About a month ago, I posed a question to social media boards and received an immense response. That question was, what is some of the bad advice you have received about bellydancing.  One of the major things that came up time and time again was related to posture and the pelvic tilt. Just some of the issues related with this I will be discussing in this post as well as describing what posture and pelvic position we are striving for in bellydance posture and what some of the incorrect ones may look like.

A severe anterior pelvic tilt is not OK. Also a proper full posterial pelvic tilt is not OK. NEUTRAL is what we strive for. This does not matter if you are a male or a female. not maintaining a neutral posture can actually put a lot of pressure on your lumbar spine. your weight should not be in your heels it should be distributed evenly across your feet when flat. If you wish to train for balance and move around on your feet, that’s one thing but if you are in your “base” position, feet flat and balanced. Also no leaning back. Leaning is for back-bends and for a full body sway. Not as your go to always position. Do not clench your lower back. You do not need to dance high in the torso or over extend your shoulder and ribcage to give an over arch. How do you not tuck? engage your core. I know it’s easier said than done and sometimes this is hard for people because their core isn’t trained. but that’s half the battle and the exercise benefit of bellydance. CORE.

This is not to say as i have above that you cannot have a tilt that is natural for you. There are some people that are blessed with more in the caboose and they have an arch to their lower back that is natural to them. My goal for myself and for my students is to be as neutral as possible with a bent knee, engaged core, and relaxed glutes. Another note is that you do have to care about your legs and feet. Not just your core and your pelvis. Regardless of whether you wear long full skirts or not and they can’t be seen, you have to pay attention to them. Incorrect leg or feet positions can also lead to incorrect posture and eventually pain. This is also not related to any particular style. It doesn’t matter what style you perform, neutral is what should be done.

I have attempted to demonstrate each in the photos below. It was hard for me to extend fully to one direction or the other in order to show the incorrect frames but I tried my best and I hope that this diagram is helpful to you all. The central pane is the correct posture where my pelvis is neutral and my lower back isn’t under pressure. The two to the left are the more extreme of tilting forward and the two to the right are the more extreme of tilting backwards.  If you have better examples that you would like to share, please do! I think we can all learn from this!