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By Natalie Vitashkevich, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and Dance Mom
IG: @truewellness.coaching
We are at Ocean City, MD this week for dance nationals. There’s beach time and great food and good friends and many laughs, but there are also grueling 14 hour days, quick costume changes between dances, full stage hair and makeup every single day and above all there are wardrobe malfunctions, lost dance shoes, injuries, technical mistakes, nerves and tears and performance jitters. A dressing room full of tween and teen girls running on adrenaline and chocolate is a sight to behold. They finish their routines, run to the dressing room and unleash a squall of emotion onto the ever-present, stoic dance mom.
And then there’s my own anxiety. Will she hold that needle for the entire 3 seconds? Will she get all her turns right? Will she be happy and excited by how well she did? When my daughter is about to go on stage I feel my heart beating somewhere in my throat. Every. Single. Time.
It’s hard to manage this kind of stress. You can’t prepare for it. It is all consuming and exhausting. Yet I would not trade it for the world and watching her dance brings me so much joy. But as someone with a chronic autoimmune illness, I know that this week will leave me completely spent and may cause a flare up if I am not careful. So I try to mitigate the negative effects of this stress by doing little things that I know will support my body and down regulate my nervous system.
Here are some things you can do:
Hydrate
Your dancer is not the only one that needs to stay hydrated through the long days. Bring a large bottle of water for yourself and sip in between costume changes. Do not rely on coffee to keep you hydrated - it will not. Plain water, flavored with lemon or fruit if you like, or unsweetened herbal tea work great.
Pack food and snacks
Competition venue food often leaves much to be desired. Sure, you can doordash a meal from a neighborhood restaurant, but sometimes there is no time, or the restaurant choices are not great. If you are someone, like me, who is on a special diet due to a medical condition, that makes things even harder. Bring a cooler with a nourishing meal, not just for your dancer, but for yourself as well. Bring lots of snacks - nuts & seeds, cut up fruit and vegetables, baby carrots, beef sticks, cheese sticks and hard boiled eggs are all great choices.
Take breaks
The crowds, the loud music, the cheering, the hustle and bright lights of the dressing rooms all assault your senses and wear you out. If your dancer is changed for their next routine and does not need you at the moment, leave the dressing room and take a walk. Go outside and get some air. Don’t sit in the audience and watch dance after dance. Or just find a quiet spot somewhere in a corner (easier said than done!) and close your eyes and do some deep breathing or a short meditation. Then come back refreshed and better equipped to carry on.
Make time for self care & rest
Sometimes there is no way to take breaks, you forget your snacks or all hell breaks loose when your dancer makes a mistake on stage, or can’t find a costume piece and is a tearful mess 5 minutes before they are due backstage. Make time for self care before and especially after competitions to give your body a chance to restore and repair. Get some extra sleep, take that personal day to recover, order takeout for dinner, or take a yoga class or make time to read a good book if that is restorative for you.
Here’s what works for me:
I wake up 45 minutes before anyone else and do 30 minutes of grounding yoga flow. Or I walk to the beach to sit and watch the sunrise. I bring my air pods and do a short meditation somewhere in the corner between dances. I take lots of nourishing snacks with me. I try to stay away from sugar. I drink lots of water. I breathe. Most importantly I breathe. Every time she takes the stage I breathe slowly in and out. And try to be really present and enjoy the moment.
