I love Grey’s Anatomy. On the show there are two characters, Meredith (Mer) and Christina (Yang). They are called the dark and twisty sisters because of their mood swings and emotional issues. Anyways, they have this thing where when its difficult to talk or express how they feel or when they didn’t want to deal with reality, they would have a 30-second dance party, music or no music. I thought it was adorable and made for tv. I mean, who dances for 30 seconds…. without music??
My perspective changed this morning when I woke up not feeling totally with it. I was ruminating over unnecessary emotions that left me more icky than yippee. So, I decided to give this 30 second dance party a try. I YouTubed Making My Dreams by Hail and Oates from 500 Days of Summer and I rocked out.
It was liberating. Whatever I was feeling, the icky, tired, uninterested feeling totally left my body. I felt super cheesy and über corny. I probably looked offbeat and crazy, but I was more myself than when I first got up. And, maybe I’m just a super cheesy and über corny girl who dances offbeat with super crazy moves, regardless, my head was clear and I was able to reconnect with me.
You may chuckle at this, it is pretty funny, but there is something to a 30 second dance party. Maybe Mer and Yang did it as a defensive mechanism to avoid expressing how they really felt. I see it as a chance to pause and reconnect. Dancing around for 30 seconds (for me it was more like 5 minutes) allows not just your body, but your mind to become active and aware. Your attention is drawn away from the icky feeling that isn’t really you and totally invested in this short moment of freedom and bliss. It gives you a chance to reconnect with you.
Now it’s your turn. I challenge you to try it. For some, this is really random, weird, and seemingly risky and probably stupid. This may not be your element. Still, I encourage you, just once, to dance it out. Cant knock it, til you try it riiiiiiiighhht? So, when you feel yourself becoming super distracted, feeling icky, stressed, or just sad, throw on an upbeat song or think of an upbeat tune and rock out for at least 30 seconds. Put your mind on pause, tell your heart to rest, and just lose yourself in the music and in the moves. Allow yourself to be free even if it looks weird. You deserve to be free and you deserve to be you. So how bout it?
Til next time,
D