Happiness
I feel happy. How often are you self-reflecting on the day and feel an inner peace, contentment and child-like happiness because life just feels good? Obviously life ebbs and flows, some days are good, others feel like it is just a necessity to make it to the end and sleep for a re-set. But moments of feeling pure happiness? It is the most beautiful feeling!
I had two group classes on Sunday - Bachata Level 3 and a Ladies Styling class. Both are very challenging, as I am going back to the drawing board a little and fixing a few issues in my dancing… namely making sure I am appropriately shifting my weight and increasing my sensativity and responsiveness to my leads. I am loving learning the technicalities because I know that it will dramatically help my dancing. It was laying in bed once I got home that it hit me on how happy I felt! It is the combination of several things. 1) I love dancing (duh) and the mental focus of learning new moves and body positioning makes my brain work. I love a challenge. 2) The teachers. They are so passionate about what they do and so encouraging. I live for the positive feedback AND the super direct corrections because I know they are really focused on helping me get better. 3) I love watching the final song dance at the end when the instructors incorporate what we learned over the season… because watching the beauty, connection and fluidity gives me the same chills as when I first saw the couple dance bachata in Grand Caymen. And, because it gives me something to work towards. 4) I adore the other students. I am not sure if all dance studios are like this, but I have found a home at my studio in a way I didn’t think possible when I first started lessons. <I’ll come back to this>. The other students all radiate warmth, everyone is smiling, trying hard to learn the moves, laughing when there are awkward moments of weird pelvic tucking, or head bumping or running into the couple beside you. It is all makes for the best time and the whole room is vibrating with kindness and happiness. It is really incredible!
Back to when I first started lessons post-Covid. I remember walking out of a class with the teacher/studio owner, totally high on endorphins and telling her I was going to talk to all of my friends and see if I could rally everyone to start taking dance lessons with me. She responded that would be great but told me I would also make lots of new friends. We were walking down the stairs from the studio where we had the lesson, and I really didn’t believe her. I thought she was probably just saying that and it would be like any other social activity in LA, yes, I would meet people but I would only see them every once in awhile (maybe) and after the series was over, that would be it. This could not have been further from the truth. People who fall in love with dance are a special, special breed of human. They don’t just maybe make plans to hang out and maybe you will see them occasionally. No, we dance all of the time, as much as we can outside of our 9-5’s and when you have the bug, you take more and more lessons. Often, you see the same faces multiple times a week and when you go out social dancing, almost all of the faces become familiar. You travel with these new friends, you share bandaids and hair ties with these friends, you share beds and hotel rooms at festivals and eat together, cry together, laugh together and develop a deep friendship that is rare as an adult. You meet some new people who may become your closest friends in life and you meet so many like-minded people. Many, like myself, have found dance when they wanted to find a way to live and express life in a more creative way than what is experienced in “normal” life, work, etc. It is magical. Dance is magical. The friendships and shared experiences are magical. Dance is Happiness.
Dancers love a good theme party!