A pointe to make.

I sit here with ballet looming nearer and nearer as time passes, thinking to myself, "Do I want to go?"

Usually I know that if I have doubt or fear about something it could be due to two main causes:

1. My fear is driven by a fierce desire to do well, which in turn sabotages me because it causes paralysis and/or severe self criticism, or
2. My doubt is genuine because there is something wrong with the scenario that makes it wrong for me.

Even if I detect something wrong in the slightest it causes the largest of doubts within me.( I seem to be an overly analytic and somewhat complex person when it comes to my thinking process, which drives me crazy, but please bear with me.)

So ballet...

Let me start with my background. I have a certification for personal training through the International Sports Sciences Association which consumed me well before I got it. I have a passion for all things fitness and health. It is something I don't ever stop thinking about, or talking about, or doing.

So ballet would seem like a good idea for me because of its nature of demanding the physical. However, I have found with time and experience it would be the opposite for me. The workout is great, don't get me wrong. I haven't ever used my body quite this way and I can feel muscles I may have never used before working as I move, but there is one HUGE drawback.

It is the foundation of the movement. Ballet has carried throughout the years the basis of the art without ever losing anything it would seem. Which is a score for ballet, but awful for me. I'm talking body positioning here. In ballet, the feet and hips must be turned out while still having straight legs and the lower abdomen pulled in. The feet positioning changes from there, but the hips do not.

That is a problem for me for a few reasons:

1. My glutes are the most developed muscle on my body, making it very difficult to literally work around them. My turnouts suffer because I can't seem to push past that.
2. When I am turned out it causes a torque on my knees which sometimes causes later pain. I am one of the few fortunate young women to play sports and not have a knee injury or any problems with my knees. (knock on wood!) I would like to keep it that way.
3. I have spent the last few years correcting my posture through exercise and mindfulness. I would hate to lose some of that because of a semester of dance. 
4. I had this belief that I would learn how to strengthen the arch of the foot through dance because dancers have such strong feet. I have learned from being in class however that dancers have some of the ugliest and most collapsed feet I've seen. In order to compensate for additional muscles on the hips some dancers use foot eversion. 

When I take a look at point No.1 I realize that my lack of good turnouts is only a problem because I am an overachiever. It consumes me, which drives me mad. Looking at No.4, I can see now I am just not as charmed overall with the experience thus far. I had great expectations for ballet and it shows no promise of fulfilling any of those. I wonder if it will fulfill anything inside of me.

Well, I am off to find out.