Blog

Not with a hangover!


Tom: Once I’ve got them singing I’ll invite some of them on stage to dance.
Client: Our people will never dance. There’s a thousand of them, how many drummers will you have with you?
Tom: Just me, I’ll need a mic.
………………………..
Client: You had so many people on stage dancing with you we were worried it would collapse. How did you DO that?
Tom: I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

It’s true. Marlon Brando was the Godfather of Family. James Brown was the Godfather of Soul, and I’m the facilitator with a few tricks up my sleeve. Haha, list of three. Get it? Alright, I’m the Godfather of Spirit, but don’t tell anyone, I sound so ‘up myself’.

This is how I do it. Speaking from the stage my invitation isn’t to their judgemental minds, right now they hate me, their frowning faces are saying, “We could be in the bar if it wasn’t for you and your freakin’ team building”. My invitation is to their spirits, and I see a thousand of them out there shining, saying, “Thank god you’ve come, what took you so long?”

And d’you know what? Everyone’s spirit wants to dance. Why? Because it wants to keep their mind and body healthy, purely following its survival instinct. To fend off dementia and Alzheimers it innately recognises an invitation to do that.

Memory – it’s a muscle, and it needs new things like dance choreography to keep it thriving. Whatever age you are now you’ve got to use it or you’ll lose it.  If we don’t take evasive action while we can approximately forty per cent of us over the age of sixty five will experience memory loss to some degree. Have I said that already?

A study, published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Human Neuroscience’ showed that dancing, when compared with other physical activities, was overwhelmingly effective in reversing aging in the brain. Overwhelmingly effective!

Dancing improves the functionality of the brain in various ways. The study examined MRI brain scans and their relationship between age-related brain degeneration. It took place within eighteen months and compared dancing in different genres, including Jazz and Latin-American, with traditional exercise. Researchers found that in individuals with an average age of sixty five that their brain structure made dramatic improvements after participating in weekly choreographed dance routines. Think what it’s going to do if you’re thirty or forty.

 
The perceived increase of the hippocampus area of the brain due to dancing is impressive, as this region of the brain is most known for incurring age-related declines. The study showed benefits of dancing that stretch far beyond the strengthening of the memory though. Choreographed dance routines also boosted endurance, flexibility training, and balance. As our bodies and brains grow older, balance becomes key to maintaining health and safety in many instances. Dancing combines aerobic fitness, sensorimotor skills, and cognitive demands while also having a low risk of incurring injuries.

Researchers believe the improvements in balance may be connected to the challenge of coordinating footsteps and arm patterns along with speed and rhythm changes that take place when learning choreography.


But it’s not just me at corporate conferences promoting this. Doctors in the UK are starting to prescribe dancing to help people stay well, or recover from depression. Termed ‘social prescribing’  these interventions aim to complement more traditional treatment methods and offer an alternative to overprescribing medications. “We’ve been fostering a culture that’s popping pills and Prozac, when what we should be doing is more prevention and more perspiration,” says UK Doctor Mark Hancock.

From a business perspective, when something in the workplace looks like this much fun, the question is always, “But will it affect the bottom line?”

I have an answer for that. “Yes”.

Client: We must be saving a thousand pounds on the bar at least because everyone’s taking it easy tonight.
Tom: Why’s that?
Client: They saw the drums being unloaded into the lobby earlier and there’s a rumour going round that in the morning we’ll be combining all the singing and dancing we’ve been doing with you into one big final day performance. With added drums. They don’t want to be doing THAT with crushing hangovers.
Tom: Oh yeah? I wonder who started that rumour.
………………………………………………………..

You can find out more about Tom Morley and CREATIVITY at www.tommorley.com

Posted in