Hello to you all again and welcome to my blog, if this is your first time here!
Christmas and New Year are getting closer and closer and I hope that despite Corona, you are getting in the mood a little bit!
It is almost frightening to me how fast this year passed by…it still feels like 2019 sometimes.

This time I have a topic that a very good friend of mine mentioned to me a few years ago. She lives on Macau and we danced together in a revue-show in Monaco, organised by the Lido from Paris, a very long time ago.
It was a lot of fun, because it was a contract of only three months and we were rehearsing in Paris and performing in Monaco.
Wonderful accomodation and great per diem were paid by the company…it was very luxurious!

Anyway, we stayed in touch and as I said, a while ago she told me about a small article that she read, which was about our “happy hormones” that we all are supposed to have and which are supposed to be produced in our brains.
Certain situations stimulate the production of these happy hormones, like situations in which we feel important, or in which we are exercising.
And all of a sudden it occured to her that dancing and performing on stage are situations in which the production of happy hormones is stimulated a lot!
And if we quit dancing or if we have an injury, we miss out on all of that and no wonder we feel less happy or less fortunate than before!
Underneath you will find a picture of the article that she sent me:

I found it really eye-opening to read about dopamine and the goals that we want to achieve and the pleasure that we get when achieving them…that’s exactly how we worked as a dancer: our goal was the performance and the perfection of it and once that was achieved, we felt so great!

The same thing about serotonin: it is produced in our brain once we feel important and significant.
And in a lot of productions we were important for the performance and sometimes even irreplacable! (I do have to admit that I was also part of productions in which the management was very clear about their point of view: “For your part there are hundreds of other dancers waiting outside, we can replace you in a wink of an eye!”)

And dito for endorphins, the so called runner’s high:
produced through excercise. Well I think I don’t need to explain any further on this one, hahaha. Rehearsing/exercising 8 hours a day, six days a week, most of the time!

So, it is very understandable that the decision of quitting dancing, comes with difficult and less happy and less “high” times.
It is normal, since the brain doesn’t produce so much happy hormones anymore. And knowing this, was a relief for me.
Because sometimes I thought that I was the one that made this process difficult and that I was the one that made myself less happy.

The good thing is that there are things that we can do to make sure that our production of happy hormones is kept at a sufficiant level.
Take a closer look at the picture above and you will find some advice about what you can do.

That’s it for now people, I hope this maybe could help a little bit.
Take care and wishing you happy moments,

Jeroen