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“Spanish women have their own opinion and know how to express it. Russian women most often sit in front of basins with Olivier salad.” Flamenco dance teacher Lena Hernandez reflects on why Russian women are so insecure about their bodies. Psychologies publishes an excerpt from her book Rights to the Body.
“The scene at the airport: the waiting room, the flight is delayed, and some three-year-old baby, bored, begins to dance, inflating the frills of her blue skirt. I tell my companion: “Look, she’s so small, but she’s already dancing!” The satellite answers me: “Not already, but – yet.”
I realized the full depth of his rightness later, trying to teach Russian women Spanish dances. At first, as a Spanish gypsy, it seemed natural to me that an adult should dance better than a child. In Spain, many flamenco competitions are won by old women. They dance with a sense of fate, with a taste of blood in their mouths, they have so much experience in every gesture that the young dancer who comes out behind seems to be an athlete.
The trouble is that in Russia you can quite accurately calculate at what point the plastic development of a woman stops – approximately in the senior classes, with the last disco. But you did not stop in intellectual development. Notice that I’m not talking about muscles, but about body language – posture, gait, gestures. A friend of mine noticed that people change their posture under the gaze of others. They are more unsure of their body—of their non-verbality, perhaps—more than they are of their speech. Meanwhile, the person is very corporeal. We don’t even know how important the first impression is, the way you move.
There are very few confident women. Not a little, but very little. I mean calm confidence, without any exclamation mark, with a dot at the end.
Read more:
- Why do we dance
A woman does not have freedom of gesture because there is no trust in others. Most often, deep down we are afraid that we won’t like it “as is” and try to improve ourselves. There is little trust in others because there is no trust in oneself: in one’s gait, figure, movements. The zero point of reference is when you are satisfied with your texture (height, weight, age, gender, shape of the nose, chest, knees, etc.). A point below zero is dissatisfaction and a false hope to change this texture.
Why false? – yes, because if you, being a dissatisfied full blonde of small stature, wake up in the morning in the body of a tall, thin brunette, you will be dissatisfied with this. The biochemical nature is not given to you by chance: your psyche, gestures, temperament correspond to your appearance. You are so conceived by the Creator.
Your bodily defects are visible to others when they are visible to you. In other words, if you consider them as such. I propose to change the point of view. These are not shortcomings, but features.
The courage to be yourself is a very modern problem. We give up individuality just because it’s easier not to stand out. But if you do not fulfill yourself, do not reach the edge of the opportunities allotted to you, then your children will start climbing from the same dull bottom point, and the peak betrayed by their parents will suppress them.
Read more:
- Body Oriented Therapy. The possibilities of your body
For many years I tried in vain to teach improvisation in flamenco to women who have been studying with me for a long time. They are good dancers, they start to dance beautifully quite quickly, even “in their own way”, but I mean the tragic aspect: when you no longer think about attractiveness, and your dance is both crying and rebellion.
Flamenco is, after all, female ambition, human dignity, at the same time humility and opposition to Fate. Spaniards have their own opinion and know how to express it. Russians, on the other hand, most often sit in front of basins with Olivier salad.
It is impossible to start moving well if you are sure deep down that you are ugly. If you don’t love yourself. If you want to be loved, help others in this. It is rare for someone to be lucky with a fan who elevates a woman in her own eyes. Usually men tend to do the opposite: trampling us, they climb and climb the crumbling steeper, trying to increase their self-esteem. Well, and – “I look at the knife mark, will it have time to heal …” And after all, they are not on purpose. They themselves have not been taught to respect who they are.
By unifying ourselves, we serve the devil: it is always easier to deal with identical bricks. Where is it, the divine mosaic of our individualities?
Ugliness is the lack of self-discovery. Dare to be true to yourself, not only in words, but also in body. Know that you have everything that the most graceful Spanish dancer has.”