Emma from Is My Bum Big In This posted a really good blog post about depression and exercise yesterday – well worth seeing, it’s rare that reading an article on depression can be so uplifting!
Random Happy Dancing Is Good For Depression
Depression is something that Emma and I both battle with – and believe me, it can be a BATTLE. It is all the harder when you are surrounded by people who are ignorant, just don’t get it and worse, think you are wallowing or weak or self indulgent. Stigma makes living with a mental illness all the more a challenge, and also contributes to people feeling unable to ask for help.
She’s written a really good overview about what it’s like living with depression, how exercise can help, and about how it can be hard to help ourselves when we feel so awful – but it’s worth it!
Lately depression has really given me a good kicking, it’s made me just too fatigued, miserable, and in pain to live (and yet, like millions of people around the world, I still do it anyway.) The one thing that’s really shone through this for me has been going back to ballet recently. It’s even been difficult to get out and to ballet – so fearful am I, and so unable to cope with life – and yet, for that hour a week that I’m there and dancing – I’m on cloud nine. The contrast is incredible – shining hope and blissfulness surrounded by a pea soup of misery. Wow.
It’s very true that exercise is a great way to help yourself – it’s a natural mood enhancer, and part of why ballet helps me would be this. The other part is that it’s been my lifelong passion and something that has always been as crucial to me as the oxygen I breathe – to have been robbed of it for all those years was like being suffocated. I know that never again shall I bear to live without ballet in my life.
Whatever YOU like to do to get moving – is sure to be a great boost to your mood. Walking, running, dancing, kicking a footy in the yard – something that gets you MOVING. And even better? Something that gets you laughing!
Last night, Emma’s post inspired me to remember something I stumbled across in a random park years ago. A circle of people sat, clutching shaking bellies, roaring with laughter. I thought they must be bonkers!! And yet, I too started to laugh – I just couldn’t help it. I’d stumbled across a Laughter Yoga Club. Last night I googled Laughter Yoga, and trying to find a funny video of it being done (or happening, sounds better!) I ended up on a tangent that led to tears of mirth and random public dancing.
Would you break into dance in your grocery store?
And a call out to Missy – we need to see that video of you and your mates jamming in the grocery store! 
Enjoy – hope it gets you dancing, too.
I loved the video! I’ve had the urge to dance in the supermarket before, as well as the gym! I always wanted to get up off the exercise bike and shake my booty haha, it’s so frustrating that most people in the gym look so serious.
Love this!
xx
Oh gosh, I’m challenging you to break into dance in the gym and cheer those people up! I can never fathom why people make their exercise so serious either!! It’s a joy to move, and a blessing to be able to!!! Was an honour to feature your blog post here
xx
Happy hormones are one of the main reasons i SWIM!!!! I’m tellin’ ya, when i’m in a funk, i hit the water … or jump up and dance to something with a big-old beat baby!!!!
I can’t not start feeling better when there is superduper happy music on – nor can I stay still, though I try, because I might be good at ballet, but I’m terrible at other dancing! I look idiotic in a nightclub for example
Swimming is good isn’t it? I avoided pools up til I started hydrotherapy and then I realised how much I love it – loved to float! It’s as near to flying as I probably have gotten. I wish human beings could FLY. Like birds. Talk about happy hormones that would create! xxxx
My husband and I loved to dance and weren’t bad if I do say so…but that’s one of the things I can’t do anymore except slow…or sitting in our car listening to our 50′s music…lol It does make you feel better though for sure…Diane
It’s hard when you cannot do something you once loved so much. I felt that way when I was more unwell – I truly believed that dancing, running like the wind, just playing, walking even at one point – were things I’d never be able to do again, I was facing life in a wheelchair/bedridden. It really is hard to take, feeling trapped in your body.
I’ve been very very lucky and I’ll never take my body for granted again.
My heart goes out to you and I hope your husband and you still do slow dance as much as you can. Music is really uplifting too, isn’t it? I love it. xxx
Love this. When I was still in the midst of my bulimia, I used to put my headphones on really loud and dance around my living room in the dark while my roomate was sleeping. It was the only time outside my running that I felt free.
Hello
welcome to my blog. I can’t wait to check yours out!
It’s making me smile to imagine you dancing around soundlessly but the music loud in your ears.. imagining the look on your face. Dancing makes me feel free too. I’ve never been able to really get into running (I am TOO WIMPY haha). I used to always make the school teams, and just felt obligated. But in more recent years I’ve started to crave it!! Because I do imagine you would feel so free, running like the wind. Once you get past the pain that is! I’m glad you find such peace and comfort in your dancing and running and I’m so glad it sounds like you have come out the other side of that bulimia hell, too
I feel like I have come out of the bulimia hell, for now. But I am still in the midst of basing my worth on issues of food. One day my head will start to agree with my knowledge. We can only keep going. Cheers.
I so understand. I’m still in the hell, just not as bad, and able to maintain my weight and medical health now – and I KNOW that my worth has nothing to do with my weight or size or food – and yet it’s still my first thought whenever I’m scared, unhappy, anxious, etc… old habits die hard. I think we have to keep persevering until the new becomes habit.. it’s more complicated than that.. but you are on the right path and I so admire you. Keep hanging on. You will make it xx
I know depression very well and I feel I’m about to get one again. At least I know what to do against it, so I can go for that: playing, walking, and speaking to friends. I don’t want it to get me.
I’m really sad that you feel that, but I’m glad that you can feel it before it happens – that’s insight. You know that you are possibly on the way down and are trying to put in place things to at the very least – ease it for you as much as possible. Hang on tight, dear Kath, I’m praying hard it doesn’t get you. If it does, remember, it’s not forever. It does end. *hugs* xxx
Okay – You’re not gonna believe this — well actually you probably will because I am…me.
BUT the dancing in the grocery store thing? DUDE. I DO THAT. But like,….no camera. LOL. Just me. I also sing too. I know this one grocery store it always happens in — they have the BEST muzac EVA-H!!
And I just…jam out.
But it may be hard to get my pal to upload the video to utube – lemme splain. The video is so old it is on VHS and so they have to switch it to digital…etc.
But MAYBE I will post a dancing video. MAYBE.
I think I love you, Missy, I have never seen someone (outside youtube) dancing for realz in a video store before. I want to. Badly. More than that, just to know someone who is that cool and funky and just.. someone who would even do that.. I would love to know that person. I don’t have the guts to!
It’s okay, I remember you saying the vid was old and might not make it, but I had try hehe. Please do post a dancing video!!!!!!