May I have this dance?

Do you remember when you first tried to dance — in front of other kids I mean? Maybe you had taken some dance lessons. More likely not, but you simply tried to dance by imitating someone else.

Maybe your first turn on the dance floor was as a young teenager ­— awkward, perhaps socially inhibited, trying to dance a dance way out of your comfort zone. Oh, wait! That wasn’t you. It was me!

Dancing can still intimidate some of us today. Especially if it’s a dance we didn’t want to learn in the first place, like the “Dementia Dance.” Yes, dementia has some real similarities to real dancing – great awkwardness, socially inhibiting, very much out of our comfort zones.

But whether a dementia dance is a metaphor — or an actual dance at times — we might be forced to learn its steps. We may play the caregiver partner or we may play the person living with dementia.

Either way, we need to learn the steps one-at-a-time, one day at a time. And the next day we may have to learn new steps because someone has “changed the music” on us! We also need to realize that the “lead” dancer is rarely the caregiver. Most often it’s the person with dementia.

I have seen family members and/or staff persons in care centers slow-dancing down the hall with a loved one, usually dancing to “You Are My Sunshine” or another favorite song. Wher-ever the dance and singing occur, they contribute important therapeutic benefits. Dance:

1) helps persons express themselves in new ways; 2) reduces anxiety and agitation; 3) triggers pleasant memories; 4) improves overall well-being (like mood, even physical flexibility, or stimulated senses); and 5) improves quality of life (emotional engagement, lethargy-lifting toe-taps, increased family interaction, etc.).

Whether the dancing is spontaneous or part of an actual dementia dance therapy program, the activity can encourage surprising brain health. Actual physical activity encourages coordination and neurological health. Several brain regions are impacted:

1) the cerebellum, 2) the somatosensory cortex, and ever-popular basal ganglia. (Feel free to look these brain regions up!) They all trigger important neurological, rational, musical and emotional responses.

So why am I spending so much time with this “dementia dance” metaphor and actual activity? Because we are going to focus next Tuesday’s Geezer Forum on dementia, and some of the “steps” of dementia come in questions and answers about the disease.

Our guest resource leader is P.J. Christo, outreach coordinator for the Coeur d’Alene office of Alzheimer’s Association. Many people have learned from P.J. in the past; but she knows that we can all use refresher information about dementia, including its most common form, Alzheimer’s disease. Hence her topic: “Dementia Moments & Geezers-in-Training: Anything You’d Like to Know?”

P.J. wants to share basic dementia information with us. But she especially wants to hear from Forum participants about our questions, our comments and our experiences as caregivers and/or as persons living with dementia.

We meet next Tuesday, May 28, 2:30-4 p.m. at Columbia Bank’s Community Room. Please consider joining us if you have questions or experiences. We won’t likely dance in living color, but we will certainly re-learn some old “steps” and may even learn some brand-new ones!

By the way, next Tuesday’s Geezer Forum is the last one before we take our Summer Recess during June, July and August. We will then begin the Geezer Forum again on Sept.10. (The fall session is already set through November! I can’t believe I’m this organized.)

Paul Graves, M.Div., is lead geezer-in-training for Elder Advocates, a consulting ministry on issues of aging. Contact Paul at 208-61-4971 or elderadvocates@nctv.com.