Belly Dance - Abdominal Moves

Diana: Hi! I am Diana and I am a Middle Eastern belly dance instructor, and I am going here now, to go over for some abdominal moves and undulations. So, we begin, what I am going to demonstrate first, is an abdominal roll. And that's an abdominal roll, and I am using my abdominal muscles to roll my stomach and to get this movement, it might take a little bit of time, because a lot of us don't use our abdominal muscles. To start this movement, what you do is you just,-- it's easy if you put your hands on your body, just push the top part of your abdomen out, the middle part, and then the bottom part, and then pull the top part in, the middle part in, and the bottom part in. Push the top out, push the middle out, push the bottom out, and then pull them back in.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, and with time you will able to identify, those muscles, and you will be able to roll them like this. It just will take a little bit of time, and it's a matter of persevering, like pushing the top part out, out, out, out, in, in, in, out, out, out, in, in, in, out, out, out, in, in, in, and then you can roll it, you can roll it down, and you can roll it out, good. So, just try one more time, you can grace your frames out. The next, probably we are going to go ahead is the undulation, which is used a lot in Middle Eastern dance, and this involves your chest as well as your abdominal muscles. So, good way to begin this movement and this movement also will take a little bit of time to master. You imagine your chest is a big bowl here, and we are trying to scoop something out, and it's coming from in between my shoulder blades again, and I am trying to scoop something out, and then I am letting it go down into my body, and I go into a gentle sit. So, scoop up, and then gently bend down onto your knee, up, and then down, good, up, and then down, and then we are going to push it back up. So, scoop up, and then push back up, good, scoop, and then push up, with using your knees. So, imagine this is one big bowl, we push down, we roll down, and then we scoop back up, one more time, good, and then back up. So, we go over the abdominal roll one more time, good, and then an undulation down, then undulation up. And that concludes the section on belly dance abdominal rolls and undulation.