Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • The daily groove

    Nia trainer Debbie-Lee van Ginkel leading an 8-minute dance break.

    Day 52 of 52 Nia dance

    Well, this has been a thing. It feels good to have done what I committed to do — dance every day for seven weeks and three days, 52 days of dancing in recognition of the 52 moves of Nia. Besides the feelings of improved aerobic fitness and strength, I also have a boost of optimism from having done the thing I said I’d do, despite some challenges along the way.

    I’m not sure what it means for me going forward. Will I continue to dance every day? My today body does not know.

    Today I chose a sampler of routines, bits from Ignite and others. Tomorrow is a mystery.

    I have been so grateful for friends and family and for the dance community, both locally and globally, who have followed this blog of my progress. As of today 597 readers have stopped by here. They’ve visited from 16 countries, and I especially want to send a virtual wave to a reader in Ireland, who has been a regular visitor. Thank you! It’s amazing to feel connection to dancers in Sweden, the UK, Cambodia, Israel, India, Bermuda and France, among many others. The dancers I get to be with in the studio helped me keep my enthusiasm up when it flagged.

    Here’s some data about my 52 days:

    • 23 — The number of distinct routines danced (including a rogue Led Zeppelin routine choreographed by me.
    • 30 — Number of times I danced at home with online routines
    • 22 — Number of times I danced in the studio
    • 17 — Number of instructors whose routines I danced
    • 43 — Number of days I danced a full 60-minute routine
    • 9 — Number of days I danced 5- to-30 minute routines

    Thanks for following this dance journey.

    Can’t sign off without leaving this link to one of my all-time favorite songs to dance to. Its lyrics knock me out every time, especially these two lines:

    “Tune in, log out, be here, go on,” and

    “You never have to wonder where the groove went, the groove is you.”

  • Spirit flower

    Day 51 of 52 Nia dance

    Pineapple sage (salvia elegans) is a perennial (in Oregon) and part of the mint family. It doesn’t start blooming in my garden until mid September. Then it kind of loses its mind with these spikes of brilliant red. The neighborhood hummingbirds love it.

    I do too. It will keep blossoming like this until we get some freezing weather and that could be well into December. Enjoying it this morning right before I started Nia, I decided that salvia elegans is my spirit flower, blooming spectacularly but late in the season when many other flowering plants have wrapped up the show.

    Today I did a repeat of the moving to heal routine “Selfless,” which I tried for the first time on Sunday and found quite emotionally cathartic. Today’s experience was less fraught, more just enjoying the routines and the music.

  • Mind’s eye

    Day 50 of 52 Nia dance

    Whenever our Nia instructor Dael Parsons brings Linaia — the 2-foot tall model skeleton — to class, I know I’ll learn something. Often it’s about our joints, maybe range of motion, or about gaps I didn’t know existed, say in the lower pelvis. (Really, where those two big scoopy meet.) But today, she was there as inspiration. Dael asked us to imagine our heads attached to a star. It’s so interesting how that mental image brings my body upright, how my bones all feel aligned, and also, how there’s a greater sense of space. It’s the same way I feel when I take in a good breath, my diaphragm drops and I feel like my rib cage opens up a bit.

    This imagining served me nicely as we danced “U.” Highlight of this great routine for me was dancing to the song “U R the Answer” by Michael Bernard Beckwith. The song leads with the line “Something wonderful is always on the verge of happening,” and it’s backed by a pulsing dance-club beat. So energizing, inspiring and fun.