Dancing My Way to the Mat: My Journey to Yoga
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People take many different twists and turns on their lifetime pathway through fitness. Some begin with yoga on day one, others choose a road that leads them to yoga later on. Some may consider yoga but are unsure if they can take the plunge - “I don’t know if I can do that,” “That’s not for me, I’m a weight-lifter, jogger, ballroom dancer,” “I’m not sure I can understand the vocabulary so I won’t get it,” “It’s probably too hard/too easy for me.”
It’s understandable to have doubts about something unfamiliar to you but the great thing about yoga is that it can be done by almost anybody, practically anywhere, requires very little equipment and combines wonderfully with other types of body movement and exercise regimes. You don’t need to have been born on an ashram or be able to put your feet behind your head!
No matter which of life’s many meandering paths leads you to yoga, the health benefits of yoga can be reaped by all. I dabbled in yoga on and off over the years and have gradually developed a regular practice over the past five years thanks to Yoga With Adriene videos. But you know what? This is not where I started. It’s been quite the journey to get there!
DANCE, DANCE, DANCE
I took years of dance, starting with ballet and tap at Elaine’s Dance Studio in Ripon, Wisconsin around the age of 5. In my small town in the 1960s and 70s, if you wanted to take dance lessons, that’s where you did it. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a ballerina and truly thought I would be.
Photos sourced from CANVA
Elaine said I had the perfect specially pointy feet for ballet, and suggested my parents could take me somewhere where I could take intensive dance training. But that was just not the kind of thing one did back then and I certainly wasn’t asking to do anything of the sort. You did what was available where you were, that was just part of small town life. And thank goodness for that because I definitely did not have the resilient temperament one needs to be a professional dancer!
I danced in toe shoes for about a year
Keep your eyes on Elaine’s silver shoes!
I loved going to my dance classes once a week, doing tap, ballet and tumbling and performing in the annual shows. My mother patiently sewed my costumes which provided my once yearly interaction with sparkly sequins, so special and rare they were at the time.
I still love the sparkles and that nowadays you can head over to Target or Walmart and pick up skirts, backpacks, slippers, pillows, you name it, entirely covered with sequins of every color. Not so back then!
I eventually left ballet and tap behind and transitioned to modern dance in my teenage years. I continued on into college, dancing with the Ripon College Dance Company throughout my college career. We had a fantastic team of dance teachers - Ella and Mark Magruder, who had just begun teaching at Ripon College and had all kinds of fantastic ideas for training, choreography and performance.
I did a quick google search and felt all happy and warm inside to see their faces again when I found them and saw they’re continuing to pursue their dance trajectory in Virginia.
AEROBICS - TOTALLY RAD
It was at that same time during my college years that a new trend began that took the world by storm and I discovered what was called “aerobics,” very dancy exercise routines. It was all the rage around 1980 and I attended classes galore (any opportunity to wear my many pairs of fashionable leg-warmers).
My sister, who was also in college at the time, even taught aerobics classes at one of the college dorms! The routines were fabulous and so was the music: Gloria by Laura Branigan, Fame by Irene Cara, Karma Chamaleon by Culture Club, She Works Hard for the Money by Donna Summer, Beat It by Michael Jackson, Jump (For My Love) by The Pointer Sisters, Faith by George Michael, I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston, Hit Me With Your Best Shot by Pat Benatar, Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper and the list of great tunes for aerobics goes on!
With the popularity of aerobics came VHS home exercise videos. Our Jane Fonda Workout video got played hundreds of times. My sister, my mom and I couldn’t get enough, I even remember doing the fitness routine outside in the backyard once, blasting it through the window. Crazy fun times!
Look at those skinny, professional dancers, all thin, toned and tanned. Body diversity had not yet been embraced by the burgeoning fitness video industry. Nevertheless the Jane Fonda video series absolutely changed fitness for women and at-home physical exercise. She originally created her video workout because gyms, clubs and other workout spaces were dominated by men in those days and women often did not feel welcome or comfortable in that environment. Jane Fonda’s Original Workout became one of the most popular of all time, selling more than 17 million copies worldwide in 1982. And it has made a tremendous comeback since COVID lockdowns began and helped many people weather the sedentary life and isolation of the pandemic. You can get it here or here!
My years-long career of exercise videos at home thus began with a bang! I also continued to take dance classes into my adult years, moving from modern dance to other dance forms including several years of Flamenco and a bit of salsa and samba.
Eventually my participation in classes tapered off as I had children, developed my career as a conference interpreter and increasingly favored the variety and time-saving plus of home fitness. I can’t believe how many types I’ve done, my favorites always being dance-inspired ones. I added to my VHS and DVD libraries frequently to keep myself engaged and work the various muscle groups in different ways.
Here’s what I was doing in the late 90s and early 2000s:
Altheatized - Funky Dance aerobic workout - and Pump Fit - Althea Lawton-Thomson - These were the two I did the most when I first got back to home fitness videos. They are both excellent and so much fun.
Ellen Barrett Crunch - pilates workouts - Ellen has such a variety of pilates, yogini and targeted videos. I did them over and over, especially the blue one which was my first of her pilates videos and a fantastic workout. You’ll find many more of Ellen’s vast selection of videos here or on her website where she has a streaming membership and video downloads.
Old School Dance Party featuring Sugarhill Gang! - Donna Richardson - Donna is such a fun instructor, plus you get to work out to live music!
Cardio Dance Blast - Marie Forleo — Love the teacher and she has a room full of people having a great time going off to the islands with her.
Dance and Be Fit - Brazilian Body - Kimberly Miguel Mullen - Lots of great Brazilian dance moves presented by Kimberly, accompanied by a man and woman who really know their stuff. And such an apropos setting - they do the routines outside amongst huge palm leaves and bird-of-paradise flowers. Lovely!
Dance Off the Inches Hip Hop Party - Jennifer Galardi - Excellent hip hop dancer, great at teaching it. Hip Hop Party is fun and you can alternate it with Hip Hop Body Blast.
Fame - Dance Workout - Lots of dance moves here, a fantastic workout and lots of fun.
Zumba Exhilarate - A set of several Zumba workouts where the presenters dance on a stage which is a fun, different setting. My fav of the set is Activate where two women take turns teaching the routines and engage in fun banter challenging each other during the routines. In English but with an overdub available in Spanish which is a lot of fun too.
NEXT STOP - YOGA!
We go through many periods in our lives as the decades march on and the types of movement and fitness regimes that fit into our lives and feel right can vary throughout the years. I’m so pleased that I’ve been able to engage is such a variety of artistry and exercise: many types of dance, aerobics classes, home fitness videos, a few attempts at jogging and tennis and a bit of Tae Kwan Do thrown in there.
At one point several years ago I felt I needed a change from the routines I’d been doing at that time and I checked out YouTube for some ideas. I began trying out some yoga videos from time to time and learned the basic movements. Yoga increasingly became my go-to form of physical activity and I began to appreciate it more, the more I learned.
My growing yoga practice has helped me through a period of personal challenges as I found it contributed to an overall sense of stability and balance in my life. I have found that this movement form helps to relieve stress and anxiety which has been a welcome benefit over the many months of the 2020/2021 pandemic.
I took it a step further in January of 2021 and began the 30 Days of Yoga month-long regime offered by Yoga With Adriene. My daughter Ally and I breezed through the month of January program, titled “Breath,” never missing a day on the mat, and were so motivated that we decided to go back and do all of the 30-Day challenges, beginning with the first one Adriene put out in 2015. We completed that one in February and we are now coming up on the end of our third month of every day yoga practice, just finishing up with the 30-Day challenge from 2016 called “Yoga Camp.” We plan to begin the 2017 30-Day journey called “Revolution” now for the month of April. We’ve scheduled the 2018 “True” journey for May, 2019’s “Dedicate” for June and 2020’s “Home” for July. We will have done seven straight months of yoga!
Both my daughter and I feel that this is the perfect spot for us on our journey and plan to stay here and grow our practice. The direction it takes down the road only time will tell. But I know that yoga will always be an integral part of my movement regime on into the future.
