Belly-Dancing 101

Well Folks,
Turns out I'm not as limber as I once thought. I had my first class last night and it kicked my ass. We spent the first 1/2 hour focused on stretching/toning. THIS really kicked my butt. The second 1/2 hour was spent training the ab muscles and learning what they call isolations. Isolations are apparently the foundation of belly-dancing. Let me tell you: My body does NOT move that way. The "shimmy" in particular blew me away. It is where you shimmy your hips WITHOUT using anything other than your ab muscles to move them. Sound tricky? It IS. The way my instructor described how to do the movement is this: Imagine that you have a thin string attached to each of your hip bones. Take a string in each of your hands and pull them up one at a time. WHAT??!!! You can not move your legs, knees ect. ONLY your hips/abs. Crazy. She said to practice sitting down. Basically sit on your butt and WITHOUT using your knees/legs to help you shift your butt muscles from one side to the next. Being the quitter that I am, I almost threw in the towel after leaving last night. But then John reminded me that nothing comes easy at first and that the instructor has been doing this for 29 years. So, I decided that I'll finish out my 8 week course and if I don't have the isolations down by then I'll throw in the towel. In the meantime, I've got some shimmying to do..........