mari windsor is inside the box above my head
2006-10-13, 12:50 a.m.

I did pilates yesterday without a mat. Did you know you NEED a mat to do pilates? Did you know that pilates and mat go together pretty much EXACTLY like a horse and carriage? Can't have one without the other? There's this roll-around-on-the-ground move that I hate because it makes me hysterically laugh thereby making me unclench my "POWERHOUSE" and defeating the purpose of the entire exercise. Plus I feel like a total idiot. Anyway, if you do it without a mat you pretty much bruise your entire spinal cord and skull.

Never mind the fact that I haven't like, exerted my body in months, other than hoofing it across campus when I was late for my 8:30 class.

mNeedless to say, y body is not very happy with me today. It's like, tightness, and soreness, and stiffness, but actually, it doesn't feel totally bad. It's, you know, that sort of soreness that makes you extremely aware of your muscles and the way they move and which ones move when you do certain things. I kind of like the feeling. It makes me feel like I've done something good for myself.

Anyway, I need to engage in more exercise, if only because it keeps me more sane. I was a relatively balanced individual until I stopped taking dance lessons.

Now, I was never any kind of prima ballerina, but I am not wholly uncoordinated, at least when it comes to deliberate, choreographed movements. I did jazz/hip-hop and this weird ballet/modern dance fusion class at a local dance school. The atmosphere was ... casual. To say the least. It wasn't any kind of academy, anyway. But it was like, a use of my body. A way to expend stress and pent-up energy without even knowing it. But I quit when I was 16 just because. I mean, there were reasons. I was getting tired of the school and it was so expensive to be in the recitals, and I was getting way, way too busy and I felt underappreciated, if that makes any sense. I just wasn't enjoying it anymore.

And since I was never like, a runner, or an organized-sports or sports-of-any-kind type of a girl, I never found an exercise alternative that equalled the cardio strength of 2 hours of dance. And since I don't have lightning-quick metabolism or anything, I have paid the price. But that is besides the point.

The point is that exercise is like, a really important thing to do, I think everyone agrees. And I literally grew up always dancing for exercise. So it started to become the only exercise I liked. I feel comfortable moving my body to dance. I don't feel comfortable moving my body to catch or kick a ball, or to run around a track. Running, especially, I hate.

I think the reason I hate running so much is because it hurts so bad, and the only thing you have to focus on is the hurt. With dance, maybe you hurt, and maybe you're super, super tired and out of breath, but you have other things to worry about: getting the steps right, being in sync with everyone else, nailing the new part, perfecting a pencil turn. It's such purposeful movement, and it's so nuanced and subtle but it really makes a difference. Plus, you use so much of your body in dance--literally every muscle. Running feels so harsh and choppy to me after 11 years of dance, and makes my legs feel so heavy.

I would gladly fall back into dance again, but here at College(tm) you have to be a part of a dance team to dance; there aren't any classes or anything. I'm not sure if there are like, aerobics or kickboxing--both of those I have done before and didn't hate, but if there are, I don't know where. Basically, I want to exercise, but I want to do it on my own terms. Is that really so much to ask?

The pilates thing, I think, will work for a little bit, but really all I want to do again is to take dance lessons. I'm so old now, though, that I would feel out of place at any dance school. And I haven't dance in so long that I wonder if I'd be bad by now. And then there's the issue of the weight I put on and how... um, interesting I'd look doing an arabesque penchee.

We shall see. Probably I will just keep doing what I am doing and eventually fall out of it and never look how I want to look and just have to live with it for the rest of my life. But you never know. I could surprise myself.

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