Q&A for How to Belly Roll

Body rolls are a great way to learn and practice flexibility while keeping the abdominal muscles engaged. A great way to control abdominal muscles is to practice sinking the bellybutton into the spine while exhaling many times a day. Along with strengthening exercise, stretching the lats muscles and chest openers can also help the torso flow more smoothly during a body roll.

This takes lots of practice. It takes strength in your obliques and lower back as well. Try hip-ribcage isolations (look up isolation jazz warmup exercises), which helps a lot. Then practice some more! Use the mirror to assist.

Anyone can belly dance! I am on the thicker side as well and I teach belly dancing classes. I find thicker people can dance as well, if not better than thin people.

If it hurts, only do it for short amounts of time, then progress to longer trials.

You should probably not do belly rolls for a few hours or so, so that you can digest the food. If you do belly rolls, especially if you are lying down and facing the ground, you may feel ill or injure yourself.

Belly rolls will never hurt your stomach or any other organ. The pain could just be muscle pain (which is fine) or an unrelated pain.

It's pretty rare to just naturally be able to do it, but most people can do it if they put some effort into figuring out how.

A crop top would make it easier, but if you are uncomfortable it can be done with a shirt on.

That depends on how well you can grasp the ability to do so. Some people can get the hang of it faster than others, but you will learn it if you try hard enough.