Belly dancing and physical therapy

I am now in physical therapy for the second time in six months. I really need to stop getting hurt. But the belly dancing I learned a few months ago is again helping me out. The last time it was better for my shoulders and back than the physical therapy was. This time it just makes for a funny story.

I sprained my ankle on New Year’s Eve trying to run on the side of my foot. It doesn’t work. You are supposed to only run on the bottom of your feet. You are also supposed to go to the doctor for any and all sprained ankles, but I didn’t know this before. It wasn’t getting better, so I finally went to the doctor last week. And he had me start physical therapy yesterday.

The therapist was having me do different exercises to try to get my ankle to loosen up so it will actually move again. One of the exercises was to put a big elastic band over the ball of my foot and hold the ends of the band in my hand. Then I had to draw the alphabet with my toes three times.

When I was taking belly dancing classes one of the exercises we did to help isolate different body parts was to write the alphabet with our shoulders, our chest, and our hips. So I told the therapist I’d already been doing that in my belly dancing class, only now he was asking me to do it with my foot.

It made him laugh. I don’t think anyone has ever told him that before.

This just goes to prove that everyone needs to take belly dancing.