90-Day Belly Dance Challenge

As folks who follow my blog posts can tell, it’s been a really, really rough several months pain-wise. I went from dancing in at least three to four classes a week to maybe doing one a week … maybe … if I’m lucky. This has been a huge hit to my self-esteem, especially because my spine surgery helped get me back to some dancing (although that dancing was really made possible by efficient use of adaptive equipment, like my forearm crutch or my wheelchair to seriously save spoons where I can).

Green devil duckie surrounded by four finger cymbals.

In a twist of interesting timing, this post from Andalee at Belly Dance at Any Size pops up for a 90-day belly dance challenge.  She set it up in a way that makes it really accessible to a lot of people, whether that’s skill level, busy lives or, like me, borked bodies.

How is it set up? Dance for at least five minutes a day, every day, wherever you can; take classes, drill a movement that you want to build stamina or speed in, work on fun combos, do hip drops while you brush your teeth, work on 3/4 shimmies while you clean the house … any dancing counts!

This is really perfect for me right now as 1) I’m trying to find everything and anything to help me keep my pain-related depression managed better, 2) graduate school plus doctors’ appointments plus work means I don’t have much extra time some days (and other days, I just don’t have extra spoons), and 3) I have more accountability than just my therapist telling me to find healthy distractions.

I really love how Andalee’s made something both a challenge and really accessible to a larger number of people! I’m also including visualization as an alternative if my pain is too bad, along with practicing my doumbek (a Middle Eastern drum that’s common in traditional belly dance music).

So, who’s with me? I’m going to be doing my accountability blogging both here and on my personal blog Adventures of a Part Time Wheeler, so you can follow me much like Shaunta’s Eating the Food challenge!