Workout: Reconnect With Your Body

Instructor: Sarah Leversee, of Louisville, the artistic director of Boulder-based Art as Action, a nonprofit that aims to use art for social change and to unite and inspire the community. Reconnect With Your Body is one of the programs through Art as Action.

Leversee has been a dancer all her life, and she minored in dance at the University of Colorado. She was a professional dancer in Seattle and taught dance at a community college and through the city of Boulder’s parks and rec department. Then she got injured — about the same time that her uncle was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

“I was told my career was over,” she says.

Instead, she and her uncle both began rediscovering their bodies. She was trained to teach dancers with Parkinson’s in 2011.

What is the workout?Reconnect With Your Body brings dance to people with Parkinson’s. The goal is to have fun, teach participants to listen to their bodies, discover new things about their movement and also get some exercise in an environment where other people understand what they’re going through, says Leversee.

The class is creative but also more technical than something such as Zumba. Leversee teaches basic choreography to songs, using a variety of dance styles (jazz, modern, hip-hop, contemporary, ballet), as well as stretching and strengthening moves.

My class started seated in chairs. Leversee guided us through a meditation and checking in with our bodies, a slow easing in. Then we stretched slowly to music in the chairs. We then stood up and danced in a circle and across the floor. Class ended with a thorough cool-down.

What’s different? Some participants do yoga, Tai Chi and other classes, but dance is different, Leversee says.

“You kind of forget all of the things you can’t do. You can get lost in the music. It can be what motivates you to move,” says Leversee. “For a lot of people with Parkinson’s, starting to move can be really hard. They can get frozen. But when you’re dancing, you hear the music and you can move. It taps into a different part of their brain.”

Students told me they learn new things that their bodies can do every class, which is liberating and exciting.

“It’s about creativity, joy and community, so it has a different layer of meaning,” Leversee says.

Classes repeat some familiar routines but also always mix it up and offer different moves.

Cost: $12 for a drop-in. First five classes are $25. You can get other punch passes to reduce the price.

Level: All levels. No dance background needed. None of the people in my class had ever danced before. About two-thirds of the participants have Parkinson’s. Other people just come to dance.

“It’s also powerful for people who are aging, in their 40s through 60s, and their body is changing. The challenge is to stay open to what’s possible,” Leversee says.

Class also is beneficial to people with multiple sclerosis, Leversee says.

My class had both men and women of a variety of ages. I took the class (and don’t have Parkinson’s) and got my heart rate up, felt dramatically more mobile and flexible after class (especially in my shoulders and joints) and had a lot of fun.

Participants come from Boulder County to Lakewood to Arvada.

I found the class a four on a 10-point scale of intensity. Some of the faster classes reached closer to a five.

Leversee says she aims to open a lower-intensity dance class in Boulder later this year.

When: 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

What to prepare:A water bottle and open mind, Leversee says.

Muscles worked: Full body and cardio. Class can be adjusted to accommodate the participants’ needs.

“It’s really not about therapy. It’s just about experiencing the joy of dance and coming together as a group,” Leversee says. “And all of those benefits people with Parkinson’s get from dance, anybody could get from dance.”

What I loved: This is far from a typical easy-moving class you might see at the senior center. The music was diverse and cool (The Black Keys, Florence and the Machine) and the choreography was exciting and very well done.

But best of all, I loved seeing the change in energy and excitement. At first, many of the participants moved slowly. By the end, one woman said she was feeling so good she skipped out of class. And you know what? Parkinson’s or not, I felt like skipping out, too.

I have no doubt if I returned to this class, the participants would overwhelmingly and probably literally embrace me.

What I didn’t like: Leversee says she offers this class in Arvada so it can accommodate people from across the metro area, but I wish there were a class in Boulder County. Although it was only a few minutes south of Broomfield, the nonprofit is based in Boulder and the classes would be more convenient for local residents if it were in town. (Do I sound like a typical Boulder resident stuck in “the bubble” or what?)

How I felt after the class:Joyful and mobile. My spine and joints felt warm. I never felt sore.

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Workout: Reconnect With Your Body

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