By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
An army of 2,000 happy social dancers -- this is what our world needs most in the New Year. From our Market St. dance hall to the sea life of the Monterey Bay, from the Amazon to Shanghai, dancing joins our world in a celebration of joy like nothing else. As our dancing year now draws to a close, let us review our past 12 months of happy progress. In 2021 our Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing made small but valiant growth, launching more people in quantum leaps up to higher happiness in their lives. Our 2021 footsteps -- stomping, bouncing, gliding, tapping, cha-cha-cha-ing, echo in Market St. Dance Hall, and in our memories. January -- Still in pandemic lockdown, Mike and I began our second COVID year of SCW&S partnering through the zoom glass. We fiddled with camera angles, sound level, for our weekly Wednesday evening and Sunday sunrise dances. A few local and international guests joined from Ethiopia, England, New York. A professor in from Shanghai China asked me to teach him the Polka step, so he could teach his students. February –Inspired by the amazing sea life of our Monterey Bay, our lessons learned from one sea creature per week, observing from their squiggly personalities, ways of movement we could imitate in our dancing. First, the playful sea otter, rolling and wiggling in perpetual motion added frolicking movement to our Swing dancing. Next, was the clam. Though anchored in one spot, clams can open and close their hinged shell. Likewise, swing partners hinge into open and closed positions. We went on to study the movements of the squid, the starfish, sea lions, jellyfish, octopus, and majestic grey whale. So much we learned from each! May -- After a year of careful COVID quarantining, we gladly took the miraculous gift of vaccinations. Thanks to a global army of medical researchers, we are now super-powered against those evil germs. July-- In-person dances re-start! Giggling, we shyly rediscover the delights of pressing flesh palms together. For those of us who kept practicing during our 1.5 years Shelter at Home, our partnering skills quickly return. New dancers joined in this fall, learning Waltz & Swing thrills with us. December – Huzzah! More dance venues re-open. Severino’s, Cubberley’s Ballroom, Friday Night Waltz -- my social dancing mother ship, a whirling group of genteel waltzers trained by Stanford University’s renowned Social Dance teacher, Dr. Richard Powers, himself. At FNW’s Christmas Dance I helped check forehead temperatures and vaccination records for more than 200 guests. I noticed most had lost much dancing fitness and I secretly gloated that, thanks to my continued dance practice, I was in better dance shape than many of that younger university crowd. If you are one of those COVID dance dropouts, don’t worry. By all means, DO jump back in to dance, after being FULLY VACCINATED, (ahem). You will be warmly welcomed back, along with the 90% of other dance delinquents, to stumble through it together and catch back up again quickly. But, for those few of us who kept it up, yeah, that feels sweet. Then, in a delightful finish to my dancing year, a new friend from Brazil joined our final dance. After our Waltz, Swing and Polka lesson; she taught us a Brazilian Samba, then an indigenous Amazon tribal dance from her area. Awesome! Now time to give thanks. We dancers have so much to be grateful for: “Thank you for reminding my family to dance on Thanksgiving. It’s become a tradition. We don’t Turkey Trot, but we sure dance big time between dinner and pumpkin pie. This year it was raining. 14 of us put on the rain gear, went out on the deck and danced.” -- Katherine Beiers, past mayor of Santa Cruz. Mike is thankful this year for ”all the golfing and dancing that I do. I’m dancing 6 to 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Whenever I’m dancing, I turn into a better version of me.” I myself am grateful for -- - my assistant Mike, a treasure, indefatigably positive even when we goof up steps, harmonious and friendly who enjoys welcoming new dancers and continually learns new skills. - every dancer who bravely walked through our dance class door, taking that hardest step of all... showing up. - my own progress in developing our dance program...trying many things, learning from our many mistakes with a forgiving audience. Now that we’ve chronicled this crazy, 2021 Quarantine Year of partner dancing, Here’s my dance predictions for the new year. I predict that, armed with vaccinations, our social dance army will continue growing in numbers, health and happiness as a primal outlet of creativity and joy in our lives. So let’s sing what we look forward to: In our twelve months of 2022 my partners dance with me: - 12 Viennese Waltz Spins - 11 Redowa leaping - 10 Cupid Shuffles - nine Oslo Waltz Mixers - eight Crazy Swing Moves - seven Tokyo Polkas - six Chaos Mixers - FIVE – GREY – WHALE - TANGOS - four Turning Boxes - three Cowboy Cha-Chas - two NightClub 2-Steps - and “Jerusalema” under a pear tree So there you have our New Year gift of dance to you. From every corner of our planet, undersea creatures of Monterey Bay, to Amazon jungle tribes, to Shanghai university halls, dancing connects our spirits in in a kinetic celebration of life, our gift to the world. Jump into the joy with us in 2022.
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By Peggy Pollard, www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
I’m feeling it. Are you? The annual downward migration I call ABFOF: AUTUMNAL BELLY FAT OVER FLOW Don’t worry, it’s a normal process -- our annual human winterizing of our bodies. Just as we winterize our homes, shuttering windows, wrapping water pipes, hauling winter clothes down from the attic, our bodies too, need an annual powering-down time. We humans, like most mammals, need to hunker down into winter hibernation mode, both physical and emotional low energy phase. This week I really felt it. Right at its usual time. It does not feel great. Our summer of cool fog at last dissipated into our golden annual October bliss. The balmy air felt so glorious. Until, last Wednesday, it didn’t. The temperature dropped into that joy-killing chill. Even the sun couldn’t summon up enough enthusiasm to arc so high above the clouds. The trees lacking sufficient moisture into their roots this drought year, failed to push their sap up, up, way up into those high branches. So their leaves glowed a last glorious blaze of yellow orange, crimson red, before withering into crumpled flakes. Along with the leaves and daylight, down, down falls all my physical energy too. I felt it drop wayyyyy down into my gut. Then with a dastardly turn, balloons out into overflowing belly fat. ABFOF strikes again! I feel the extra weight in front of me at all times, I try jiggling it, massaging it, squeezing the bulges into spandex. But no good. The extra fat remains. I’ve just learned from Howard LeWine, M.D. Editor in Chief, of Harvard Men's Health Watch that ABFOF has another name: “Visceral Fat.” That does not make me feel any better about it. But identifying any problem is 50% of solving it, I believe. And he does motivate me, since Dr. LeWine warns that that it’s important to get rid of it because “excess belly fat creates serious health risks, even if you are only mildly overweight.” Plus I’m encouraged that his advised solution works great with social dancing. LeWine recommends at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity stress-reducing aerobic exercise, five days per week. Perfect for social dancing! Because, right about now, end of October, just as the sunlight and thermometer drops lower, so does our energy for physical activity. Thus, our schedule, even our DANCE schedule needs to be winterized. I’ve seen the pattern every year. A burst of September ambition. A new school year! A new dance class! But oh how quickly it becomes too much. My usually very manageable schedule suddenly feels overwhelming, requiring far more effort than I now can muster. What reports can I now avoid? Will anyone notice if I ghost that meeting, skip doing that project? So, what is our wise thing to do, in this predictable slowing down time of year? We have three choices in this annual battle of seasonal energy change:
Adjust your expectation of “success” in exercising. Aiming for a survival maintenance schedule is OK. I Give You PERMISSION! Perhaps instead of daily, every other day, or every other week is OK. A half hour of dancing instead of a full hour is still highly beneficial. In fact the key secret to successful health is . . . -- Lower Your Expectations -- Appreciate what you already have; respect your limits. How do we Winterize our Dancing? In little bits, that’s how. Keep dancing but do it in little bits. And you will feel good about it. Over Flow Bellyfat beGONE! To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to plan, and a time to uproot, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Winterize your social dancing with us in Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing ==================================== By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
Our emergence from pan demic isolation to redis cover face-to-face society, delighted us in June. ...palm-to-palm hand-hold while waltzing! ... wow! ... But now our long August vacation days are shorten ing into crisper schedules of Autumn. Memories of far-away travels, or indolent stay-cations are engraved permanently into history, recorded in our brains and phones. Schools are convening. Families hunker into re vised weekly rhythms. The end of Summer 2021 draws nigh. Sigh. So get ready! Next week calendars turn to the glowing “-ember” months of fall. We must now settle into newly polished schedules for our next year. So this last week of August is the PERFECT time to re-evaluate our exercise schedule to make this our healthiest ever year in body, mind and soul. Doctors say that the #1 most important thing most Americans can do to improve their health is regular exercise. What we need are weekly HABITS, to minimize our stress, maximize our happiness. Here are the seven BEST Exercise Habits you need to do to make 2021-22 your healthiest, happiest ever. HABIT ONE: Find Enjoyable Exercise – Because, we all know, if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t keep doing it. (pssst… machines are boring!) No matter how many $$ you invest in an exercise or cycling, machine or gym membership, machines are very limited in the type of movement you can do on each one. Admittedly, a machine may get you STARTED exercising, and can be a good addition to your exercise repetoire. But as the extremely high annual dropout rate of gym membership every October and February shows, just the amount of $$ you spend is not what will KEEP you going in regular exercise. It’s the amount of enjoy ment you get from the exercise that WILL. Whether ballroom/social dancing (the best IMHO), competing on a soccer team, long beautiful countryside bike rides, mountain climbing,or JiuJitsu grappling, the ideal exercise gets you beyond thinking “I need to exercise” to… “I love doing this activity so much I don’t want to stop after three hours.” The best exercise is when it no longer feels like “exercise. It feels like your purpose in life. It feels like you are doing something terrific. Now that is sustainable. HABIT TWO: Exercise with symmetrical, large body movement--- The most important exercise for biggest physical benefit, are moving your body’s major muscles in a rhythmic symmetrical way. Move your WHOLE body the way it was designed to move. Start with walking for the most simple, primal level of fitness. Then add in other big muscle movements such as running, cycling, swimming and SOCIAL DANCING. Big, rhythmi cal, symmetrical move ments keep your whole body strong. You should also include a combination of anaero bic and aerobic exercise. Anaerobic is slow long distance, such as long walks, slow runs, slow Waltzing, Tango, Night club Two-Step. Aerobic exercise is quick sprints, getting you out of breath, such as Polka, Schottische, Quickstep, Fast Swing. The beauty of partner dancing is that it usually includes all three, often in one dance . ..so efficient. HABIT THREE -- Ex ercise to music you love -- studies show that by exercising to music, you will do it more, and more energetically. Plus, music exercises your soul along with your body and mind. As soon as Nat King Cole’s voice croons through my boombox, telling me I’m “Unforgettable” I no longer feel tired, I feel awe some! I’m floating around the room. Or when Pharrell Williams asks if I’m “Happy” I can’t help jumping so big the roof starts bouncing off. No exercise drudgery there. In fact…I know, I know, this will sound a bit crazy, (why has no one has thought of this before?), but doing PATTERNS of exercises, a variety of moves, perhaps with a partner, counterbalancing against each other… wouldn’t that be wild! Then what if we estab lish patterns to synchro nize those movements to inspiring and catchy music? After that we can progress to allow for creative, spontaneous kinds of movement… we should try that some time. So crazy it just might work. But what to call it… hmmm… how about “prancing?” or stanc ing,” “bancing,” “cancing?” Let’s keep thinking, it will come to us. Uh-oh, running out of space and time here, So view my blog www. peggydance.weebly. com/santa-cruz-waltz blog to read the next four essential habits: 4. Schedule Weekly, 5. Balance Solo & Group, 6. Mind With Body, 7. Learn Systematically. Dance with you soon for your happiest year ever! By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
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