Broken Bones

So I broke my toe again today. And by again I do not mean the same toe but rather this is my second broken toe since January, and my forth broken toe in a span of three and a half years. No I am not what I would call accident prone. Clutzy perhaps, but accident prone brings to mind one of my male friends who seems to have at least 3 hospital trips a year for various avoidable but serious accidents such as, falling on and getting stabbed by a broken Captain Morgan's bottle, lifting a lamp to move it and in the process hitting a revolving fan with the bulb and getting his eye cut open, getting hit while driving over the old bridges in Charleston, by a soccer mom in a suburban and dangling perilously over the rail, and so on and so forth. Rather I suffer from a minor form of clutziness caused by years of being a dancer.

That's right, being a dancer leads to clutziness, or clutziness leads to being a dancer, I've never figured out which, but after 18+ years in the dance world I have learned that being graceful on an open stage with moving people is much easier than walking around my house with inanimate objects. I have several dancer friends who will attest to this. Sadly enough as we have also danced so long as to bruise our toes, create blisters and open cuts that do not permanently heal and stain our shoes with blood and sweat, a broken toe doesn't particularly phase us. If I were still in the ballet world I would simply tape it up and go back on point; as it is I think I'll tape it up and go run.

Running and Yoga have become my new past times. As my body feels the years of abuse it has taken from overstretched muscles, hours of overtime, dancing while sick/injured/exhausted, and generally moving in ways the body was NOT designed to move, I have had to give up dance and find other muscles to abuse. Don't get me wrong, I was never destined to be a professional dancer, too tall, too gangly, and too big, despite looking like Olive Oil, I still did my part to choreograph, teach, learn, and house manage as I had time for. As I got older and my body resisted, I have had to find other things to keep in shape.

I hate running; I do not enjoy it in the least. I know some of my friends (mainly the culprits who got me into it by dragging me across the Charleston Ravenel bridge, despite my protests) that love to run. In fact, the same friend who is accident prone, will go for multiple 3+ mile runs a day. I do not get this. It is above and beyond all my comprehension. I'm lucky if I can make myself run for a couple miles once a day. Just enough to keep the pounds off. My high school track coach would be devastated to see my running for "fun". The man tried for years to make me run long distance, despite my being good at short distances only, until I finally gave him my cleats and walked away. Though I gave him my cleats for an entirely different reason, the fact that I run in my spare time is absolutely mind boggling.

Yoga on the other hand I have come to love. I don't get the spirituality thing of it but I do get the athleticism. Perhaps its discipline, hard work, core structure and diversity all appeal to my former dancer. Most styles of yoga come from Astanga, Iyengar and Viniyoga; all can be broken down into a beginner level and advance to a master level. From any level you can branch out and transition into approximately 12 different styles, all building on basic fundamentals but stressing different alignments, flex points, temperatures and flow sequences. Different teachers and different styles appeal to different people. Big deal. But unlike pilates which builds on itself and generally has the same sequences and exercises from levels 1-100, yoga actually is tailored to the person doing it. And that's why I like it. You can take a "beginner" class with 25 other people and there will be people who have their feet behind their heads not breaking a sweat, while a person two mats down has his foot resting on the floor for balance and looks like he's going to die.

I always wondered what I would be doing for exercise after dance. I think it's something all dancers worry about. What will I do after dance? It's alot of time to fill and its a hole of passion. Most dancers only continue to dance because they love it; not because it's easy or comes naturally. Some people are fortunate to have the time and interest to choreograph. I found I could fill the passion peice of it by doing development work in non-profit art organizations. It never in my life occurred to me I would become a yoga fan or a runner (both forms of exercise I had adamantly resisted until the last year) to fill the exercise piece of it. Despite all my efforts to ignore what works for me, unfortunately these forms do. One I love, one I hate, but either way at least I'm staying healthy. Sure, in a few years I'm sure my knees will protest from the constant pounding and I'll have to try something else but for now I'm stuck on these. I suppose it's another way of life telling me I need to be open minded to all possibilities. So for tonight, I'm going to tape up my broken toe and go run.