By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing
Trying to feel thankful today? I’ll help you with that. First, today, Thanksgiving Day, is our is our one-year Anniversary of our Sentinel’s Young At Heart” section! To celebrate and warm up your Thanksgiving spirit, here’s my free Turkey Trot Dance video lesson I posted one year ago: www.youtu.be/R-3df05X4AM You’re welcome. Next, here’s my simple way to help you and any Thanksgiving companions focus on thankfulness. Take a large sheet of paper. With a marking pen, draw a bare tree trunk and branches. Write at top: “In 2021 We are Thankful For:” Then take a few sheets of autumn-esque colored paper-- red, brown, yellow, orange, green. Cut small spear-shaped leaves about 3” long. Give each person a few leaves to write what they are thankful for on. Scotch tape the leaves onto the tree. Voila! You have a Thanksgiving Tree to decorate your wall and save for your historical records. Now here’s what to write on those little leaves: Start BIG. What happened this year in the news, worldwide or local? If the first answers popping into your mind are negative things, which admittedly, there were plenty of this year, then you are especially in need of counting your blessings today. This is exactly why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of all. We all need it to lift our spirits to a higher level. From the big global scale down to micro-level, we need this day to refocus our hearts and minds away from our endless daily problems, into thankfulness for all the goodness in our lives. Being thankful helps us walk in the reality of the love that truly surrounds us. And being thankful together really helps. So, I ask people I know what they are thankful for. My husband the doctor instantly volunteers his thanks for the miraculous COVID vaccines appearing this year, and for this week’s new pill for COVID, the first pill effective against a common cold virus, which COVID is one of. Other common answers: family, friends, work, school, food, world peace – good, sincere answers. Though not creative, they fit the ancient wisdom of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes chapter 2. Surmising that “everything is meaningless,” the sage also advised that in life, “there is nothing better than to enjoy food and drink and to find satisfaction in work.” For myself, after another year of national turmoil I’m especially thankful for the hard-working hero's of our legal system and free press, lawyers and journalists bringing truth and justice to our troubled land. I’m also thankful for my small part in making the world better, in small ways, from our little corner of it. I’m thankful for my nice dance partners, especially awesome dance assistant Mike. I’m also thankful I am helping others discover dancing joy at our Wednesday and Sunday dances. Because for dancers, to have strength to dance, whether solo or with partners, gracefully or not, to dance at all is a lot to be thankful for. To dance is also a beautiful way to give thanks. It might even be contagious. (and thus TikTok happened) Just try it today. Turn on music, stand up and start to moving to it. Then offer someone your hand and see what happens. If they join in, you have doubled the amount of joy in the room. Then write this down on your paper leaves: “I’m thankful I can dance” Dancing is more powerful together. After my absence of almost two years, I returned this week to my beloved ballet class. Stepping into the studio doorway I was enveloped in a big warm hug by my, normally aloof, teacher Rebecca. “Peggy made it back,” she declared to the room full of mask-and-leotard-clad dancers at barres around the walls. The class burst into a round of applause, beaming smiles toward me before refocusing on the lesson. It felt good to be back together with this elite band of dancers. “Most of my dancers have found their way back,” Rebecca told me. “Except a few who have not yet returned,” she added with a worried look. From this enthusiastic welcome I felt like I’d re-joined a covert military team in a clandestine battleground bunker. Because I did. Together under command of teacher Rebecca, we dancers are waging a battle against enemy disease with our military regimen of plies and pirouettes to strengthen body and soul against the evil germs. I’m thankful for my warm welcome back into this special dance community. I’ll write that on my Thanksgiving leaf. I’m also thankful for my own students still finding their way to our dances these past months, thankful I can teach them able to dance. More leaves of thanks. What are yours? What are the most important things this year? Write them down. Post them on your wall. Read them daily. Optimize your happiness. There is no better way to celebrate the goodness you’ve been given this year than to be thankful, and to dance. Join our Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing dances www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
0 Comments
|
FOOT Notes from Teacher PeggyAuthorPeggy Pollard has been teaching social/ballroom dance in Santa Cruz since 2010. Archives
September 2022
Categories |