How your New Years Resolutions can be solved by dancing salsa!

As we look back over 2013, and forward to 2014 (Much in the manner of the Roman god Janus, who had two faces, one to look back to the year behind, and one to look forward to the year ahead…. and who we take the name of the month January from) it is time to start thinking about the person that we want to be in the future, and how we can become that person. One of the main catalysts for change for many of us is of course the New Years resolution!

We know that many of them will be forgotten by the middle of January! This shouldn’t put you off making them though, you just have to find the right way to make a resolution that you will follow through with!

I am standing here to make the argument that the best way to stick to that resolution is to do it with salsa! Salsa is fun, so if you use salsa to complete your resolution then it will happen almost in spite of you!

I’ve done some research and found the top ten New Years Resolutions for 2014…. and I’m going to tell you here how salsa can help you to achieve each and every one of them!

1 Lose Weight

We all know that losing weight has two components. The eating less, and the exercising more! We can’t help you with the eating less part, but if you come to salsa you’ll find that you’re doing loads of exercise without even realising it! And for every minute that you’re out dancing, you’re not sitting and watching tv / checking facebook, with that refrigerator in easy walking distance…

2 Getting Organized

Salsa is great for taming the mind. Although salsa looks spectacular and showy, the trick to doing it well is restraint. That means controlling your own energy and your natural instincts. And once you’ve mastered that level of control on the dance floor then it becomes that much easier to practice it in the rst of your life.

3 Spend Less, Save More

It may seem as if taking up salsa is a new expense that will work against this resolution, but lets compare salsa to some other popular forms of entertainment… The typical salsa class or social will cost £5. Compare this to a moderate night of drinking (say 4 drinks at £3.50 each) at £14; or to going to the cinema which will cost you the best part of £10 these days; or to go out for a meal which will set you back anything from £10 to £100…. so suddenly you see how salsa can definitely be saving you money!

4 Enjoy Life to the Fullest

As anyone who dances regularly will tell you, there is nothing in this world that is more enjoyable than putting on some music and losing yourself in it. And if you want to look at a group of people who know how to enjoy themselves… well, you need look no further than any of the countries that salsa is danced by most of the population! Say what you like about the Latin Americans…. but they know how to enjoy life!

5 Staying Fit and Healthy

Salsa is great excercise! According to this website if you dance salsa for 1 hour (and weigh 75kg) you will burn off a whopping 433 calories! I think that everyone has at some time paid for a gym membership… only to find that a couple of months down the line they are still paying a huge chunk of their income away…. and not even going to the gym! Well, with salsa you can have all of the benefits of that gym membership…. without the huge expense… and it is FUN!

6 Learn Something Exciting

Learning salsa is definitely exciting! It gets your heart racing, releases oxytocin and endorphins into the bloodstream, and makes you feel like not much else will!

7 Quit Smoking

Well…. you won’t have much time for smoking if you’re dancing the night away will you? Salsa dancers tend to be a healthy bunch as well, so though there are smokers they are few and far between! The best way to give up smoking (especially “social smoking”) is to surround yourself with people that don’t smoke!

8 Help Others in Their Dreams

A great dance is much like a dream, it is spontaneous, ephermal, exciting, and once it is gone you can’t quite remember what happened… just the feeling that you got from it! So if you learn to dance you can help several people with their dreams every night!

9 Fall in Love

We can’t promise that you will meet the person of your dreams at salsa, but you’re certainly more likely to do so then you are sat on your own in your house! You’re also more likely to meet genuine people at salsa than you will surrounded by drunk people at a bar. In fact, in many ways, a salsa lesson is a bit like speed dating! You spend 3 minutes with a person… then the teacher calls “next” and you’re on to the next one! And you’ll know you have at least one thing in common! There are lots of single people at salsa…. and some (like me) that found their partner there!

10 Spend More Time with Family

Umm…. OK. Maybe not this one! Unless you bring your family dancing with you! In fact do that! It’ll be a great way for you all to bond, and have fun! Much better than that obligatory board game at christmas that always ends up with at least one family fight!

So, as you can see, whatever your new years resolution, with salsa we can help you to stick to it and get there!

If you need to find a class in Leeds then go to the Leeds Beginners Classes page for a full listing. (Also, I’m running a salsa course starting in January! If you want to know more about that then click on this link to the Salsa course info!)