Free Ballet Beautiful: Transform Your Body and Gain the Strength, Grace and Focus of a Ballet Dancer by Mary Helen Bowers Page B
Authors: Mary Helen Bowers
instead of drowning your feelings in jellybeans. Non-food-related ways to treat yourself and stay on track include buying a magazine and nail polish, treating yourself to an at-home spa experience, giving yourself a few minutes to browse your favorite e-shopping site, or even taking a power nap!
4. Are you eating right ? Remember to eat often and to choose healthy foods.
5. How positive and healthy is your thought process ? (Especially when thinking about yourself!)
When you eat well and work out at least 15 minutes, six days a week, your body will thank you. And you will realize that you can indeed maintain balance.
As you learn to pay attention to how you feel and to root out patterns that are not aligned with your health and fitness goals, you will naturally and easily fall into balance—physically, emotionally, and mentally. Keep in mind that we all eat emotionally—it’s natural to seek comfort in food when we feel bad, uncomfortable, or sad, or have any other feeling that upsets our inner homeostasis. With a heightened awareness of when you’re at risk of emotional eating, you can avoid derailing a day of healthy eating and exercise with one too many bites of a cupcake, triggering uncontrollable cravings by having too many cocktails, or putting yourself in a funk after you couldn’t stop eating an entire pint of Häagen-Dazs instead of switching to a lighter dessert.
Being in balance is the essence of living the Ballet Beautiful mindset. As you become aware of your inner attitudes and shift from a negative attitude to one that is positiveand growth-oriented, you will have an easier time identifying and setting realistic, self-empowering goals. With this clarity, you will naturally tap into your own motivation for achieving your goals, making you feel ever more confident and strong. These building blocks are the foundation for achieving the physical, emotional, and mental balance that secures your baseline. From here the only way is up!
Chapter 4
The Ballet Beautiful Method
The Basics
S ome people will tell you that you have to be a professional ballerina to look like one. And others will say that you can’t actually target and transform specific parts of your body . . . that if you want to have leaner hips or a flatter stomach you have to work out your entire body. I couldn’t disagree more.
I believe that every woman has the ability to transform her body. I have seen my Ballet Beautiful method dramatically change the bodies and lives of countless women all over the world, including my own, and I know that it can do the same for you. In this part of the book, you will learn how to tune in to where your ballet muscles are and, more importantly, how you can begin to sculpt and reshape the way your body looks and moves. We are going to break down the basics of the Ballet Beautiful method together as I explain how this program targets and exhausts the key “ballet muscles” through low-impact exercises and stretches designed to give anyone the graceful lines, fluid movement, and beautiful posture of a ballet dancer. This is what makes Ballet Beautiful different from other programs: it’s the secret behind my method and your incredible results.
To keep it simple, I focus on five features of your Ballet Beautiful body:
1. Flexibility : Everyone can increase flexibility and become more agile through daily stretching. Each Ballet Beautiful workout begins and ends with a good stretch to keep the muscles long and limber!
2. Strong center : A ballerina’s strength, posture, and grace all extend from a strong but narrow center. The Ballet Beautiful exercises target the muscles deep in the abdominals, center, and back that are key to building a dancer’s strong center of balance!
3. Great butt : Ballet dancers are known for their tight, toned butts! My exercises tighten, tone, and lift the butt. If you already have a great butt and are concerned about exercising it away, don’t worry—that won’t happen
4. Are you eating right ? Remember to eat often and to choose healthy foods.
5. How positive and healthy is your thought process ? (Especially when thinking about yourself!)
When you eat well and work out at least 15 minutes, six days a week, your body will thank you. And you will realize that you can indeed maintain balance.
As you learn to pay attention to how you feel and to root out patterns that are not aligned with your health and fitness goals, you will naturally and easily fall into balance—physically, emotionally, and mentally. Keep in mind that we all eat emotionally—it’s natural to seek comfort in food when we feel bad, uncomfortable, or sad, or have any other feeling that upsets our inner homeostasis. With a heightened awareness of when you’re at risk of emotional eating, you can avoid derailing a day of healthy eating and exercise with one too many bites of a cupcake, triggering uncontrollable cravings by having too many cocktails, or putting yourself in a funk after you couldn’t stop eating an entire pint of Häagen-Dazs instead of switching to a lighter dessert.
Being in balance is the essence of living the Ballet Beautiful mindset. As you become aware of your inner attitudes and shift from a negative attitude to one that is positiveand growth-oriented, you will have an easier time identifying and setting realistic, self-empowering goals. With this clarity, you will naturally tap into your own motivation for achieving your goals, making you feel ever more confident and strong. These building blocks are the foundation for achieving the physical, emotional, and mental balance that secures your baseline. From here the only way is up!
Chapter 4
The Ballet Beautiful Method
The Basics
S ome people will tell you that you have to be a professional ballerina to look like one. And others will say that you can’t actually target and transform specific parts of your body . . . that if you want to have leaner hips or a flatter stomach you have to work out your entire body. I couldn’t disagree more.
I believe that every woman has the ability to transform her body. I have seen my Ballet Beautiful method dramatically change the bodies and lives of countless women all over the world, including my own, and I know that it can do the same for you. In this part of the book, you will learn how to tune in to where your ballet muscles are and, more importantly, how you can begin to sculpt and reshape the way your body looks and moves. We are going to break down the basics of the Ballet Beautiful method together as I explain how this program targets and exhausts the key “ballet muscles” through low-impact exercises and stretches designed to give anyone the graceful lines, fluid movement, and beautiful posture of a ballet dancer. This is what makes Ballet Beautiful different from other programs: it’s the secret behind my method and your incredible results.
To keep it simple, I focus on five features of your Ballet Beautiful body:
1. Flexibility : Everyone can increase flexibility and become more agile through daily stretching. Each Ballet Beautiful workout begins and ends with a good stretch to keep the muscles long and limber!
2. Strong center : A ballerina’s strength, posture, and grace all extend from a strong but narrow center. The Ballet Beautiful exercises target the muscles deep in the abdominals, center, and back that are key to building a dancer’s strong center of balance!
3. Great butt : Ballet dancers are known for their tight, toned butts! My exercises tighten, tone, and lift the butt. If you already have a great butt and are concerned about exercising it away, don’t worry—that won’t happen
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