For several years, my Wednesday afternoons are always the same.  I drive to the Golden Years Club Alzheimer Care Center.  I announce myself into a tarnished speaker box: “It’s Janice, Rosie’s daughter.”  I hear the lock unlatch. And I enter an unforgettable world of people who seem to have forgotten their lives and loved ones.

Other women, particularly a stately German woman, claim me as their daughter and see me as someone they perhaps once knew. But my mother is oblivious to me.  She sits at the window rather solemnly.

For a few moments of each visit, I hang back and study her from a distance. I ache.  There is so much I want to tell her, so much I want her to say to me.   “Momma?,” I say.  But she stares beyond me.

Ah, but I do know how to connect, to speak her new lost-language.  I stand in front of her and frisk and caper.  Her eyes catch the movement.  She smiles and I take her hands, pull her to her feet, and we dance.

Long forgotten as a daughter, this is something we “remember” together.  We dance with our arms wrapped around each other.  And as we dance together, we trigger smiles and gentle sways from others at the Golden Years Alzheimer Club. Ah, we are so happy.

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My mother Rosie danced, mostly in the kitchen. She would dance as she moved from the silverware drawer to the stove.  She would dance (and sometimes twirl) as she cooked.  She would dance as she shooed me, my brothers and sisters toward the dining table, and dance as she carried steaming hot plates of food toward us.

As I child, I knew her dancing, but it wasn’t until years later that I understood its depth.  And it is only now, four years since she passed in August of 2005, that I feel as if I can adequately describe her dancing for what it was:  a simple, graceful ritual of embellishing life.

As if she needed to punctuate the gift of her dances, my mother constantly reminded me that I must “remember to dance.”  It was then – and it remains – good advice. 

Inspired throughout my life and now my mature years, I find myself dancing with experiences that stretch me, challenge me and allow me to joyfully move. Over the years, I have studied and immersed myself in theories about movement and dance.

My explorations confirm what I know deep down:  We all should dance.  Really!  We all should bump up our energy vibes through dance.  

But lest you hesitate, let me give you seven obvious and not-so-obvious reasons why we should dance and why we need to dance:

1.      The obvious: Dancing is good for our physical health.  When we dance, no matter what kind of dance style, our bodies focus on inhaling and exhaling.  We build visible strength, balance and grace.

2.      The not-so-obvious: Dancing is good for our mental health. Scientists have proven that our conscious movements to rhythm strengthens our hippocampus, the area in the brain that neuro-imaging has defined as our memory center. 

3.      Also, not-so-obvious: Dancing is good for our emotional well-being and the relationships we share. New scientific studies say that dance creates electrical changes in our bodies and, in turn, shifts our consciousness so that we’re more intuitive and more in touch with ourselves, the people and circumstances that surround us.  We raise our happiness level and we share our joy.

4.      The obvious:  Dancing is beautiful, and beauty fuels us and inspires us.  It honors the Creator, creativity and our ability to express broad ranges and depths of emotion.  It embellishes (ah yes, that word again) our lives by making the ordinary extraordinary.

5.      The not-so-obvious: Dance is spiritual.  Steeped in broad religious tradition, it has, through the ages, defined many religions.  Yet it is something that transcends religious divisions.  It’s something that gets us past our differences. And it opens our heart to feel spiritual dimensions in a profound ways.  

6.      The obvious:  It’s a reflection of who we are, culturally.  And, yes, just as it transcends religions, it transcends cultural divisions.  I personally witnessed this through many remarkable experiences while learning the Sacred Ritual Dances of other cultures.

7.      Dancing – the pure act of moving our bodies – creates a cosmic connection to the universe.  In many forms, many ways, many rhythms, it brings us peace.  

For me, a mother, dance is reminiscent of that amazing, miraculous moment when I felt my child dance inside the womb for the first time.  Dance is my biological inheritance, a powerful force inside me, with the rolling rhythm of expansion and contraction. 

My mother’s advice – remember to dance – is advice for us all.  Embellish your life by enjoying the life-expanding elixir of movement daily.  Dance while you work, and work becomes play.  Dance while your prayers are being answered. Dance as you do the ordinary, and life becomes extraordinary.  Take a walk and simply swing your arms. Venture out to the sand dunes to twirl, glide and roll.  Play footsies in a nearby stream.  Embrace your love and gently waltz around the room. And to keep your groove-thing going, join me and dance for peace with the crowd at the Gatherings hosted by World Peace Gardens every Sunday at the Green Valley Spa at 11am.

Whatever you do, just remember to Dance for Peace.

This column is provided by World Peace Gardens, a nonprofit organization promoting oneness, inner peace and world peace. The World Peace Gatherings take place every Sunday at Green Valley Spa in St. George, Utah. The gatherings begin at 11:00 a.m. and are located at 1871 Canyon View Drive. For more information call: (702) 521-2635 or log on at: www.WorldPeaceGardens.org.