A lot of bad habits happen because of bad leads. I've danced with many who pull me off center when I spin (for the longest time I thought I was just a bad spinner!), and I discovered how tense I was keeping my arms and shoulders. It worked its way all the way through my body. I danced with a more experienced, more sensitive and taller lead, and he helped pinpoint my difficulty, and led me effortlessly through a spin. He was saying the same thing you were. Then I experienced a great dance full of triples with another great (and tall) dancer, with absolutely no effort on my part. And this was WITH a bad back. So cornutt, I concur. I don't know if this injury had anything to do with being led poorly, but I do know I wasn't dancing in a healthy way due to the amount of tension I was experiencing. The trick now is to dance with those people who I find lead me with less force, and a better understanding of where my axis is. There aren't a lot out here.
As for good days and bad days, I know. I'm tentative about my success here... but I've been taking "
gotu kola" and another product called "Inflam-Away", herbal products I got from my nutritionist and live blood analyst, and they work really well. I feel genuinely like my body is healing beautifully. And the kind of chiro adjustments I've been getting have been shown to resolve a disc herniation in less than a month, so I'm hopeful that this is more than an illusion. At any rate, I'm taking it easy and slowly excercising, one step at a time. I can feel it keenly if I try to overdo it. Thankfully, I'm fasting right now too (part of the colon cleanse), so I don't have a lot of extra energy. I'm not hungry, but strenuous excercise is sort of out of the picture for the next week or so anyways.
I wonder if I could possibly hold some sort of seminar for leads where all the injured follows get to "tell their stories". We could tape it and make millions. You know it brings up a genuine gripe I have... a lot of leads seem all too concerned about being interesting or spectacular or full of style and pizzazz, when I've really quite rarely come across leads who have a genuine focus on leading to the follow's benefit... with regards to health and posture, etc. It takes an open mind and a humble heart to openly ask "i there any part of my lead that makes it hard for you to dance?" Of course you want to ask the follows that reall yknow what they're doing, but opening this kind of dialogue with beginners can be eye-opening too I think. If a newbie says "for some reason I can't 'blablabla'", it might be a great opportunity to examine some finer points of technique and non-verbal communication.
Anyhow. Discussed to death I'm sure. I need some more apple juice!
