The Magic of Dance

I have been a dancer for a long time, and it still amazes me every time how much of a feeling of love and healing seems to permeate my whole being at each dance and that feeling lasts throughout the next day as well.

Why is that? What is so heart opening about dancing? Perhaps because it is nonverbal. When I am dancing, it is all about feeling the movement and moving smoothly with my partner so that the grace and fluidity just flows through.

When I am dancing, there is only the music and the movement and I am completely in sync with it. All my other concerns about other situations all disappear while I am dancing. No matter what else is happening, no matter what other problems or challenges I have been wrestling with, once I do the first dance of the evening, I feel better.

Surrounded by joy and smiling faces, how could your spirits not be lifted?

My feeling is that the key to feeling better and the way that dancing works is that when you are fully engaged in the movement of dance, you get all those good things stirred up in your blood, the endorphins, oxygen, healing blood cells, all that good stuff starts circulating, and while your body is busy coordinating with your partner, mental chatter is more than just off to the side, it is quieted completely. At least for me it is.

That is why I always keep dancing in my weekly schedule, with only occasional interruptions due to work. Certainly there are some dance partners you like better than others and certain ones you are able to dance with better, and in that difference, I sense a degree of heart connection. There is an openness in that moment and a requirement that you be present, and there is always a flow of love that I sense, even if I would not say that I am in love with that person, a sense a connection in dance that goes to the core of recognizing that no matter what else might be going on with that person that we do not even know about, that it does not even matter, just as long as they will be present enough to dance with me, and that shared moment is a crystal gem of unity and genuine care for each other, at least potent enough to transmute the energy of the moment into something truly magical: a dance.

So simple, and so powerful. I keep looking for ways to make more moments in my life into moments of dance. It is magic.