More Than Dance

Is it really worth it? The time, the money, the vulnerability, the discomfort of trying something new, and even getting yourself out of the house on a cold day when you'd rather stay home? In this episode, I talk about what makes something worth doing, especially when you don't know what the experience is going to be like until you actually do it. I share how planning my wedding with Jos...

One of the coolest things about dance is that you can give two people the exact same choreography, and it’s going to look different on both of them. And I think that’s something we should be celebrating! In this episode, I’m talking about developing your own sense of style as a dancer, learning to recognize what makes your movement unique, and why you don’t have to dance like anybody else. We talk...

This episode is all about changing your relationship with making mistakes! Can we skip to the good part? The part where dancing is fun! How many of you have started dance or something else and asked yourself "why isn't this fun?"  We want to become so good so fast but we somehow want it to be easy? Think about how you apologize when you make mistakes. We don't treat it like par...

In this episode, I’m talking about slowing down and learning to enjoy the process of dance instead of always trying to get to the next step. I started thinking about this through sewing and videography. When you’re working on a project, there’s usually a finished product you’re working toward. You make something, you complete it, and you get to enjoy what you’ve created. Dance is a little differen...

Beginner dancers are rich in so much: opportunity, experiences, progress, and all of the things they get to discover for the very first time. Think about how much you have to gain when you’re learning something new. One class can completely change the way you move. One correction can make something click. And something that felt impossible a few weeks ago can suddenly become something you know how...

This episode is all about being effective and efficient when it comes to learning dance and understanding that sometimes doing MORE isn’t necessarily going to make you a better dancer. We talk about technique, practicing, and how much you’re actually asking your brain and body to do when you’re learning something new. You’re trying to remember everything you’re learning while also figuring out how...

Do you ever get stuck in that all or nothing thinking where something either has to be 100% or you’re not doing it at all? This episode is all about embracing messy action and learning how to keep moving forward even when things aren’t going exactly the way you planned. I talk about how easy it is to get caught up in wanting everything to be perfect, wanting things to be within our control, and wa...

This episode goes into ALL the reasons why I think dance is one of the best forms of exercise you can possibly do. Dance is all encompassing. Your body is working with gravity, you’re using spatial awareness, balance, agility, coordination, weight transfers, reaction and timing. Your brain is processing SO much information while your body is trying to actually execute it. You’re training endurance...

This episode is all about reminding yourself that you are a bomb a** b*tch. Because sometimes we forget. Sometimes you’re having a tough day, something isn’t going the way you wanted it to, or you’re questioning whether you can do something. And yes, you can call your friend and have them remind you who you are OR you can be that person for yourself. You can be the one who says, “I’m a bomb a** b*...

This episode is all about positivity and how positivity is one of the secrets to becoming a better dancer. I talk about what you’re feeding your brain when you’re in class because your brain is listening to you. If you keep telling yourself all the things you’re doing wrong, eventually you’re going to believe that. But the same thing can happen when you start pointing out the things you’re doing R...

This episode is all about finding your community of people and how dance can help you do that. The dance studio is such a great place to become part of something that is SO much more than dance. You’re around like minded women, you’re seeing the same people every week, you’re learning together, and you’re going through a lot of the same things together. And I talk about this from my own perspectiv...

This episode is all about shifting your goals and giving yourself permission to change them. When you set a goal, you can have every intention of doing it, but you also don’t necessarily know what’s going to be realistic for you that year. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know how you’re going to feel. You don’t even know if you’re going to want the same thing six months from now....

Remembering that dance is athletic is really helpful because when you dance, at some point, you’re probably going to experience some kind of pain. In this episode, I go through the steps of working through what’s happening in your body and figuring out what to do with it. There are different kinds of pain, different reasons for it, and different ways we need to respond to it. The idea isn’t that y...

In this episode I talk about declaring that something is worth celebrating. I talk about my journey with celebrating the studio’s anniversaries and how every year I would create a party and a theme, but I don’t know that I ever really felt like anyone could understand the magnitude of what I was actually accomplishing. And it got me thinking about celebration and validation and why sometimes somet...

That night you struggled you actually did a lot more. Sometimes its not about the exact dancing and getting it exact that is why or how you enjoy a dance class In this episode I give you my best tricks for not accepting defeat and how to take control before it controls you. I teach you how to make it a place of ease and not a place of stress with examples like: 1. Living in the moment, being prese...

This episode is to help get you READY for what your first dance class is actually going to be like. Dance will challenge you physically, mentally AND socially. I don’t want you walking into your first class thinking it’s going to go perfectly. Because that’s delusional. And I know you KNOW that, but there’s still this little part of us that wants to walk in, pick everything up, look like everybody...

There is something really special about being BRAND NEW at something. In this episode, I talk about the joy of being a beginner dancer and how freeing it can actually be to walk into a room where nobody expects you to have it all figured out yet. Dance gives us this really cool opportunity to play again. To make time in our lives for something that is literally just FUN, meet people who are figuri...

This episode is all about when you feel like you’re doing EVERYTHING, but somehow it feels like you’re doing nothing. This happens in dance all the time, especially when you’re learning something hard or trying to achieve a new skill. It might look like you don’t have it yet. You didn’t get the move. You didn’t memorize all the choreography. So it feels like nothing happened. You’re working on SO...

This episode is all about pivoting, gaining control, letting things go, and really asking yourself if you’re able to release something and trust the process. We have expectations. We think something is going to go a certain way and then when it doesn’t, we immediately want to figure out how to gain control again. But we aren’t necessarily meant to gain control. We’re meant to learn how to pivot an...

This episode is all about why you should do the easy thing first (contrary to what doing the easy thing first and how doing something easy can actually help you get A LOT more done because it creates momentum. Especially if you’re feeling stuck with dance or maybe you’re trying to get back into it, do what’s easy first. It could be taking the easier class level. Maybe it’s taking a shorter class....

In this episode, I’m talk all about DATA and how tracking things has become one of the best ways for me to understand my mood, my progress, and sometimes even the illusions I have about where I think I am versus where I actually am. Sometimes we work really hard to get somewhere, but when we actually get there, we don’t recognize it. (ep 18) We’re still thinking we’re trying to get there. And then...

In this episode, we’re playing with speed. Just like I use dimming and exaggerating to change the size of a movement, one of the teaching techniques I use all the time is changing the speed of choreography to change the way you learn it. Sometimes I slow it WAY down. Slowing something down gives you more time to think. You can actually see the transitions, figure out where your weight needs to go,...

Through the many, many dance lessons I’ve taught over the years, I’ve figured out one of the easiest ways to make someone a better dancer in less than five minutes. Exaggerate the movement. When dancers are first starting out, they usually don’t realize how much space they actually need to take up. So when I tell someone to make something HUGE, what feels ridiculously big to them usually ends up b...

This episode is a little trip down memory lane and about knowing that dance is something that lives within you. I talk about going back to my old studio for the alumni show, being part of the recital again, and getting to think about all of the people and experiences that helped shape me as a dancer and as a person. I even got to learn about my former dance teacher and her studio, which made me th...

If you’ve taken a break from dance and you’re thinking about coming back to it, this episode is here to remind you that dance is something you can always come back to. Your body is going to remember a lot more than you think it will. I talk about going to the gym and doing squats after I hadn’t done them in a really long time. Of course there were some things I needed to relearn, but there were al...