holy sweat

Wow! I am still energized and very happy-feeling from a dance class I have long wanted to take, Debbie Nargi-Brown's African-inspired dance. This has been a long-standing class in Santa Cruz and is held in the same building as one of my bellydance classes.

Though I've been taking dance for a long time now (2 1/2 years, just about, if you take into account the ballroom dancing lessons Mr. Strega and I take from time to time), I've been nervous about taking Debbie's class (due to feelings of awkwardness, fatness, etc). This class has three live drummers who are amazing and Debbie is reputed to be a fantastic teacher. Well, I'm happy to report that she is not only an incredible teacher, she moves like nobody I've ever seen (and she's around my age, too).

The basic format of the class is threefold: first, standing in a circle and dancing to the live drummers while following Debbie in very fast, but do-able moves (I was sweating so much that I wondered if I could get through the rest of the class--and I take six hours of dance and yoga all week long!)...then there was a cool-down and stretching period, then the MOST FUN part--the class divided up into small groups of four (usually I hate small groups, which reminds me of being picked last for P.E. in grade school, but people welcomed me into their group right away). Debbie demonstrated a move, and then all the groups of four danced that same move, in turn, across the floor, stopping at the drums. And it was RADICAL dancing, very aerobic and so fun--I was so full of adrenaline and so caught-up in the drumming and learning the moves that I forgot completely my usual sense of dorkiness and awkwardness. There is a huge range of ability in this class, so I felt good about that. There was even an elderly couple who did great! At the end, the group sits down and sings for ten minutes or so; last night, we sang for one of the class members who is having heart surgery soon. This was another big deal for me, singing with others--I have had a lot of healing to do in that regard, too, even though I like to sing.

So, this probably sounds like the most hippie thing I could possibly do, but it was wonderful. Surprisingly, I am not in any major sort of pain today, just a feeling that I stretched a lot. It's nice to come out of dance classes laughing and wanting to do more--I have had my share of a couple of dance classes after which I cried in the car on the way home because, for whatever reason, the class just wasn't good for me on an emotional level. This class made me want to dance all night!

The reason this post is titled "holy sweat" is because one thing that kept me away from exercise, gyms, dance, etc., was the fact that I had to get over my embarrassment about sweating. Without getting into detail, let's just say that I don't "glow" when I am exercising. Still, as they say, I had to get over myself and just get out there, sweat and all.

I guess the most interesting part of yesterday is that Debbie's class was absolutely huge, and at the end, she said, "Well, I don't know where all of you came from, but thank you!" Apparently there were tons of new people, so I wasn't the only one.