"Claim Your Bubble Means Claiming All The Space Around Your Body"

Music and dancing have always been one of my main priorities in life. And finding the Stix to be a brand ne way to move to music has been and continues to be a unique joy for me. With Stix you don't need a dance partner, you don't have to know certain dance steps and it goes good with all kinds of music. One of my favorite things is to get a new CD and see how it feels to do Stix to. I'm really into Latin flavored music lately. I've been dancing to Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and an old Santana CD, "Caravanserai" that I picked up at my local used CD store. What a find - it is one of my favorite workout sounds. Bill and I have created our whole house as one large dance floor with a few incidentals around the edges. It's perfect because our life is mostly about dancing with our Stix. I've put together a great workout routine that centers around the CLAIM YOUR BUBBLE Idea. Let me explain: Movement and dance are what doing Crystal Stix is all about. Claiming Your Bubble, as we call it, is a great warm-up move as well as a dance move that we like to include in our workouts. Claim your bubble means claiming all the space around your body - having the flexibility to do this - and bringing all of your available attention and energy into it. Doing this with Stix has your upper body in full motion (preferably with a heavier set of Stix) and your lower body lunging, twisting and springing at the same time. As far as I know this is a unique way to exercise - it really concentrates a lot of energy release into a little bit of time. Let me explain the Claim your Bubble movements (It is a full body twist similar to a spinal twist in yoga):

- IMPORTANT- DO THIS SLOWLY AND USE SMOOTH NOT JERKING MOTIONS. STAND WITH YOUR FEET SHOULDER WIDTH APART AND SLOWLY TWIST TO YOUR RIGHT KEEPING YOUR FEET ON THE SAME SPOT BUT ROTATING THEM TO THE RIGHT - NOW KEEPING YOUR KNEES SLIGHTLY BENT, KEEP TWISTING YOUR SHOULDRS TO THE RIGHT UNTIL YOU FEEL A NICE STRETCH HAPPENING THROUGHOUT YOUR WHOLE BODY - DOING STIX THE WHOLE TIME - EVEN JUST A SIMPLE TIC-TOC WILL DO. NOW DO THE SAME TWIST TO THE LEFT. A VARIATION WOULD BE TO MOVE YOUR FEET FARTHER APART AND THEN DO THE TWISTING MOTION. IN DANCE TERMS - "SECOND POSITION". KEEP YOUR BACK STRAIGHT AND YOUR BACKSIDE TUCKED IN WHILE DOING ALL OF THIS.

With the intention of doing a full workout (an hour or longer is best), I do at least ten of these CALIM YOUR BUBBLE movements with my feet shoulder width apart, first position, and then 10 in second position or feet farther apart. These movements are not done all at once but in between aerobic Stix dancing. This is simply moving your whole body to the music. Really lifting your feet off the ground. Just a jogging movement to the music while doing Stix will really get your heart rate up. Then slow down and do a CLAIM YOUR BUBBLE in both directions. Then pick it back up - try to make up some steps like a skipping step or a cha-cha step to the music. I love Latin music because a lot of steps just come naturally to those beats.

TRY THIS SERIES OF MOVEMENTS: Sometimes I will put one handstick down and concentrate all the movements to one arm untill the muscles are burning then switch to the other arm, then doing a series of CLAIM YOUR BUBBLE movements this way. Then I go to the second level of Stix where I clasp both hands together on one handstick - called Duel Handed - and repeat the whole process. Doing these movements with both hands at once really demands use of the abdominal muscles, a great way to tone and shape the waist. -And finally I follow all of this with a doubles session. This is using two batons at once and going through all of the CLAIM YOUR BUBBLE movements at the same time. The first time this was suggested to me, I thought it would be impossible to do, however, it sounds harder than it really is. While quite a challenge, demanding use of both of your brain at the same time, it is also the most rewarding because of the energizing effect it has on you. Any effort at all with doubles gives you a benefit.