This morning I got up at 6am to go to a dance party in the city before starting my work day.

I danced around like a maniac to Jamiroquai and Michael Jackson and all sorts of 80/90s pop classics amongst a crowd of people drinking coffees and green juice (no drugs or alcohol) and dancing around in in colourful sportswear and other mad costumes. Afterwards people headed off to their suity jobs like nothing was amiss.

I used to HATE dancing,

I didn’t know how, I was super awkward, it felt like my arms were glued to my body and the best I could do was bounce up and down a bit. Bit by bit, as I learnt mindfulness, I learnt not to care so much about what people thought, and I slowly realised that I could dance just fine, it was only my mind stopping me. We all know how to move and dance, our mind just stops us doing it from the age that we learn to think “but what will people think of me?”

Dancing is a great mindfulness practice to notice the resistance that comes up when we try to let go and enjoy ourselves like we did when we were a kid.

If dancing scares you, Eleanor Roosevelt and I reckon you should do it anyway:

“The very next thing that you should be doing is the thing that terrifies you the most.”

I love dancing now that I don’t care so much what people think, so this morning was the coolest thing ever. It was called Morning Gloryville (“rave your way into the day”), it started in London and is now all over the world. Check out http://morninggloryville.com/ to see if it’s in your city yet, and GO!

In any case, find yourself some ways to exercise that make you excited to get up and go. Or a personal trainer that is sexy.

There a million and one studies that show that exercise increases energy, brain power and ability to focus, and reduces stress levels. Regular exercise increases the number of mitochondria in our cells. Mitochondria are the little dudes that produce ATP, which is what our cells use as energy.

What better way to exercise than to dance like a madman, get puffed, get the stitch (I did) and laugh a lot at people dancing their ass off dressed as a giant cake?

If you don’t use energy, you lose energy

So get yourself to Morning Gloryville, or 5 Rhythms, or Ecstatic Dance, or No Lights No Lycra – dance events for the sake of dance (not for the sake of getting drunk and hooking up.)

Disclaimer:

By 6am I really mean that BGC woke me up at 6.55am saying “Andrea, you’ve missed the dance party!” But anyway. I still made it, just a bit late. It’s actually the second time I’ve bought a ticket for Morning Gloryville but the first time I actually managed to get out of bed and make it. I’m not a morning person, though I’m trying to be!