Dance like no one is watching

I am currently in the second week of a writing workshop that is being held at the Atlantic Center of the Arts in New Smyrna Beach. This is a workshop that offers residency and I decided to stay here for two of the days to save the three hour drive round trip. I'll talk about my entire experience here in another post once I have completed the workshop. But I want to talk about something amazing that I got to do last night. The Atlantic Center of the Arts has galleries and studios for all genres of arts. I am here for writing but my first love in the arts was dance. I took dance lessons for twelve years from the time I was about two years old. I miss dancing every single day. I miss the confidence I felt while dancing and the beauty that came with every step. So yesterday I discovered the dance studio! I found it during my lunch break and could not stop thinking about it all day. I made sure to get a good sum of work done first but last night at 9 PM I unlocked the doors to the dance studio and turned on the lights to a place that seemed like home. The happiness that filled me is honestly indescribable. I planned to only dance for an hour but I ended up being in that studio for over an hour and a half. I never wanted to leave. I felt like I owned the world. I felt beautiful and confident and just amazing. Dancing was my first love and it still is. Even though I danced for all of those years, I never once had an entire dance studio to myself. It was so freeing and liberating. I often will dance in my bedroom for cardio but nothing beats a real studio. All of those mirrors are important. If you aren't a dancer you may not understand why. To me, at least, the mirrors are important because you are forced to watch yourself. You are forced to look yourself in the face. It is something that people all too often do not do. It is important to face yourself and watch yourself fail and/or accomplish something. The thing in, you are going to do both in life. You WILL fail but you will also succeed. You need to go through both in order to truly become whole. You can practice a move over and over again and actually see your progression. More often than not, people don't get to see their progress or acknowledge it. Being in that studio for that short time allowed me to express myself, I let out so many feelings and emotions and frustrations and stress. Everything. I took pictures of myself in the studio and I feel like you can see these emotions in my body. I originally took these photos for my fitness Instagram account because I wanted to show my body off in a positive and active way. Since April 20th I have been following the Fit Girls Guide (www.fitgirlsguide.com) which is an e-book that offers a "girly-girl's guide" to a healthy lifestyle. It gives you exact meal plans and exercises to complete during the course of a 28-day challenge. In the first challenge I lost 9 pounds! The unique thing about this is that there is an entire community on Instagram where you can follow and connect with thousands of other women who are following the challenge. I certainly have not been following this guide exactly as it is listed, however, it is a guide and I have been using it as so. I got an overwhelming amount of likes on the picture I posted and I realized that I wanted to share it with even more people because the experience was too good not to share. I am after a healthy and happy lifestyle. I talked all about this in my original post on this blog (http://lextravaganza.blogspot.com/2015/01/one-step-at-time.html). I want to truly develop into a woman that is a role model. I want to be strong, confident, beautiful, healthy, and happy with myself and my life. I wasted too many years feeling depressed and sorry for myself. I only have one life and I need to live it for me. The way I felt in that studio last night is how I want to feel every day of my life. I am determined to make that happen. Nothing happens overnight but I have been working so much on my positivity and happiness over the year so far and though there may be some downs, I strive for as many ups as I can get. I can't wait until tonight....you better believe I will be back in that dance studio!

Just in case no one has told you yet today, you are beautiful!
Love, Lex <3