So it is the day of an amazing battle. First thing when I wake up...
Hello everybody. This is Jaja. You might know me from America's Best Dance Crew,
So You Think You Can Dance, or as the robot girl from Step Up, and STEEZY.
and I'm here to help you on a body recovery and health journey
So I started my health journey
firstly for environmental reasons, but also I started because of health reasons in
2017 I was diagnosed with Cancer in Situ and I wanted to take a healthy approach and a different approach
Than the usual surgery and treatments so I decided to do a whole plant-based diet and completely
change everything from cosmetics, to how I take care of my body, to what I eat
Personal health and taking care of your body relates to dance because we are athletes
and I really do believe that we should be treating our mind, mental health, and our body's physical health as
high level athletes as well.
So I am combining, eating lifestyle, meditation, and body recovery
to be the best version of myself that I could be for dance
Mental health is really important, especially for dancers because a lot of our
injuries, or illnesses, or when our body is tired comes from mental state
what I also see a lot in dancers is that they are not able to concentrate or focus
or even be creative in different kind of ways. If you are combining the healthy eating and
meditation together
it is really going to build up your mental state to where you will be able to concentrate in learning choreography or
freestyling
So the basic understanding of meditation is basically focusing and being able to focus on just your breath
So when you are inhaling you focus on your breath when you are exhaling you still focus on your breath
You don't let any other thoughts come into your head
This is really just helping you in dance to focus on the present moment on your body
Another kind of meditation is where you are meditating
focusing on the breath
but also you are visualizing a
Certain thing in dance that you want to improve. For example, you are visualizing yourself
learning choreography in the dance studio
your goal right here is to
Really visualize yourself, the teacher, and the dance steps. Just by practicing this visualization
Your physical body will be improving as well to learn the choreography better
So I use nature as my personal
de-stresser because in nature I can really relax, focus and connect with the nature and really
disconnect from the everyday stresses: dance, responsibilities...
and sometimes we just need to unplug and this is my way of how I relax
Everybody's body is ultimately very different
So I think it's really important to tailor yourself your own workouts for your body and what suits with you
so what I do a lot is
I focus on
Functional Range Conditioning, Neuro- Somatic massages, breathing techniques, and Cryotherapy
This is something right now that works with my body the best
So functional range conditioning is basically a strength kind of workout
So getting your joints to the point where they have the maximum range of motion
I'm going to demonstrate some of these exercises for you.
So this is the cat-cow workout. You're going from here, first chin, then chest, slowly
Making your spine into a half circle and then going back starting with your hips
and again, slowly stretching your spine
back up, finishing with your chin up
So in this one, I'm moving my leg in a half circle
Imagining I have a glass of water on my bag that I do not want to spill by pushing my hips to the ground
While pushing my leg up
I focus on static stretching a lot as well
Which means you are basically holding a pose in a stretch for about 45 seconds
And then you switch to a different pose where you hold it for another 30 to 45 seconds again
In a static stretch you take a pose where you feel stretched out
and you stay in the pose for about 30 to 45 seconds while
really deeply breathing
So I also developed a lot of body control exercises because
especially as a female, I really wanted to
have the best body control possible
So what I do is I take regular workouts and I add weights on my body and I do the exercises
With my arms and the weights in my hands
It actually really levels up your control
Also make sure that your weights are no more than 3-5 pounds because you don't want it to be a regular workout
you really want it to be a workout for the control only. Stay safe!
With this vest
I'm going to be doing stops.
one, two, three, four, and one, two, three, four.
I'm tensing my core and my legs and trying to make this stop as clean as possible
This weight vest helps me to make it really sharp and nice and levels up your control
for my arm control exercise
I'm going to raise my arms and again tense my muscles in my arms and go
Stop,
stop,
stop
and drill this exercise over and over again
Cryotherapy is basically cold therapy for your whole body where you go into a freezer that has negative
150 degrees Fahrenheit
And you are there for three and a half minutes.
What it does with your body, it helps you to recover faster and better from soreness.
It also helps your skin glow
And it also helps your mental health as well
Personal diet as I would love to say, lifestyle, is really important for dancers
and people in general to really fuel your body with the best food that you can to build up the best version of your body that you can
lifestyle for me is to really make a conscious choice to
change your eating habits completely to build
a body that is going to serve you the best version for your dance
Whole foods are foods that are not processed. So if you go to a store you can get yourself
Fruits, veggies, nuts, and grains, or if you eat meat also meat.
it's basically food, that we were eating back in a day when we were still hunting and picking berries
when you eat whole foods you basically are cleaning your body from all the chemicals from the processed foods
What happens is when you eat a lot of processed foods, the chemicals are staying in your body
and your body is not able to process the nutrition from the actual food
Processed foods make your body more sluggish, tired...
You can have a brain fog or a fatigue and it doesn't help your stamina.
It doesn't help your focus
So this is how whole foods are going to help you so much in dance
So when you are buying foods that are packaged
I would definitely recommend to focus on the words that you cannot even pronounce that are in the ingredients
That's my number one thing.
Then one I would also focus on not buying foods that have too long of a list of ingredients
Because that's for sure a no-no.
If you take this almond butter, the only thing that you will see in the ingredients is almonds!
that's what you are paying for
So alkaline and acidic foods.
First I will explain what alkaline and acidic means.
So when we are born as a baby our body is born alkaline
Which means that our body has pH more than six and a half
Our body has on average pH 7.3, but when we grow up and we start to eat foods
Such as potatoes, rice, meat, and processed foods, it's all very acidic foods
These acidic foods are taking the pH of our body down
diseases cannot really grow in alkaline environments
and that's why our bodies actually have the natural ability to heal itself if our body is alkaline
The minute our pH is acidic
diseases love to live in acidic environment, so that's how normal diseases such as
cold, flu, inflammation, joint pain, headaches, come in
and also more serious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and such
So it is the day of an amazing battle
First thing when I wake up, I would have a really huge glass of water,
it's about 1 litre of water that I would be drinking in the morning after that
I would be drinking some celery juice after that
I might have some ginger shots because ginger shots are really great for your gut health,
lunch, I don't have until like 4:00 or 5:00 p.m.
I would make some bowl that would have:
kale, chickpeas
mushrooms
fermented cabbage
avocado, peppers, tomatoes
Cucumbers, sesame seeds, and I would make a nice dressing from tahini and miso
later that evening I would maybe eat half a watermelon or some cherimoya or some fruits such as mangos and
Papaya, and that would be my typical eating day
This dance health journey definitely helped me out in the long-term
Completely transported my mental state and my physical body to help me in my dance
Especially with a lot of traveling with a lot of training
It helps me to recover faster. It helps me to focus and it also helps me to feel better and
more happy
That way I can connect with people better and I would recommend this
transformation for everyone.
One of the most important things that I think is always to stay curious and always to seek for education.
These conscious choices that I'm making in my health
go back to my body and to
My mental health and physical health to make me a better person, better dancer, and better athlete.
So I know this transformation might not happen overnight
but stay open minded, stay curious, always educate yourself
I'm Jaja, thank you for listening to my TedTalk
I hope that this video was helpful for you guys. Thank you guys so much for watching
You can find me on Instagram @JajaVankova or my website JajaVankova.com