Why dance fitness can massively improve your experience of going through Perimenopause and Menopause

© Copyright 2021 Artwork by Cordi Neckermann

Just when you thought mother nature has bestowed enough gifts upon a women’s body here comes menopause and even better perimenopause. While menoopause marks the end of having your period and all the fun bits and pieces that come with it every month, perimenopuase is more of a long term process. It usually occurs between 45 and 60 when a woman’s body is going through the physiological stages leading towards menopause and can take years (5 or more).

Bring on the Symptoms

Perimenopause can come with symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, weight gain and memory and concentration problems. None of theses symptoms sound particularly fun to me so I set out to find out about how to minimise and ease these symptoms and keep them in check without pills and potions. I’m not ready to pick up my knitting needles and kick back in a rocking chair just yet.

The Magic Word

Of course my good friends Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo provided me with a huge amount of information on the subject but one word kept coming up again and again and that magic word was exercise.

Thank havens! It’s not time for knitting and the rocking chair after all.

It seems that more exercise is the magic solution for a number of the sympotoms that come with the hormonal changes of perimenopause.The suggestions regarding the amount of exercise made by the Center of Disease Control and Preventions is 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity and 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity a week.

How dance fitness can help

Yes, any form of exercise is helpful during perimenopause but with dance fitness you are not just ticking the boxes for the aerobic activity. You can also combat some of the other symptoms that pop up during perimenopause.

Weighing your options

One way to ease the symptoms of perimenopause is proper weight management. Meaning, it is easier to navigate through perimenopause if you enter the process with a number on the scale that is considered ideal for you. The shift in hormones results in the loss of muscle mass and gain of abdominal fat. So starting out with a healthy weight can prevent other health issues that may arise with carrying extra weight.

In short, it is a good idea to find a form of exercise that brings you joy and keeps you coming back for more as soon as possible.

The good thing about dance fitness is that it doesn’t feel like exercise and the intensity is easily scalable to what feels right for you. One day you might dance your heart out and jump and shimmy through every song and on another day you take it easy and skip the jumps and work more on your arm movements. Every dance fitness instructor will encourage you to listen to your body and only do the moves that feel good to you. As a dance fitness instructor I experience it quite often that participants tell me at the beginning of class they will take it easy today and then after dancing the first two songs I see them jumping and cheering the higher and louder than ever. Dance fitness has this wonderful way of easing you into your workout and picking you up from wherever you are, respecting your emotional and physical level.

The mood elevator

Experiencing mood swings is quite common going through Perimenopause. The hormonal changes in your body will influence your mental wellbeing. Riding the mood elevator is generally not a bad thing. Nobody is happy all the time and anger, sadness and feeling overwhelmed is part of life. It becomes a problem when we feel burned out. When our cortisol levels are on a constant high. During Perimenopaus the adrenal glands help out the ovaries and produce some of the progesterone and oestrogen for us. This is great but it gets problematic when the adrenal glands are already busy producing stress hormones and can’t help out.

The stress buster

Yes, you guessed it! The simple solution is to destress and dance fitness comes swooping in to help us out with that. As mentioned earlier being eased into your workout and gently drawn away from the world outside is one of the magic super powers of dance fitness. Going even further once your mind is focused on the music and the moves it becomes a moving meditation. You can leave all our worries aside for the time being and allow yourself to get lost in the music.

Together strong

When you are part of a dance fitness class and it really doesn’t matter if you join online or in the studio you are part of a community. There are always lots of lovely people who enjoy moving and shaking it. Who love to laugh and not take themselves to seriously. All that lead by an instructor who will give 150% to keep you safe and entertained for the session. That’s my primary goal as an instructor and all the other lovely dance fitness instructors I have the privilege of working with see this as their priority as well. Being part of a loving community that embraces your individuality can be a major stress buster.

What it boils down to

Basically it all comes down to stress and weight management. Most of the uncomfortable symptoms that come with perimenopause and menopause can be eased by maintaining or reaching a weight that is considered ideal for our stature and by keeping our stress level low. Dance fitness is one way to tackle both these factors. You can turn a dance fitness class into a high intensity or low intensity workout and get the added benefit of stress relief through turning your workout into a moving meditation.

If you love dancing and think that dance fitness might be for you I would love to meet you in one of my classes. You can book here. Your first class is always FREE!

I hope that my little insights gave you some motivations to get moving and relaxing. Dance fitness, yoga, pilates or lifting weights. Whatever type of exercise gets you coming back for more is the right choice.

Fall in LOVE with your workout

DO it regularly

Have a HAPPY and healthy body and mind

I hope to see you soon in one of my classes,

Cordi

#CordiNeckermann #BollyXwithCordi #Menopausesymptoms #Perimenopausesymptoms #WhatisPerimenopause