[00:00:01] Speaker A: When you get people dancing and they're involved in these kind of social experiences, the brain network start to reorganize. It's called intra brain connectivity. Intra brain synchrony, or functional connectivity starts to become greater. And especially in these areas, like the frontoparietal networks that support cognition, that support learning and memory, and that support emotional connection, they really start to become lit up and excited.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Welcome to the Age of Aging, a show about living well with an aging brain produced in the Michael Nadoff Communications Hub. I'm Jake Johnson, joined today by executive producer of the age of aging, Dr. Jason Carlich. Thanks for being here, Jason.
[00:00:57] Speaker C: Thanks a lot, Jake. It's great to be here again.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks for coming on. So, for today's episode, which is about dance and its relationship to dementia and longevity, this was one that you originally brought in.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: I did, I did. I was quite adamant. I even came in with the title.
[00:01:11] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: So tell me about that. Why were you so interested in this topic?
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Yeah, because it's personal. For the last four years now, going on five, I have been consistently studying Vaganava ballet. Um, I take classes frequently throughout the week. And I went from being someone who kind of thought, well, it's just good for the body, obviously, to very quickly discovering this is really having some really important benefits for me mentally. And I start to look around, look at the literature, and it turns out my experience was not unique and actually is backed up by science.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: What was the inspiration to start ballet?
[00:01:49] Speaker C: I had the privilege, the opportunity to witness a very intimate performance in a very small space of the Philadelphia Ballet. The dancers were all, like, five feet away from me. And I had always kind of had this interest in ballet. And when I finally got to witness the dancers so up close and personal, I think it just finally pushed me to say, you want to do this?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Is there anything about doing dance classes that has been surprising to you?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: It has been magnificent. And I think that's what we're going to explore in this episode, Namely, yes, it's physical. It is, and I will talk about that more. I think many of our guests will talk. Talk about that. But it clearly, to me, within just a matter of a few weeks, really settled in. This is an enormous mental benefit. So, yes, physical, of course, strength, balance, flexibility. But the mental benefit for me was really evident. We'll talk about it more after the show. You know, I have dyslexia. I get right left confusion. It's really remarkable sometimes. And directional confusion, it's not gone. But it has substantially abated, courtesy of ballet training.
[00:02:52] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: That's fascinating. Well, I think that's some great context for this episode. I'm excited to jump right into it, but first, a word from our sponsors.
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[00:03:45] Speaker A: Understanding longevity can better prepare individuals to make thoughtful decisions not only about their finances, but about their health and lifestyle, too.
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[00:04:08] Speaker F: all
[00:04:11] Speaker D: My sister had signed up for ballet classes.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Carolyn Houston is 55 years old and works in healthcare strategy at Penn Medicine
[00:04:20] Speaker D: and I thought her tutu was really cute. So I joined her in ballet class and I loved it. I loved all the twirling around. It was wonderful. And then suddenly I was placed at a recital and I was told to go out on stage and and so I follow my sister out there and there we are and the lights come on and there's, I don't know, hundreds of strangers staring at me and I froze and I started to cry and I ran off the stage and that was the end of my career as a performing artist.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: There's a good chance a few Listening Share a similar early experience of dance with Carolyn, an activity that started out as fun but but was ultimately abandoned out of embarrassment or self consciousness. But nearly 50 years after her first fatal performance, as her son was entering his senior year of high school, Houston would be pulled back into the world of dance.
[00:05:17] Speaker D: So the parents put on like a variety show for all the seniors. It's a celebration of and a gentle mocking of the kids and the various activities that they've been up to at the school, as well as some pop culture references either from their generation or from our generation.
And I got recruited into a dance performance by a friend, she said. So what I'd like to do is put together a dance that is being performed by her kid and a few other kids around the school. I guess on TikTok. This is a viral dance as well as the song was really popular. It was a K pop song by a band Called Cat's Eye. I never heard of them. But again, this dance had gone viral. The kids were doing this dance all over school parties and at basketball games. And so she wanted us to perform this dance for the kids.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Houston said she quickly realized that putting together what she thought was a silly dance would be a lot harder than she expected.
[00:06:20] Speaker D: Well, it's really hard. It turns out. I have so much respect for people who dance now because when you look at a move, you realize it's not one move. You have to think about your hand, what that does in your arm and your leg and your foot and your head. And there's, you know, 10 things moving at the same time. And so just to nail that one move, you're actually nailing 10 moves at a time. So it took me at least a week to figure out the first five seconds of the song, and then I had to learn all the other components. It took me, seriously, a month of practicing, probably about 30 minutes to an hour every single day just to get it down, just to memorize it. By the way, this is like a 30 second dance.
We successfully learned it. We successfully performed it. It was a huge hit. The kids loved it. We even had an encore at the all school assembly. We did do it live at the graduation party.
The kids who had been doing the performance, they requested that the song be played by the person who was DJing. So the song was played and the kids started performing it, and then we moms joined them. It was so delightful because all the kids, all the parents gathered around and it was just so joyful. I would never, ever be the type of person who would jump up there and do a coordinated dance and in front of. I mean, it must have been over a hundred, easily over 100 people. But it was such a celebration and we had worked so hard on this and created such a bond that it was really, it was wonderful.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Houston said the hard work and the success of the dance inspired her, particularly as it related to brain health and longevity.
[00:08:09] Speaker D: I started to realize that there's such huge benefits in my brain.
I could really feel it. I felt more alive. I felt the physicality of it. I felt the hard work of it. I felt that the newness of it was pushing me in new ways. And so I started a chat with my fellow dancers and they were feeling the same thing. And then, you know, in addition to that, we'd become friends. I really enjoyed their company and doing this together felt really special.
And so we started talking about keeping it going.
I started to think of it when I was doing the dance as dementia prevention, and I was sort of giggling about that to myself. And also I'm keenly aware of it because both of my parents had dementia. And so I started to make recommendations to my friends that perhaps we should keep this going as the Dementia Prevention Dance Club.
And so we did decide to keep meeting as a group. It's the same concept where the intention is to learn to dance and push ourselves. There is not a performance at the end in front of 100 judgy teenagers. But anyway, so that's what we're doing. We're now dancing.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: The group, officially called the Choreo Club, meets once a month, Houston said, each meeting picking a dance to learn and performing the dance from the previous session. She said the group has continued to be very beneficial for her because of the cognitive, physical, and social mixture of dance.
Dr. Julia Basso is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise at Virginia Tech and the director of the Embodied Brain Lab. She said what Houston understood intuitively from her experience of dance is backed up by research.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: I'm really interested in dance as this kind of multimodal physical activity practice because it not only has the sensory and motor aspects, like many aerobic exercises, but it's also social in nature, it's emotional in nature, it's creative, it's rhythmic, and it has this cognitive piece to it. We're either creating kind of new movements or we're learning and remembering choreography. So it's this multifaceted physical activity form. So I was interested in bringing it into the lab and studying it in a scientific way.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Dr. Basso explained that since dance recruits so many different parts of the brain, dancers have actually been shown to have more white matter in their brain, the connective tissue between brain areas.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: This means that the connections between these brain areas, the train tracks, are larger, there's more communicative networks. And so when that happens, these brain regions are better able to communicate with one another. The flow of information is faster and it's more and it's greater. And that's actually what we're finding with the brain in motion. So when you get people dancing and they're involved in these kind of social experiences, the brain network start to reorganize. It's called intra brain connectivity. Intra brain synchrony, or functional connectivity, starts to become greater. And especially in these areas, like the frontoparietal networks that support cognition, that support learning and memory, and that support emotional connection, they really start to become lit up and excited, she said.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: This intra Brain synchrony paired with the aerobic exercise of dance is particularly beneficial for long term brain health.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: There's areas of the brain, for example, the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, that really start to degenerate when we're aging, either in mild cognitive impairment, in dementia, Alzheimer's disease, other kinds of dementias. And so these areas are really impacted. And why? Because they're some of the most highly plastic brain networks that we have. And so when we can do something good, like physical activity to promote the growth and birth of new neurons, which is called neurogenesis, then these areas are becoming stronger, more supportive. There is a restoration to this network and it comes along with all kinds of behavioral changes like improvements in learning and memory, improvements in attention, improvements in processing speed. So how fast and quantitative we can do things.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Dr. Basso emphasized that you can receive the benefits of dance even if you don't consider yourself a quote unquote dancer. She said starting dance at any age can be beneficial.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Well, a lot of these studies are done with novice dancers, so the effects can come on board with, in as little as a few weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, is what our studies are showing. I think even the term dance or dancer, you know, oh, I'm a dancer. It's kind of a scary term, and I'm even reticent to use it sometimes when we're doing a lot of this work. I've tried to use movement rather than dance per se, because it feels more accessible. But, you know, as I said, the, what the research is finding is that the more complex and coordinative and intricate that the movements are. Thus, you know, dance, right? Dance practice, as compared to running, as compared to cycling, dance really offers you that complexity of movement which, which is proving to be really important to the state of the brain.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: For 25 years, Natasha Goldstein Levitis has worked as a certified dance movement therapist.
[00:13:33] Speaker E: Dance movement therapy is the psychotherapeutic use of movement to connect physical, social, cognitive and emotional integration of the individual. You might hear dance therapy, you might hear movement therapy, dance movement therapy, it's all the same thing.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: For the majority of her career, Goldstein Levitas has used dance movement therapy to assist older adults with dementia and their caregivers.
She explained that while dance movement therapy draws from different dance traditions, it doesn't look like learning a choreographed dance.
Instead, Goldstein Levitis said she uses movement as a way of helping individuals feel their emotions connect with one another and feel a sense of agency in their bodies that they may not normally get to experience.
[00:14:20] Speaker E: It's a strength based modality so different than a dance class in that it's tapping into what is accessible. Where is this individual and what do they have available and ability to connect and engage. And let's start from there. Even if it's like we're only able to move our fingers, let's go with that.
Yeah. And maybe that extends into our arms.
Right. And we're taking some deep breaths together. And deep breaths, in fact involve movement. So that can be like a really wonderful way to start as well. We're again, we're alive, we're breathing. And so tapping into that can be.
Yeah, really, really powerful.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: She said that while she starts every session in a circle with a warm up that usually involves light stretching, what happens next is more improvisational based on how people are moving and reacting to the music.
[00:15:15] Speaker E: If the group is very high energy, we're going to go with that. We're going to change up that music playlist that we came in with that day. Often we need to change, change up our plan at a moment's notice. And it's not perfect.
It's not perfect. What is?
You know, we're talking about human emotion and connection. And there's so many different things that can impact that engagement on any given day.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Goldstein Levitas said that connection and community are major parts of dance movement therapy.
She said she likes to use supportive tools like scarves, which allow people to hold onto different ends without physically touching something that can feel threatening to someone with dementia.
This social connection element of dance, which Houston touched on earlier, is linked to a phenomenon called neurosynchrony, Dr. Basso explained.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: So neural synchrony is this thing or interbrain synchrony, what ends up happening. And even as we're talking together, our neural oscillations start coordinating. And this is a thing that happens very early on, say right from the first moment of birth when there's skin to skin contact, when there's eye gaze, all of that, that mother ease, the similar gesturing and vocal tones, neural synchrony starts to occur. It's, it's very strong in mother child relationships and romantic partnerships as compared to strangers, for example. So what we're finding is very exciting that the more you get people to coordinate with one another and we do this practice called mirroring. You know, if I asked you to follow my hand and we get to move together and you're tuning to that other person, the more you can actually coordinate with somebody, the more you actually can drive the neural synchrony. And one of Our biggest behavioral outcomes that we're finding that Dan's is very good at driving social connection.
[00:17:06] Speaker F: This is a class where social interaction plays a huge part of the experience.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: David Leventhal is the program director for the Dance for PD program at Mark Morris Dance Group in Brooklyn, New York, A dance program specifically designed for people with Parkinson's disease.
[00:17:24] Speaker F: It is brought in, really, from the very beginning of class, where we are reaching to each other. We're saying hello to each other through movement. It's also a very useful motivator for some of the physical movement. So, for example, if I ask someone to lift their arm, they might lift it just a little bit. If I ask them to reach across the circle to somebody on the other side, that movement becomes much bigger, it becomes amplified, because now they have what I call socially motivated cue. They have a motivation to want to go a little further, to want to connect with that person, and that actually makes the movement bigger, which in turn serves the physical outcomes.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: We haven't spoken a lot about Parkinson's disease on the age of aging, but like Alzheimer's, it's a neurodegenerative disease.
This means it impacts the nervous system, causing nerve cells to stop working and eventually die.
Tremors, muscle rigidity, slower body movement, and worsened balance are all common side effects of pd. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Parkinson's can also cause cognitive changes, such as mild cognitive impairment and dementia.
Leventhal explained that Dance for PD began as an idea from a woman named Oli Westheimer, who ran a support group for people with Parkinson's and had a dance background herself.
She pitched a class to Mark Morris's executive director, and they said yes.
In October of 2001, Leventhal found himself teaching that first class.
[00:18:50] Speaker F: I was not scheduled to teach the first class, but my colleague who was, was called away because of a family emergency. So I ended up in front of a room of six people living with Parkinson's who'd never danced before. I'd never really led a class for people living with Parkinson's before.
And we experimented our way through that hour. What I found at the end of that hour was the. Was a sense of transformation that people who had experienced stiffness, hesitancy in their movements, rigidity, lack of confidence. At the end of that class, they were moving with fluidity. They were moving bigger.
They were moving with rhythm. They felt connected to each other.
And I realized that there was something very special happening in this particular studio. And so we decided to have a second class.
That program Grew. So the second year, we offered it twice a month. And then the third year, again, a few more people came in. We started offering it weekly. And we really started to see some pretty dramatic changes in how people were moving, how people felt about themselves as people living with Parkinson's. They expressed greater confidence. They expressed that the class changed their mood. They expressed that when they came with a care partner, that the relationship between them and their care partner changed in terms of a much more positive interaction than what maybe happened at home, where there were frustrations on both sides and there was anxiety and stress. They came to the studio dancing together, and it completely transformed that conversation.
[00:20:27] Speaker D: I do remember, in general, just being so amazed at what they could accomplish in this class.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Emily Tobey's father, Charlie, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his late 40s and regularly attended the Mark Morris Dance for PD program.
[00:20:44] Speaker D: And what the people with Parkinson's were able to do when normally they couldn't maybe even walk by themselves a lot of the time.
But then the music would come on and they could move very smoothly. And I was just. I was really impressed and amazed and also just. It was such a warm, welcoming place that you couldn't not feel good being there.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: There was such respect, Emily's mother, Judy,
[00:21:13] Speaker D: for everybody who was there.
No one was treated. No one was called honey or whatever,
[00:21:21] Speaker C: which is a pet peeve of mine.
[00:21:24] Speaker D: When you get older, everybody was treated as an equal.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: According to Emily and Judy, Charlie's passion in life was physical exercise and movement. He was the chairperson of the physical education exercise science program at Brooklyn College, a tennis coach and a marathon runner.
They said Charlie was able to live with relatively mild symptoms until he was 70. When his symptoms got worse, they said Mark Morris became a major physical and social outlet for him.
[00:21:53] Speaker D: It really made him feel good about
[00:21:55] Speaker C: himself, even though I have to say
[00:21:58] Speaker D: he wasn't the best dancer. But he was doing physical activity, which was something that he cherished and liked to do. And we made a lot of friends that we continued to be friendly with. There were a group of us who would hang out and play catch in
[00:22:20] Speaker C: the room or throw Frisbees in the room.
[00:22:23] Speaker D: And Charlie, for a good long time,
[00:22:25] Speaker C: was still able to do all of those things.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Neil Godick is 84 years old and lives in Philadelphia. He started taking tango therapy classes, another form of dance therapy for Parkinson's, on the recommendation of his doctor.
[00:22:40] Speaker G: I was falling at the rate of once every three weeks. I saw a neurologist at Penn. His name is Deke.
Deke Recommended that I get involved in the tango dance program and I ignored it.
I poo pooed. I said this is phony baloney.
He insisted I back down.
And it was the smartest decision I made.
I don't fall anymore. I haven't fallen in this calendar year.
That's nine plus months. I don't remember when it started, but I know it hasn't. I haven't fallen this year and I'm pleased as can be.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: He said that it's the socialization aspect of dance that makes it truly different from the other forms of exercise he does.
[00:23:28] Speaker G: What I learned in the process of this is socialization is a bigger problem than I possibly imagined.
And I'm pretty up upfront guy. I'm a pretty energetic person. I was down and that was a big boost for me.
I told Dr. Deke and I've told the people at Tango program that I'm a volunteer.
Okay, how can I pay you back?
Because you were a big help to me and I want to pay my debt.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: While many of us consider dance with apprehension, afraid we'll embarrass ourselves.
Everyone I spoke to in this episode expressed how liberating dance was for them.
[00:24:09] Speaker D: It was sort of tmi, but I had to twerk in this K pop dance.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Carolyn Hewson again.
[00:24:16] Speaker D: So I had to learn how to do something that a 55 year old woman maybe shouldn't be able to do. But. But I. But I did and I could. And so it was really reassuring to realize that at this age I can do hard things. I can do things that are associated with young people.
I felt so much better.
I've had chronic lower back pain.
The twerking, I will say, helped because it really helps strengthen your lower back muscles. Who knew? But it's a great back exercise.
[00:24:54] Speaker F: I know that the word dance can instill fear in people. Oh, I can't dance. I have two left feet or I'm not coordinated. I. I will say this dance is part of who we are as humans. We are born to dance.
It's in our DNA.
We have cave drawings of people dancing 20,000 years ago. We know it as part of who we are as a species. I also want to reassure people that you do not have to have any skill or talent or previous background in dance or any art form to reap the benefits of it.
You just have to be present and to try the best you can and to enjoy it. That's really all you have to do. You don't have to be quote unquote good at it and the teachers are not there to judge you. We are there to share our love and our passion for dance with you and to invite you to pick up whatever feels comfortable.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: And as Houston expressed, the physical benefits of dance are apparent at any age.
[00:25:49] Speaker D: I went to Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes region. You're going a mile and a half downstairs, stunning gorge. And then you turn around and you go all the way back up a mile and a half up these stairs. And when you get closer to the top, there's an emergency number that you can call.
And there are all these people who were looking like they're pretty close to calling that number.
And I got to the top, I wasn't even winded.
And I don't say that to brag. I say that to say it's really working.
You know, the cardio aspect, the constant exercising of dance coupled with working out, coupled with walking, it really does give you the life that you want.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: A few things before we wrap up.
If you want to learn more about any of the teachers or dance programs mentioned in this episode, as always, there will be more information in the show notes.
In 2014, a documentary titled Capturing Grace followed members of the Dance for PD program and Mark Morris, including Charlie Tobey.
A link to watch that will be in the show notes as well.
And finally, David Leventhal and Dance for PD are launching a new program for adults living with dementia in collaboration with friend of the show Ann Basting's program Time Slips, called Time Dances.
Time Dances is still a pilot program, but Leventhal said they have plans to expand the program across the country in the coming years.
Again, more information on that is in the show notes. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back. I am joined once again by Dr. Jason Karlowish. So, Jason, Carolyn Houston, she starts and ends this episode. I thought that she was so fantastic. Her story of the. The tutu and the ballet as a kid and doing this dance class with these other moms, I just love that. So you were the person that actually did that interview. Could you tell me about how that came about and what that interview was like?
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Yeah. I was chatting with my. A friend of mine, Nazneen, and about the podcast. She was asking me and she said, you know, I said, well, you know, I'm working on a pitch for an episode on dance and. And we were up in the Adirondacks walking around and she said, oh, I have this friend who took on dancing because she sees as a way to reduce her risk of developing dementia. And I'm like, you've Got to be kidding me. So after that, I got connected, dropped her note. She said, yeah, let's. I'd love to talk. And I remember I was actually. I did the pre interview while I was walking to 30 Street Station, and I'm listening to this pre interview, and I felt like I was talking to myself. And what I mean is, like, her story was my story. She got into dance, and quickly as she got into it, she discovered this is really impressive, what it's doing for me physically, which she vividly narrates. The increase in her strength, the reduction in her back pain, the increase in her endurance, but also the mental effects. And when she started talking about that, it really resonated with me about how there's something about learning a dance with rhythm and music, particularly a choreographed dance with other individuals, that has a really profound mental effect. And I just knew, like, within minutes of the interview, like, this is fantastic. It's as if I was handed my story back.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it was almost. It was too perfect. I remember when you first came in with this, this. This new story, we had already been working on the episode, and you're like, I have somebody that started dancing for dementia prevention. And I was.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: But what's interesting is that that's not why she did it. And that's what I really impressed me. The moms were going to do this spoof for the end of the high school year show. And what's fascinating is as she got into doing it, she began to experience it and had this sort of revelation of, this is really fun, hard and rigorous. And if you put all that together, she realized it was translating to something that was really transforming her.
And that's what I experienced. Like, for example, when I first started doing. When you do ballet, you do this thing at the beginning of a class called the bar. And it means you have your hand on. One hand is on the bar and the other hand is free, and you do a variety of different motions. And I'll always remember in the beginning, my instructor would say to me, okay, put your right hand on the bar. Put your left hand on the bar. And I would almost coin toss, put the wrong hand on the bar.
And she would say, no, no, no, your. Your right hand.
And same thing with, like, you know, okay, now put your right foot forward or with your left foot, do this. And, you know, it was almost a coin toss. And it's, you know, I have this right, left confusion. It comes out especially when I'm stressed or really my attention is taken up.
And what was fascinating was After a couple months that pretty much disappeared. I mean, I still have directional confusion every now and then. I'm not very good with compass based directions. But the right, left confusion in class when she's like giving us a series of steps, it isn't vanished, but it is infrequent. But. And that was just one of many kind of mental benefits that I notice. I mean the other one and then is in the course of a class which is typically an hour and a half long and or two hours, I pretty much don't think about anything else. And it's not because I'm working out so hard that I mean there's. You stand there listening to instructions, there's a lot of opportunities for your mind to wander, but your mind. My mind does not wander. It is in that moment, in an almost, I guess the equivalent of a meditative way concentrating on what we're going to do that I find extremely satisfying. And I think it spills over into the, into the hours after class.
[00:31:35] Speaker B: So that it was, it was similar in that it wasn't the main motivator when you went into the class. The dementia prevention.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: To be honest, there's not many things I do in my life that are motivated. I'm doing this to reduce the risk of dementia. I mean, granted, I mean, I take a statin once a day to reduce the risk of heart attack and yeah, reduce the risk of vascular disease generally. So yeah, I mean there are things I do explosive explicitly for that. But I would say that this was not done like I want to reduce my risk of dementia. So I'm going to go into three to four ballet classes, one and a half hours each a week, sprinkled in with Pilates. No, I mean that I'd lose interest in that pretty quickly. It really has been about, as Carolyn and the others narrated, the tremendous gains in strength. You know, I'm a fairly kind of scrawny guy. I was as a kid growing up, I was always like the shortest kid in the class, you know, and skinniest kid and all that stuff in a town where like, you know, the ideal of being a man was to play football. So you can imagine how awkward that was. And I've never crossed over to that physiotomy, but I g. I've gained probably five solid pounds of muscle mass.
I mean, I. It's fascinating. The American man especially, it's about individual muscle groups being built up, like build up the triceps, build up the biceps, build up the abs, build up the glutes, build up the, you know, get and what I've learned from ballet and attendant exercise is how the smart way and the most effective way of exercise is that connects, builds up the muscle groups. Trust me, definitely with machines and all that. But then how are they connected? You know, how when I literally am activating my left glute, should my right shoulder also be activated so as to perfect the movement? I'll tell you one funny anecdote. I mean, the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago had an article about guys going to their wives Pilates classes. And these are like stereotype American 200 pound beefy guys. And the article talked about how they come out shivering like Chihuahuas.
Pilates is a lot like ballet. It demands so much of every muscle and a constant activity and it really reveals how. And yes, it's important to have muscle buildup, built up muscles, I should say. But really it's about connecting those built up muscles through the tendons, et cetera, to really make for fitness and well being.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I've gone to one Pilates class with my fiance before and I mean I go to the gym, I like to run, but I was dripping with sweat and was maybe one of the only people in the class that was struggling to the degree. I think it's, it's very true that the amount of differences, things working in tandem at the same time, as I would imagine is true with dance, is so different than when I'm just running, you know, which is a fairly repetitious
[00:34:13] Speaker C: set of many but, you know, muscles in action. It's not to disparage running. And listeners should take note here. I hope they're inspired to say I want to give this a try, but I hope they're not intimidated. I think one of the key things I would say to people is, for example, when we've been talking about dance, you and I, it's been about Vaganova ballet, which is a particular genre of ballet. There's also Balanchine and, and Jacquetti. But you know, this is, it's really about movement, dance movement, and it's not unique to ballet. And I think a key point I'd say to listeners is start simple, start even where it's a bit boring. And so simple it might seem like, you gotta be kidding me. And pretty rapidly if you do start simple and not think like, you know, I gotta dive in right away.
Number one, you have a great learning curve. Number two, you serious? You substantially minimize chances of injury and demoralization.
So for example, in the case of studying ballet, I would strongly urge people to look for what's called an intro class, which literally is Intro to Ballet. And in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Ballet and a private instructor named Amy Novinski both offer intro classes which assume no prior skill.
I would even recommend to people getting a private tutor, which I had for a while, who helped me get going with individual private lessons, which, you know, I recommend anyone really who's new to exercise, get a trainer, as opposed to just going back to the gym and picking up where you left off in high school, which oftentimes is a ticket for demoralization, injury, etc.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that first learning curve of something I think is the hardest part to stay on. I felt that with guitar. I got to a certain part, a certain point in my lessons where I was like, okay, I'm actually enjoying this and I want to keep doing it, but the beginning, it's so easy to bail.
[00:35:57] Speaker C: But if it was easy, after a while, it'd be boring.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:36:00] Speaker C: The great thing about it, I think music dance is there's no ceiling. Really is. I mean, you could always get better. When I. I've talked to professional dancers with the Philadelphia Ballet and Ballet X and they all say, oh, I could always get better. There is no ceiling here. Their only concern, the professionals, is there will come a time where they can't get better, where they age out of ballet, professional ballet.
For me personally, I've one thing I find very satisfying about ballet listeners like myself, 50 in the 50 plus crowd. There's no way I'll ever be a professional dancer. There's no way that I could. It's just not possible. And in some sense I think it's very satisfying to get good at something, but at the same time, no, it's okay. I don't have to be the best in the room. It's fun though, when I'm doing better than the 30 year olds. I will say, fellow aging listeners, join me. And if you can learn it, learn it well. There's no more fun than watching the 30 year old struggle while you're doing well.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: That does sound satisfying. So the social aspect of dancing, which is kind of you're touching on now, that's a part of this episode as well.
Dr. Basso in the episode talks about neural synchrony, which is this idea that your brain waves are like literally syncing up when you're doing a dance together. What's that experience like for you in your dance class? Do you feel like the social aspect is a big thing for you?
[00:37:23] Speaker C: Dr. Basil's remark and Like, I know exactly what she's talking about. And just this past Sunday, actually, I was in class, and we were doing what's called the open exercise, which is you're no longer at the bar, you're standing as a group, spaced out on the floor, typically facing the large mirror so you can see what you're doing.
And.
And we started doing some of the open exercises. And the open exercises, everyone's doing the same thing. And there was this moment, couple moments where as we were doing the exercise and I'm seeing everyone else do the same thing.
I guess I just say it's this feeling of synchrony. And I think people who do partner dances, certainly, they've probably experienced that as well. The moment when two people are not so much two individuals, but really working in and performing in sync. You get it a bit certainly, too, when you really get into the music. And one of the great things, when I first started doing ballet, I really couldn't follow music. I oftentimes would say to the instructor, you know, I don't hear any of the music. I mean, I hear it. There's this noise.
But lately, in the last year or two, a majority of the time, I will be hearing the music and following the rhythm off, sometimes counting, sometimes just waiting for the beat. And that's really tremendous. And that's not neural synchrony to another person. But what I'm getting at, again, is this mental aspect.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: So in terms of patience, would you ever recommend somebody take a dance class?
[00:38:51] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, first of all, got to be careful calling it dance, because pretty much, if they're a guy, they're going to be embarrassed or whatever, the way the American male reacts to some things. Although my understanding is that most accomplished football players study dance, there are moments watching the Eagles play and whatnot, where I'm like, it's like a quarter ballet. Anyway, what I recommend is movement. Think about a movement class. Like a dance class. Like a movement class. For some couples, that's. Yeah, sure. You know, I think that would be a great activity for us as a couple, But I think certainly an individual can do it, too. As is the case with me, I rarely done about probably a total of 30 minutes of partner dancing in my entire time. It's partner dancing and ballet is a whole other set of skills that I've yet to learn.
But, yeah, I would recommend a movement class. And indeed, several of our interviewees pointed that out for people with Parkinson's. I think the benefits for Parkinson's, as was discussed, is very obvious. It's consistent, period, full stop. But I think Pilates fits into this space as well. And other movement based exercises I think fit into this space and I would strongly recommend them for some patients who have a gait disorder caused by their disease, which is not at all uncommon. I'll recommend physical therapy for neurogenic gait disorder, which is balance therapy. And a lot of balance therapy actually is tapping into things that are akin to the exercises that you do in ballet. A good deal of some of the bar exercises you can almost put them into, like strength based, flexibility based and or balance based is almost how you could almost break up all ballet into those kind of three exercises. Served one of those three things.
So it doesn't have to be dance, but I think it's about movement, balance, gait training. Yeah.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: All right. Well, thank you so much, Jason, for coming on this episode and sharing your expertise, not just in dementia care, but in dance as well and ballet. I really appreciate it.
[00:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks a lot, Jake.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Age of Aging.
A special thanks to today's guests, Carolyn Houston, Julia Basso, Natasha Goldstein Levitas, David Leventhal, Emily and Judy Tovey, and Neil Godick, as well as today's co host, Jason Karlewish.
If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, leave us a review or share it with someone who would appreciate it. It makes a real difference in helping others find the show. And if you have a topic you'd like to hear, email
[email protected] the age of Aging is a Penn Memory center production made possible by generous support of the Michael Nadoff Communications Hub Fund, Lena Chow and the TIAA Institute.
Our team includes Morgan Adams, Terrence Casey Dahliel Said, Holly Elser, Jason Karlewish, Emily Largent, and Allison Lin. I'm your host, Jake Johnson.
[00:41:48] Speaker C: Sam.
