Dance, Posture, and Lindy Hop

Esther: 

Dance has been a part of my life from a very early age. Due to my Dutch mother’s love of all things Indian, I was taken for Kathak lessons at age 3(!) and then Bharata Natyam classes for many years. Later I developed a passion for various forms of South American, Caribbean, and Congolese dance. When I created the Gokhale Method 1-2-3 Move online program back in 2020, it was natural for me to weave into it the traditional dance moves I knew—plus some I discovered in the process!

At the time of COVID-19 we all needed to connect with each other; we longed for the absent nourishment of a community, and wanted some jollity in our lives again. Largely confined to our homes, many of us also craved some exercise. Dance was the perfect vehicle to meet these needs. 

Unlike prescribed exercises in a gym, dance offers repetition without boredom. Add its rich visual patterns, music, companionship, perhaps voice, perhaps the touch of a partner’s hand, and you have a rich, sustainable form of exercise that is multilayered.

Traditional dance is most often a social event that brings people together in joyful exercise and shared experience.

For millennia, dance moves have been born of healthy everyday movement patterns energized by beat and melody. For those of us living in industrial and postindustrial areas of the world, accessing these traditional moves can, with practice, hugely improve our daily movement and posture.

Traditional dance forms capture body wisdom of the past, and pass it on with integrity. We can still access many of the precious snapshots of this wisdom which originated from the African diaspora; a baseline of healthy dance movement fanned out to many parts of the world, including South and North America, and the Caribbean. 

In the US, one blossoming of the African American dance tradition emerged from the ballrooms of Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. It is known as Lindy Hop, and is a form of swing dance. The basic stance is a little squat, with soft groins, behind behind, torso angled forward, and the spine mostly straight. Our students and Alumni will likely recognize this list of physical characteristics from the techniques we teach in our in-person Foundations course, one-day Immersion course, our online Elements course, plus our Gokhale® Active program. The “ready” stance bestows a stability and athletic advantage, from which the dancers’ limbs can dart and whirl as required. 

Lindy Hop uses a forward bend from the hips, and keeps the groins soft. This allows the torso to maintain its alignment while the limbs can move freely.

To readers who are not yet members of our Gokhale Active community, I would like to introduce one of our dance teachers, Sabina Blumauer, who has a particular passion for Lindy Hop. Sabina will tell you more…

Sabina: 

It was a warm spring evening in 2004 when I first stepped into a cozy bar in Ljubljana, Slovenia—my hometown and a place where swing dance started thriving at that time. 

What a surprise! The air was alive with a vibrant atmosphere, the sound of swing music, and people dressed in 1950s style, spinning and moving quickly across the dance floor. Some of them were injecting acrobatics between their steps. I was instantly hooked. Please enjoy this inspiring film of vintage Lindy Hop dancing, with Shorty George, below. It is one of the earliest known recordings, from 1929:

See how many healthy posture features you can spot in these dancers—and those around them.

Dancing swing—mostly the style called Lindy Hop—brought me joy, and exercised my body with a variety of moves. I entered a healthy, relaxed community that shared a passion for swing and jazz, music and dance. 

I started teaching dance to our Gokhale community on the 1-2-3 Move program in December 2022 with blues, and in October 2023 I was excited to be able to extend this with an additional day of swing. It works really well as a solo dance, while bringing together people from all over the world—we have an online global dance hall! We have such fun learning simple swing dance steps to practice healthy posture. A few weeks ago we focused on knee alignment, prompting this comment from Gokhale® Elements Alumna, Elizabeth Parker:

Great class, Sabina! This was VERY helpful to me. I felt muscles that I’ve not felt before, which might indicate those need to be strengthened to help alleviate the inward knee rotation. Thank you so much!

In the short clip below I’m encouraging participants to roll their shoulders back and lengthen their necks, preserving the space created as they dance with lifted arms.

Dancing solo on 1-2-3 Move, your steps can be complex or simple, fast or really slow, as you can see in this bluesy number. The purpose is to enjoy yourself while practicing healthy posture.

I was really touched when Alumna and regular participant, Mary Walsh, wrote to me with feedback from a recent session. She is happy to share it below:

It’s hard to say how much I enjoy your class. I am not a dancer, but your moves are demonstrated so simply that I find that I can actually follow some of the steps. 

I appreciate how you handle all of the students’ questions so precisely. I enjoy listening to others who have dance experience.

Both you and Lang, and recently Aurelia, have been focusing on turning/head position when moving. This is especially beneficial for me since I lost most of the vision in my right eye and have trouble orienting myself in space. I think the majority of the students regardless of their vision have trouble turning their heads, so this is useful for all.

Join me and the other teachers to enjoy our daily program of dance, yoga, gentle Moving Mediation (Qigong), or more intensive strength training, as a member of Gokhale® Active. If you are a Gokhale Method® Alumnus, there are even more benefits with your membership, including two Live Chats with Esther each month, and an on-demand Advanced Content Video Library, both of which are excellent for consolidation, reminders, and continuing progress after a course. You can sign up here.

Best next action steps 

If you would like help in rediscovering healthier posture, get started by booking a consultation, online or in person, with one of our teachers. 

You can sign up below to join any one of our upcoming FREE Online Workshops…