PORTAGE — Imagine it’s 6:15 p.m. on a Thursday and you’re on the way to belly-dancing class.

You enter the Portage Public Schools Administration Building, climb the stairs to the second floor, walk past the classrooms full of night-school students, hang up your coat and head to the dance studio to warm up.

You grab a bottle of water and line up with 15 women ranging in age from 16 to 60. They’re wearing stretch pants, T-shirts and pink, lime, silver and black sequined hip belts that shake like loose change.

The instructor frantically looks through her leopard-print tote bag for the first song. She inserts the CD into the boom box and the drums start, then the lutes, hammered dulcimers and vertical flutes. This is not Western music, you say to yourself. The old wooden floor begins to creak as you start to move to the beat.

“Are we ready to go?” calls out the instructor as she leads a warm-up dance.

It doesn’t matter if you’re overweight or if you have physical disabilities. Joette Sawall helps any willing woman, and the occasional man, shimmy and undulate to a new body image.

“It’s very empowering, and it creates a positive force for women,” says the 36-year-old Sawall, owner and operator of the West Michigan School of Middle Eastern Dance.
Where it started

Belly dancing, or raks sharki, as it’s known in Egypt, conjures up all sorts of images: scantily clad women, sequined midriff-baring costumes, dangling beaded belts and an exotic nightclub setting.

The truth is that the dance form has humble beginnings that date back thousands of years to Egypt and the Turkish countryside.

It became a hit in the United States when a young, fully clothed girl performed belly dance at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Sawall says. Sal Bloom, the exhibit director, coined the name Little Egypt for the girl, who shimmied and undulated her way into the hearts of an uptight Victorian culture.

The 1950s and ’60s ushered in the dance technique as we know it today in the United States. Nightclubs featured the dance in a burlesque style. Dancers wore over-the-top costumes, including bright, coined sequined belts, as they quivered unabashedly and rotated their bellies in a suggestive manner.

Weight loss and aerobics

Health clubs, on the other hand, thrived on the weight-loss aspect of the moves, and some colleges began offering belly dancing as an aerobics credit.

“It works different muscles without the torture of regular aerobics,” says Deb Hansen, 56, of Portage. “It’s great for anyone who has curves.”

Johanna Hamilton, a 16-year-old high school student, agrees. Hamilton has taken dance classes since she was 9 years old. Her mother and sister took a class with Sawall and encouraged her to get involved.

“I like the mix of styles and the light structure,” she says. “Most other dance instructors have rigorous standards, and this is so much more fun.”

Kathryn Walter, 53, of Portage takes the beginning belly-dancing course with Sawall. She was exposed to belly dancing for the first time when a belly dancer paid a visit to the nursing home where he father lives, near Detroit.

“It’s nice for women who are curvier and any size or shape,” she says.

Three instruction levels

Sawall instructs belly dancing at three different levels. The first level is for those who want to learn the basic moves — undulations, shimmies, circles, hip drops — which feel a little awkward at first. After 12 weeks, most students know them well.

Upon the instructor’s approval, students can move up to the next level, which focuses on choreography for performances. This is when the fun shopping begins — the buying of headdresses, extravagant belts, veils and costumes.

The third level brings opportunities to perform at Greek Fest and other festivals or private shows.

“Women tell me they come to find their happy place. I have found mine,” says Sawall, who also teaches gender and media studies at Western Michigan University after obtaining a master’s degree in communication there last year. “I may not be wealthy, but I’m rich in many other ways.”

SOURCE: MLIVE.COM

The federal government released a new set of exercise guidelines a couple of weeks ago, and the basic recommendation was straightforward: Thirty minutes a day, five days a week, at a moderate effort, for basic health; double that and/or make it more intense for more significant health and fitness benefits.

But what if you’re over 65? Should you be doing the same things, or approach exercise a bit differently? What about kids — do their developing bodies need a different sort of workout? What if you’re pregnant? Or hobbled by arthritis? The new guidelines attempt to clarify a host of issues like these.

Exercise recommendations have been issued over the years by different federal agencies as well as by such organizations as the American Heart Association and the American College of Sports Medicine. While the “2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans” from the Department of Health and Human Services are generally consistent with those recommendations, the attempt here was to provide the broadest possible review of the available science, and to create a document that would have the weight of federal policy.

According to William E. Kraus, a professor of medicine at Duke University’s medical school and a member of the advisory panel that assembled the guidelines, that policy dimension gives this document some extra significance: Its conclusions may figure into legislative and other debates about funding for school physical education programs, regulations for the operations of senior citizens programs and other public-policy questions.

“These guidelines provide muscle that was not available” in the discussion of where physical activity fits in an array of issues, Kraus said. “It becomes part of national policy. . . . By doing such a broad review of the science, we feel very confident that HHS is armed with the best data to come up with broad recommendations.”

It also takes a sometimes confusing subject and renders it in pretty simple terms.

The effect of a more intense workout, for example, was given a specific multiplier — namely, 2. So if you are willing to work out at a level where you are breathing so hard that conversation becomes difficult, you can cut the recommended times in half — to 15 minutes a day for general health, or 30 minutes a day for more substantial health and fitness improvements. (Don’t try to start out at this level, by the way; work up to it.)

The concept of “accumulation” was endorsed, at least as a way to get started. If you have been inactive or have trouble finding a free half-hour, you can still benefit from multiple10-minute chunks — a walk or calisthenics before work, a stroll at lunch and a final session at night, for example.

For the general adult population, there are more details and suggestions, and forms for tracking daily activity, at http://www.health.gov/PAguidelines/default.aspx.

The panel — helpfully, I think — also singled out specific populations for which exercise might seem less important or be more likely to go overlooked. The overriding point was that the general recommendation of five-day-a-week aerobic training and at least biweekly strength training holds for nearly everyone, including senior citizens, women through pregnancy and the postpartum period, and people with chronic problems such as osteoarthritis that might make them overly cautious.

But there are a few specific recommendations and caveats:

If people over 65 can’t meet the full recommendations, then even small efforts will, over time, improve strength, stamina and coordination. For those who have been inactive or feel at risk of falling, balance training three times a week is recommended, including exercises such as walking backward, heel-and-toe walking and disciplines like tai chi.

Pregnant women who have been exercising have no reason to stop, though those accustomed to particularly vigorous workouts may have to adjust intensity in consultation with their doctor. Those who have been inactive before becoming pregnant will benefit from moderate aerobic activity, with little or no risk. Some common-sense exceptions include potential-impact sports like horseback riding, skiing, soccer and basketball; also, after the first trimester pregnant women should avoid exercises that involve lying on the back.

People with disabilities from stroke, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy or other conditions “should engage in regular activity according to their abilities and should avoid inactivity.” Consult with a doctor or therapist about how to adapt exercises or activity to the particular condition.

For people with chronic illnesses — the report singles out osteoarthritis, Type 2 diabetes and cancer — regular physical activity can lessen the impact of the disease, improving longevity for some types of cancers, improving mobility and lessening pain for arthritis sufferers, and lowering the risk of heart and other problems associated with Type 2 diabetes.

Kids need to be moving at least an hour a day, in ways appropriate to their age. There needn’t be so much structure, but there does need to be variety, with activities that are aerobic, build muscle, and help develop balance and coordination. Twenty push-ups, in other words, may be less important than climbing a tree or wrestling a sibling; a jog around the neighborhood may be fine for the parents, but let the kids stick to hopscotch or soccer.

SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST