One of the most popular ballets, scores, and slices of our culture, The Nutcracker ballet is not just a seasonal tradition, but a chance to come together and celebrate the magic of dance, year after year.

Dance is a powerful example of the benefit of journaling. Professional dancers explore the depths of the body through a practice of connecting with the mind, proving that journaling is not just taking notes on your thoughts, it’s igniting your authentic self.

Watching ballet can profoundly relax the mind and body, triggering theta brainwaves linked to emotional healing, creativity, and stress relief, similar to float therapy. By combining gentle stretching with ballet, you can enhance the benefits of dance, meditation, and music therapy, promoting relaxation, emotional expression, and a deeper mind-body connection.

Activating your breath plays a crucial role in meditation, movement, and relaxation, and is a powerful tool for managing stress and enhancing performance. By cultivating mindful breathing, we can unlock physical and mental benefits, from calming the body to improving endurance, mental clarity, and overall well-being.

Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) are mental, physical, and emotional health specialties that integrate art, dance, music, theater, and poetry to foster authentic healing, enhance self-awareness, and provide multidimensional forms of communication. After meditation, progress to our personal truths may arise as well as emotions, memories, and traumas. CATs can help to heal those tough emotions as well as enrich our soul.

A modern dance warm-up is more experimental than a ballet or gym warm-up, it often includes music and an emphasis on releasing tight muscles for full body freedom. I share the warm-ups I learned when I was 18 that have kept me feeling healthy, flexible, and young.

The more attuned to our posture, the more we experience fullness, expansion, and release. With meditation, dance, and art therapy, learning about the Ribs can make good posture easier, increase oxygen intake, and uplift our spirits.

The Window of Tolerance is the capacity in which one can handle life’s stressors. It is made up of three sections: fight or flight, rest and digest, and freeze. The more you are in a state of openness, wholeness, and presence, the wider your window becomes. I outline how meditation and dance therapy help strengthen our Neuroplasticity, brain-gut connection, and compassion toward others. I also share my experience with a healthy prefrontal cortex and getting to a wide window of tolerance.

Granada Hills, CA

Prema Yoga in Granada Hills, CA offers different types of yoga classes including hath, vinyasa, kundalini, and yin. Other classes specialized in energetic and physical healing such as urban zen, meditation, yoga nidra, and spine health. I would recommend their studio for those who want to try a variety of yoga styles taught by educated and spiritually-minded instructors.

Los Angeles, CA

The Heidi Duckler Dance Company is a site-specific contemporary and post-modern dance group that performs all around Los Angeles. I attended their annual performance in the park called ebb & flow, this season at the Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown.

Seattle, WA

Re-barre is an architecture project for the Seattle Waterfront. Its exterior draws graceful arch inspiration from local landmarks and its interior is designed to uplift low-income communities through programs in lit and dance therapy. Inspired by Pongo, the poetry program for at-risk teens, the writing center helps individuals express their emotions. In conjunction, the dance studio stands as a beacon for communities to congregate at the waterfront’s crown jewel that represents Emerald City.

Los Angeles, CA
I didn’t go to see Ross From Friends with the intention of charging my pocket crystals but after a night of all-encompassing vibrations in a space packed with nice people, the next day I noticed a difference in the crystals that I had in my clutch. When I go out dancing, I prefer to drink soda water and wear earplugs so my kind of hangover is more like some really sore legs and discovering these positively charged crystals.

Since music is processed and stored in multiple parts of the brain, especially our memory, there is a strong and special connection to the importance of music in each of our lives. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, studies have linked listening to music with stronger memory recall, proving music therapy to help heal emotional traumas, self-expression, and the feeling of joy.

In my final presentation for Meditation Teacher Training, I designed a guided meditation about the beauty of posture, including a chest opening warm-up, anatomical understanding, and visualizations of balancing stones.

If you spend your days sitting at a desk, working on your feet, or running around accomplishing many tasks, a simple full-body stretch can help warm your joints and enliven your energy. When you start your day, head into a float, or need a break, take two minutes for this stretch to get the blood circulating.

Understanding all that I can do to help my hard-working heart keeps me safe from some of the most common causes of death in America. Reading my blood pressure allows me to see how well my heart is doing that day. So many things can affect its pumping quality like if I went for a walk, ate balanced meals, or gave myself a moment of relaxation.