Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • My brain, on dance

    Thursday I danced a new-to-me Nia routine that included a few steps I’ve never done in quite the way we did them. It got me thinking about why I revel in both the new and the familiar in dance.

    There’s research describing reasons for this. The brain gets a dopamine hit from new experiences. Dopamine plays a surprising number of roles in the body, among them, producing a sense of pleasure. The right amount of dopamine can make me feel happy, motivated, alert and focused.

    Nia also offers the joy of familiar movement. I’ve read that learning builds new neural pathways, which is a healthy outcome. But there’s something also deeply satisfying in knowing what comes next in a choreographed routine and doing it. I particularly like how sometimes my feet just know where to go while I’m attending to other aspects. When I know the steps I can burrow into the music, which is deeply satisfying.

    There’s lots of research around this, and I especially like this New York Times article describing the research: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/arts/dance/dance-neuroscience-body-brain-behavior.html

    What I know experientially is that Nia feels good physically and mentally with its mix of form — following specific steps — and freedom — moving however I feel. After Thursday’s dance a few of us spent a few moments trying to articulate why we love it so much. Then we laughed and shrugged and hugged and went on to the rest of the day.

  • We pause

    What I see depends on where and when I am. If I’d been six feet or so to the right, or five minutes earlier or later, I wouldn’t have seen this bit of rainbow on a mostly blustery day.

    Robert Frost has a fine poem along these lines, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

    I like how the writer pauses in the poem, how he gives himself a moment of quiet and beauty before moving on to travels and tasks.

    May there be a few such moments — pausing for wonder — for all of us.

  • Rear view mirror

    New Year’s resolutions infuse me with excitement. But a week or so before my Jan. 1 ritual, I take a pause to ponder where I’ve been and what I’ve done over the previous year.

    This is easy for me because I maintain a “got done” calendar. It may be counter-intuitive — most people prefer to-do lists — but it helps me settle the dragon, the beast in my brain that is never satisfied. When the dragon’s breathing fire, I can go to my “got done” calendar where I record progress on writing projects, days on which news stories I’ve written have been published, weight loss (and weight gain), days I danced Nia, travel days. I draw this calendar myself in a pink soft-bound notebook with a crow on the cover (to remind me to be curious). It reminds me to celebrate successes, even small ones such as “I wrote four paragraphs” on a day in which writing anything seemed impossible before it was in my rear view mirror.

    I decorate the calendar pages because it excites my eyes to see bright colors. The calendar doesn’t have everything I’ve done each month, but it has the things I don’t want to forget, the things that I can feed the dragon should she rumble. The things that didn’t get done don’t show up here, and sometimes that creates a bit of positive fire, kindling a renewed desire to do them.

    When Jan. 1 2025 dawns, I’ll have a fair idea of where I’ve been and where I am. It may spark thoughts about where I’d like to go. Sometime in the next week, I’ll share my strategy for greeting the new year.

    Meanwhile, may you find bright sparks, joyous dancing, heart-felt singing and kith and kin to share your celebrations.