciate how hard this can be. One year when I had a long break between the ballet summer and the winter season, I ended up gaining some weight. I was heavier than usual when I returned to class and rehearsals. By my first onstage rehearsal for
The Nutcracker
I hadn’t lost the weight, and I was feeling really self-conscious about it. While stretching out backstage after that rehearsal, I was told that I had been cut. I was horrified, devastated. And totally humiliated. I didn’t know what I would tell my family visiting for the shows or my friends, or even how I would face the other dancers in the company. It was definitely a low point. I did end up losing the weight and was back onstage for
The Nutcracker
that year. But I also struggled with my self-image and felt obsessed with my weight for a time. I had to learn to separate my weight from my self-worth to get to a healthier place. I also had to realize that at the end of the day the way I treat myself makes the biggest difference in how I look and feel. That’s true for all of us.
When someone tells you—or you tell yourself—that you aren’t good enough, capable enough, smart enough, thin enough, curvy enough, or whatever enough, it can be hard to stay focused on the good and tune out the bad. Negative voices can dwell in your head and mix with your own voice. They are fueled by self-doubt, insecurity, and fear and can only lead to more of the same. They are also your worst enemy when you are trying to reach your goals and build a happy, healthy life for yourself. Indeed, if you listen to these negative voices, they can prevent you from reaching your goals—every time.
By simply becoming aware of the negative voices in your head and remembering that in fact they come from the outside, not from within, you can begin to take away their power. Try this out next time you hear yourself saying anything negative about your body or the way you look, feel, or behave:
•
Pause
and take a moment to think about what you’ve just said.
•
Think
about why you said that and why you are feeling that.
•
Remind yourself
that you are capable.
•
Shift your focus
to a challenge that you recently met successfully, whether in Ballet Beautiful or not.
•
Take a moment
to remember and reconnect to your belief that you can achieve your goals.
Silencing the negative and empowering the positive takes awareness and practice, but over time you will learn to set down new thought patterns based on all that you can do, not on any of your shortfalls that may or may not exist.
Together, we can work to replace negative, destructive voices with positive, encouraging, and challenging thoughts about yourself, your life, and your body! This is how we put the Ballet Beautiful mindset to work.