Try Digging Around Inside Yourself

Try Digging Around Inside Yourself

With our recent move in residency to Florida, I changed up my dance instructor/competitive partner. I’m lucky — once again I’ve found someone who has arrived armed with knowledge gleaned from a legendary roster of ballroom professionals, so the information is rolling in and I can feel and see the growth already.

In our first few lessons we spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing my “natural movement patterns.” It turns out that for someone who has lived in this body for decades, I know shockingly little about it — at least firsthand. Mostly, I know what other people have told me: the surgeon explaining that my turnout would never be the same after two hip replacements, the fitness instructor cheerfully requesting we “turn out,” and me immediately launching into an internal monologue of surgical excuses. I’ve absorbed these narratives so thoroughly that I sometimes forget to check what’s actually true for me — what I feel, what I believe, what my body is quietly whispering while everyone else is loudly narrating.

But this isn’t really about what I’m learning about dance at the tender young age of 67. It’s about the way these lessons keep sneaking off the dance floor and into regular life. One thing I know for certain: my arts — ballroom, musical theater, improvisation — all double as self-help manuals if you let them.

And the big lesson here? Most of the answers we’re hunting for are already inside us. Pay attention, put the fear of what you might find aside, and be open to discover what we’ve been carrying all along quietly inside. Trust me, you’re going to love it.