**This is my personal notes to several Books about Modern Dance, summarizing the useful bit for me only
Body Awareness Exercises- preliminary exercises that help get into the movement process:
- Lie on the floor in a relaxed position. Be sensitive to your body.
- Be aware of your breathing, inhaling and exhaling, and notice what is happening in your body as a result of the breathing cycle. Be aware of how the body is internally and externally shaping itself as a result of how you are breathing. Try breathing through the vertical, width, and breadth of the body separately and then breathing through all three dimensions simultaneously so you feel the body expanding in the dimensions in a way similar to the inflation and deflation of a balloon.
- Take some time to think about and sense the weight of your body supported by the floor.
- Without moving, think about each part of your body. Imagine how each part can move through space and how each part is related to the whole body. For example, your upper leg bone is inserted into the hip socket at the pelvis and can move in all directions with or without rotation. The upper leg bone is attached to the lower leg bone, which primarily bends in only one direction and in turn attached at the ankle joint, which leads down into the various movable bones of the foot. Think about how the pelvic/hip and heel connection facilitates movement.
- Think about the length of the spine and how it connects the trunk to the head down through the upper back and lower back and into the pelvis. Think about how the lower and upper spine connection facilitates movement.
- With the legs extended, flexing and extending in the ankle jointsm, set the body into a rocking motion- and be aware of the heel, pelvis, head connections. Check your body to see if you are holding tensions anywhere.
- With knees up and be to pulled toward the pelvis, rock the pelvis forward, backward, and sideward. The forward and backward motion is like the pathway created by a playground swing; the sideward motion is like a sideward rotation of a car’s steering wheel. Do the sideward. Motion alternating with one hip up and one hip down, and be aware of how the body is affected by pelvic initiation.
- Quietly lie on the floor and reflect on a significant past event; remember where you were and what you felt about the occasion. Let this reflective imagery lead your body to an awareness of how you felt then and feel now.
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