Get On Down Right Now

I just read an article on the BBC News website that filled me with joy and hope right on the spot.

Right on the spot?

Yes!!

The article described the amazing benefits of taking a five-minute dance break every day.

All by yourself! Just get your best music on and start flying around the kitchen and the living room and the dining room. Even down the hall. Leaping, striding, sashaying, swirling, twirling, swiveling your head, waggling your derrière, and so forth. Arms high in the air, too. Enjoy yourself in front of your biggest mirror!

According to the numerous experts cited in the article, including one Vassilios Panoutsakopoulos, assistant professor at the Biomechanics Laboratory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and a co-author of a study into the benefits of dance breaks, dancing offers a unique mix of physical, cognitive, and social benefits.

Yes indeed. Dancing improves fitness, psychological well-being, and cognitive health. It has been found to lower the risk of dementia. A five-minute dance break was also found to improve children's focus on (boring) school subjects following the break.

The experts say that improvised dancing (that stuff with just you in the kitchen) stimulates divergent thinking and improves creativity. The dancing will also lead to greater strength, improved body confidence, and better balance.

Also, if you have a partner to dance with, apparently dancing is conducive to enhanced social connection and the bonding that flows from the release of feel-good endorphins and hormones.

All that from goofing around the house with the music cranked up and dancing your heart out, dancing your stiffness and creakiness away, and reliving the best moments of your youth.

As little as five minutes can give you noticeable benefits. Such as just plain feeling good.

So, isn't this good news?

It is so pleasing to learn that something you very well might like to do just for the fun of it is immensely good for you, as opposed to being told that doing push-ups, sit-ups, and chin-ups is the only way to go.

In the past, we were told that studies showed we could get good benefits from eating dark chocolate and drinking red wine. Later studies backtracked on those earlier studies. The initial pronouncements were too good to be true.

But somehow, this dancing stuff does not sound too good to be true. It sounds sort of plausible. What is amazing is that just five minutes can give us benefits.

So what is stopping you? Do you feel a little self-conscious? Thinking you will try this tomorrow, not today?

Come on, you great lunk. Go out there right now, turn on your favourite up-tempo music from long ago—preferably a playlist—and shake your booty for five minutes. Ser the timer on your stove.

I dare you.

................................................................................................................................................

In the interests of honest reporting, I just went to the kitchen and requested first Lucretia MacEvil (Blood, Sweat & Tears), and then I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye), on the speaker. These two numbers lasted longer than five minutes in total, but I stopped dancing when the oven timer went off.

I definitely feel smarter and more well-balanced. Also slightly frisky.