Ballroom Dancing Makes Me Smile

I love to ballroom dance.

It puts a ridiculous, irreversible smile on my face. And that, hands down, is the most radiant thing that can be put on anyone’s face. My husband’s favourite pictures of me are not my most “beautiful” shots but the pictures where my face is all screwed up from laughter.

I try to remind myself to smile when I’m feeling stressed. There’s a physiological response that happens when I concentrate on curling my lips upward and softening my tense facial muscles. I sense the chain reaction resulting from synapses firing signals to other parts of my being telling me, “Everything is good. All is well. Be happy.” And, most times, my spirits are instantly lifted. Or, at the very least, everything seems a little less overwhelming.

This emotional process is what my early years acting teachers called an outside-in method of work. Sometimes the feeling of a smile on your face simply makes you feel happier; sometimes the smile you generate makes someone else genuinely smile, and you, involuntarily and more genuinely, smile even more, and so on. You may have seen the YouTube videos (Skype Laughter Chain) of people brought to tears laughing purely by watching someone else laugh. The laughter is not brought on by knowing the joke or seeing the funny cat, it is brought on purely by observing another person laugh.

These same acting teachers taught me the inside-out method, too, where an emotional reaction is triggered from a feeling generated within and then projected outward. I glance over at one of my favourite pictures of my kids I keep taped beside my desk, and I smile.

Both methods are extremely valuable to know how to trigger – we commonly use a combination of both in our daily lives.

At ArtMed, we enjoy the benefit of creating all kinds of smiles – some from inside-out, and some from outside-in, but mostly a combination of the two. One way is with BOTOX^TM. BOTOX^TM relaxes tense frown and worry lines, which in turn makes someone  smile from within because they feel happy about looking less stressed, and also because their outside visage looks happier to those around them – naturally happy, like they used to look before those worry and frown lines set in. Clinical studies are being conducted that examine the efficacy of BOTOX^TM in influencing one’s positive thoughts and feelings in the treatment of mood disorders, such as depression and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

So, sometimes I can rely on dancing with my husband to get my smile going, but much of the time, it’s reassuring to know that my BOTOX^TM treatment is helping me feel and look relaxed and naturally happy.

Jane

P.S. I take my Ballroom dance lessons with Buddy at EveryBuddy Dance Studios – shout out to Buddy! You rock! (and roll, and waltz, rumba, salsa…)