Dance with us Sunday. . . into a new beginning for our nation!We need more endings in our life.
And more beginnings. But first we need more endings. Endings are good. They are a resolution, hopefully a peaceful resolution, to finalize the progress we have made into a permanent significance that we can proceed from into the next segment of our life. So to help you find a good ending to wherever you are lately in this life, I want to help you finish THIS week of yours, and this BIG season of our national society, with a strong ending, a good ending. Let's end this week together with our Sunday morning dance party! No matter if your week was good or bad, let's make it a GOOD ending with some glad dancing together. Because we will have a new beginning coming soon. A week from today will be a BIG ending in our lives. I can feel it already. Our ever-accelerating drama these past 4 years, this year especially, of national, and global news, with daily twists and turns is now finally decelerating as we come down for a landing, hopefully not a crash & burn one, but a smooth glide into the safety of our national destination. The ending of America's four years of political turmoil with our social connections splitting us into deeper divides than we've known ever in our country, and with the invisible enemy virus among us, wedging us even more deeply apart... its been a season of overwhelming levels of conflict, ferrrrr sherrrrrrr. But to be fully ready for our next beginning, to make it a GOOD beginning, we need to get ourselves ready. You see, in order for our Democratic-Republic USA nation to work properly this coming Tuesday, Election Day. . . (did you VOTE yet?) . . . we each need to be fully actualized, woke, strong-spirited and enacting our full, good, empowered agency. In order to be the good, strong citizens that our nation needs us to be, we need to be of sound mind, heart and body. YES! We must prepare to be the best we can be -- for the sake of rescuing our republic's democracy. We can, and we MUST do it. Yes we must! So let's get ready! ... by making a great ending to this week, so we can have a great beginning next week for our nation! And no better way than to join me this Sunday morning to fill our minds, hearts and bodies with great music, dance and friendship to launch us all together into an awesome new beginning for ourselves, for the democracy of our nation, and for the world. -- Dance with you soon! -- Teacher Peggy
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Sometimes I'm just not feeling it.
I'm too down to dance. But when I turn on the music, (good music!) and start stepping my feet into the rhythm of the song, stretching my arms into the air, lifting my head up, and feeling the beat propel me into a rhythm, then my feeling changes. The energy starts to flow. And, along with my body getting energized by the dance song, my mind gets pulled in too. Too often, grey thoughts fill my brain, weighing my spirit down from the difficulties of my week. But when I start moving to the music (again, I mean GOOD music), that greyness starts turning into yellow, green, blue and purple hues of happiness. Not only does my cardio-muscular self grow stronger, my mental health is growing happier with each step I take to the beat of the music. On top of that, when I start sharing this kinetic happiness with other, real, live people, even if across the zoom screens, it adds an extra layer of goodness. When I share smiles and words with real people, seeing them dance with me, roughly the same moves, to the same music ... yeahhhhhh... this is how we step up our minds into health. First it's with the smallest of physical steps, we move our feet. Then that momentum begin to pump the good energy into our minds, pushing out those heavy negative and depressing thoughts. As music soaks into our brain, flows through our muscles, it transforms our stiff tendons & heavy bones into musical instruments. Each song translates into a different flavor of movement, unleashing a force in our spirit to light up with bliss, a bliss which is then multiplied exponentially by each person we share it with. And that, my friends, is how dance steps up our mental health. In my mentally frazzled state this month--
feeling overwhelmed, discouraged and depressed after a crazy all-online launch of UCSC classes last week-- I really needed an emotional lift. Sunday's dance did it for me. The weekly dance has become a dependable boost for my spirit into that higher plane of happiness. The combination of physical aerobics, wonderful music, and most of all seeing other REAL people dancing with me, really gets the happy vibes flowing. Judging from the glowing faces and happy comments from the others, the dancing sparked a happy feeling in them too. Tonight I watched an ominous docu-movie "the Social Dilemma" about how our social media is rigged to powerfully manipulate all of us to engage in NON-healthy behaviors (usually for corporate profits). Our primal instincts are powerfully triggered to watching lots of unhelpful, even deceptive media, and neglect less powerful, but more beneficial interests that we actually want. Like THIS one! So I realize my small dance news is competing for YOUR attention against some overwhelmingly POWERFUL forces that are highly designed to KEEP YOU too busy with MUCH less worthwhile things. They are FORCES that suck your attention away from the interests that you actually want to do, that you know are healthy and BEST for you... like this DANCE community! So I commend you few people, dear reader, who have said NO to those powerful forces calling you away with a siren song to those less worthwhile things, and you've resisted enough to keep reading THIS far. HOORAY! People like YOU who prioritize the quieter , truer voices that speak life to you, not deception and destruction. Ironically, some of the people I've befriended at my favorite SOCIAL dances up over the hill, are among the very people helping develop those powerful tools (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix) Yes, they REALIZE how valuable and satisfying social dancing is for our MENTAL-SOCIAL-PHYSICAL-SPIRITUAL HEALTH to combat social TECH media with physical social activities like Social DANCING!!! So THANK YOU dear dancer, Thank you for being wise enough to make that choice too, that you want to pursue the goodness of the art of dancing. May the FORCE of happiness grow powerfully deeper and stronger in you as you spend time connecting with our dancing community! -- Teacher Peggy |
FOOT Notes from Teacher PeggyAuthorPeggy Pollard has been teaching social/ballroom dance in Santa Cruz since 2010. Archives
September 2022
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