Guest Post – How I Went From Burnt Out… to Owning the Dance Floor Again

Please welcome Cesar Barragan to the blog! We connected on Instagram after I saw a post of his talking about his work with dancers aged 30 to 50 years old (yes, 30 to 50!). After chatting, I knew you would be interesting in learning more. So without further ado…


There’s a moment I’ll never forget.

I was standing at the edge of a social dance floor, watching everyone move so effortlessly. The music hit…a song I used to love…and my body didn’t respond the way it used to. My steps felt stiff, hips resisted, and the confidence dipped.

It wasn’t my technique or the music. It was me feeling disconnected from the movement, the joy, and from myself.

If you’ve ever walked off a dance floor thinking:

“Why doesn’t my body move like it used to?”

“Why am I so tired after just a few songs?”

“Why am I working so hard and still not seeing results?”

I’ve been there.

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I Hurt My Back Doing Body Rolls in Zumba (Happy EDS Month)

I turned “the meaning of life” years old this year, but that’s not why I hurt my back (gold star if you got the reference). Some exuberant body rolls in Zumba class aren’t really the reason either, just the trigger.

May is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Awareness Month. Ehlers-Danlos is the reason I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with my heating pad. Since being diagnosed a year ago with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), I’ve learned a lot about this connective tissue disorder and how to manage the symptoms that come with it. I first became aware of EDS through social media when someone else shared their own diagnosis. So I thought I would pay it forward in honor of the month, just in case I can help another dancer find some answers.

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Since We Last Spoke – Life and Dance Updates

Photo by Budgeron Bach on Pexels.com

Hello dancers! I know it’s been awhile. While I’ve been living a full life in the physical world, to be honest, I’ve been more than happy to not be bothered with the digital world and its insatiable appetite for new content. However, I first connected with many of my readers and dance friends on this blog, so for those of you who want to know what I’ve been up to, keep reading! If you’re just coming across this website, this post will be far less relevant to you, but I invite you to keep reading anyway, if you like.

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Guest Post: The Mental Health Benefits of Dancing by Rachel James

Please welcome to the blog, Rachel James! She is a fellow blogger out of the UK who kindly put together a few important reminders for all of us dance enthusiasts. The topic of this article may seem obvious to us, but obvious benefits can be easily taken for granted. Also, what is obvious to us is not obvious to all. So help spread the word! Let everyone know about the wonderful and amazing mental health benefits of dance.

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Understanding Why My Body Hurts

Happy Saturday, dancers! Life has kept me busy over the last few weeks. I was travelling for about a week (airports and airplanes were a lot fuller than my last trip in February!). The day after I returned home, I was sitting in line to get my second dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine. I’ll be fully charged in another week, yay! Go go gadget Covid shield! For those interested, I had one day of fever and body aches following the shot. Unfortunately, the body aches triggered one of my headaches (it doesn’t take much) and that hung around for several days. It was interesting how the fever and body aches came and went. I described it to a friend like doing a system check – flip the switches on and then flip them off. I was feverish and then I wasn’t. There was no lingering.

Luckily, I was free of all symptoms in time for my first dance lesson in two weeks. I didn’t have the opportunity to solo practice while I was gone (aside from visualizations), so my body was either going to love or hate me for jumping back in. Sometimes I feel like the Tin Man during those first few dance steps as I shake the rust off my joints. Our warmup Waltz felt pretty good though!

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Sometimes You Just Gotta Check Out

If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you may have noticed that I typically post a new article every weekend, with the occasional bonus guest post or interview in the middle of the week. Last weekend, I decided not to post. In fact, last weekend I decided to check out of several of my usual activities, including watching or reading the news and checking in on my social media feeds.

It was all part of my election week selfcare plan.

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After Seven Months, I’m Still Grieving

It’s been over seven months since the pandemic sent me home to work at my kitchen table until further notice. In addition to packing up my cubicle, I had to clear my schedule. The ballroom dance competition where I was going to debut in a new style, the wine-tasting trip that a close friend and I were taking to celebrate our birthdays, the cruise to Alaska with my mom — it was all wiped away by our unwelcome guest, SARS-CoV-2…

Continue reading on my Medium page.

It’s the Little Things

As we advance along our ballroom dance journey, the fixes, adjustments and tweaks we make to create higher quality movement become smaller and smaller. We learn what the steps are, how to do those steps, and then how to actually dance in between and through the steps. Each level builds on the one before it. This process can get frustrating though because every time you start to think you know what you’re doing, you find out you’ve barely scratched the surface.

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