If anyone knows anything about me, it’s that I love dance. So much so, that my mother introduces me as ‘this is my daughter, the dancer,’ and not as ‘this is my daughter, the doctor’. This is not to say that I don’t love my profession, it’s extremely fulfilling and stimulating, but it’s also extremely draining, what with the long on call nights, huge responsibility and the vicarious trauma.
Dance on the other hand replenishes me and gives me the mental and physical resources to better perform said profession. After a 48 h on-call and pent up energy, I go to my International Samba class and shake it all off. Or I lean back and throw myself into a Viennese waltz and spin my fatigue away. I pump up my brain and focus all my attention on making my body move exactly like the amazing professional ballroom dancers. Well, not exactly, but my mother thinks I can, which goes to say that your family and friends can also share your joy of dance and can either become inspired or dance vicariously through you!
Still, I think that ballroom dancing does have some similarities with my profession. Like Medicine, ballroom dancing is very physically rigorous and requires you push yourself, it makes you go down to the nitty-gritty details, it requires you to always be learning, and most of all, it helps develop humility.
You can’t be a good doctor if you aren’t humble and open to learning and self-improvement!
I find this similarity interesting, because many of the members of my dance family also have challenging and demanding professions; engineers, geologists, astronomers, software designers and business women. Evidently, dance offers release not only to the body and soul, but also to the mind.
4 Responses
That’s beautiful! I too find dance keeps me in the present moment and helps release tension.
The list of the benefits of dance is endless! Coming soon to my journal- that very list (or at least a part of it!).
Dancing is certainly engaging and inspires others to join in. What I love about dancing is that it’s something that everyone can do. Moving to rhythm is an innate ability, I believe. Witness how toddlers and babies move instinctively to music. Dancing is one of the many ways we can express ourselves; energy in motion = e-motion.
I love that! e-motion. Moving to rhythm is an innate ability and toddlers are the best teachers in that instance. Once we grow up and develop our self consciousness, self criticism and perfectionism, once we start caring what other’s think of us, we forget that ability. But we can get it back!