There’s a principle or technique called pulsing used in swing dancing that’s not used in any other dance I’m aware of. Pulsing, essentially, is bouncing. It comes from slightly bending your knees, keeping your weight on the balls of your feet, and kind of hopping up and down. If you watch swing dancers who know what they’re doing, you could look only at their heels, and they’d be going up and down. Or if you focused only on their heads, it’d look like they were on little pogo sticks. Since swing music is typically upbeat, the pulse compliments the rhythm of the music. Pulsing helps you connect with your partner, gets you moving around the floor more easily, and makes you look alive. I once had an instructor tell me, “If there’s a problem with your dancing, pulse. The pulse fixes everything.”

Since first learning to swing dance in 1999, I’ve learned a lot about pulsing, rhythm, connection, and patterns. I’ve critically observed thousands of other dancers and taken hundreds of classes. Through all of this, I’ve learned about the physical body and the way it works. But since closing my dance studio last year and having a car accident a couple months ago, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about the physical body in a whole new way.

Over the years people have said, “Oh, you’re a dancer, you must be flexible.” Well, honestly, I never have been. Strong, maybe. Flexible, not so much. A couple years ago, for fun, I took a modern dance class. You know, Martha Graham stuff. I just wanted to do something different. The class was taught at a local dance studio as part of a college course for theater students, and I got to audit it because I know the studio owner. I was the oldest one there and mostly awkward, but I had a great time. Anyway, one of the main things that stood out to me was the fact that every class started with stretching. Why? Flexibility makes you a better, healthier dancer.

Duh.

At the same time I was taking the modern class, I was practicing yoga. Between the two activities, I realized just how tight my hips were. Actually, they’re still tight, but they’re better than they used to be. Today I had coffee with a friend, and when we talked about dance, I said the one thing I wished someone had told me all those years ago was to stretch. Sadly, swing dancers rarely talk about stretching, except in the context of doing aerials. But I’ve never taken or taught a class that included stretching, and I’m starting to believe it’s something we’re missing as a community of dancers. After all, swing dancing takes a lot of energy and a lot of work. It’s part of the reason, I think, that the average swing dancer is only twenty or thirty years old. Constantly pulsing isn’t for sissies and is rough on the body. So if you don’t have a practice in place to take care of yourself and stay limber, you’re going to quit swing dancing and start foxtrotting instead.

Lately I’ve wanted to talk to more swing dancers about any aches and pains they may be experiencing because I’ve realized that many of the problems I’ve had with my body over the last fifteen years have been directly related to swing dancing. I assume plenty of dancers have done a better job of caring for their bodies than I have, but I also assume that plenty of other swing dancers are like me and simply haven’t been taught how to do it. Of course, most of us know something about stretching muscles, but I’m learning more and more about stretching fascia or connective tissue, and that’s really the thing that’s made and is making the biggest difference for me.

Tonight after a couple days off from yoga and stretching, I watched and worked through a video on stretching my lateral lines, basically the fascia on the side of the body. The video instructor, Dylan Werner, said that if you have to make a sudden movement, say catch your balance, it’s your fascia that’s doing the work, since fascia is much more responsive than muscles are. For this reason, having healthy fascia is “the fountain of youth,” meaning it’s our fascia that makes us flexible–or not.

In the best and worst cases, fascia locks our bodies into certain positions and keep us there. Here’s a picture of me taken about a year and a half ago. It’s dated spring of 2016, but I think it was actually the previous winter. Anyway, notice how my neck kind of scoops forward. It was like that for years. Rather than being directly over my shoulders, my ears are over my chest. Also, my back is rounded more than is typical, my shouldesr are slumped forward, and my hands are in front of my hips.

Fortunately, things have gotten a lot better. I just took a break from typing, and here’s where I am tonight. I’m picky as shit, and it’s not exactly where I want to be, but it’s serious improvement–ears over shoulders, less curve in my mid-back, chest out, hands by my side. Honestly, this wasn’t possible two years ago. People used to tell me to “stand up straight,” but I couldn’t. My fascia wouldn’t let me.

Obviously, the body can change. For the longest time, I didn’t even know I had structural problems, just that I had headaches and a hip that hurt. Once the issues were pointed out, I believed I was just stuck that way. Of course, I was stuck that way, but I didn’t think it could ever get better. Well, it’s getting better–it already is better.

Whether you’re a swing dancer or not, if you’re having a problem with your body, I believe there’s hope. And whereas I’ve always wanted a quick fix or “a miracle” to fix my body, it hasn’t worked that way. Over the last year, I’ve seen a number of body workers, massage therapists, and chiropractors, in addition to yoga and other practices I’ve done at home. In swing dancing, if you’re not pulsing, we say you’re flat, as in standing still. So for me healing has been a matter of pulsing, continuing to move and search until I found something that worked. The pulse fixes everything. Then it’s simply been sticking with it, trusting that my body will find its rhythm as I find mine.