Finding Your Fly Girl Energy

Discovering your own version of "Fly Girl Energy" might be exactly what your soul needs. After being invited to try Fly Dance Fitness classes by my sister-in-law, I found myself reconnecting with a part of me that had been dormant for years – my love for hip-hop dance that I'd often felt self-conscious about embracing fully as a teenager.

These dance classes have become much more than exercise. They've created a space where I can let my "inner gangster" out to play, where mistakes aren't actually mistakes because choreography is just someone's made-up idea of what looks right. There's a magical moment in each class when my conscious mind steps aside and pure joy takes over. My body knows the movements so well that I can simply experience the euphoria of being completely present, moving in synchronicity with others, and celebrating life through motion.

Understanding the power of mindset, I intentionally created an entirely new dance wardrobe – loose cargo pants instead of strict leggings, hair down instead of in a tight ponytail, and custom rhinestoned hot pink high-tops that I'm having everyone in class sign. These choices aren't just aesthetic; they're psychological anchors that help me embody a different version of myself when I walk into that dance studio. The most inspiring part? The 69 and 70-year-old women who've been dancing together for 18 years, not to look cute or show off perfect moves, but because they know dance keeps their brains sharp and helps them keep up with their great-grandchildren.

Whether dance speaks to you or not, find something that celebrates movement in a way that brings you joy – CrossFit, running, yoga, or whatever makes you feel alive. When you find what moves you and the right community to move with, you'll discover your own version of fly girl energy. I promise things will get better when you do.

Transcript

Discovering Fly Dance Fitness

Speaker 1 1:13

All right, let's talk fly dance fitness. Yes, fly dance fitness. This is the dance classes that I've been attending recently. If you watch my stories for a little while there, you may have seen some videos of me dancing hip hop to some like 2000s music. It's a blast.

Speaker 1 1:33

I found these classes because my sister-in-law she originally had been following this group out of Sarasota, florida, for the last seven or eight years that they have created this brand called Fly Dance Fitness and it's essentially kind of, you can think, zumba, so repetitive choreography to music, and so in this case it's more hip hop based and a little bit of pop and like jazziness, but it's very hip hop centered. So she has been following this community as it was growing. But it wasn't in our area. That's two plus hours away from us. It's not something that you just get up and go do on a couple nights a week, no. But then a studio opened in our area and my sister-in-law was paying attention to all of the stuff on social media about how this location was coming near us, near us and she said, hey, would you like to go to these classes with me? And I was like you know what? Yes, absolutely. I would love to have more dance in my life. I had just started going back to some heels dance classes at a different studio in our local area.

Dance as Celebration and Permission

Speaker 1 2:47

And here's the thing I just love moving my body, challenging it in each and every way. I have a love for all of the arts, all of the different styles, but there is something about hip hop that brings out a special little part of me. I fell in love with it when I was in my early teens, in school and through dance, and I feel like I was often like made fun of for how much I really enjoyed it because I was a white girl. And so this opportunity to go to these kind of dance classes and see it as more of dance fitness, it gave me permission again. It gave that little part of me that so loved just getting almost like my little inner gangster gets to come out and she has so much fun. So Flydance Fitness has given me that community, that space to let my little inner weirdo out to play. It has given me the permission to be imperfect, the permission to laugh through the quote mistakes, but it's not really mistakes, because choreography is just made up, it's fake, it's someone's idea of what they think is right, and they give me permission to explore different movements and so, as I'm there to just move my body in the best way that feels good to me, but they're giving me guidance on how to do that. Seeing it as guidance versus strict choreography has been such a shift because in the past every bit of choreography had to be done exactly like that and so there wasn't that extra space for fun. And so here I've given myself the permission through them, they have helped give me this permission to just have fun, and sometimes that means put your hands above your head and just shake them around, and sometimes that means doing the choreography a little bit different. That means having your hands here in a different placement and like it just means feeling the music versus just doing the choreography.

Speaker 1 4:52

And there is such a difference when you let go that there's almost this point about halfway through class or halfway through each dance, where I just I'm out of my body, I almost associate, where it's like I don't even know what I'm doing. My brain is just in the motion, it's doing the secondhand movement, it knows the movement so well at this point that it just lets go, and then I just see myself experiencing this euphoria of movement. There's just this moment where I just get to let go and be so present, have so much fun. I just see it in my face and I witness it in my energy and I see it in myself and it's such a unique experience. There's something to having that rapport with the women and men that are around you in these classes, that collective energy as the different songs ebb and flow right. There's just something to the laughter that you get when someone messes up or when you know just these little things happen throughout class that create this collective positive energy, this connection to each other. There's also this level of challenge to pushing yourself to consistently move at a high level and a high pace, like that for two to four and sometimes five minutes. These songs can get really long, and so there's this level of communal hype where everybody's like hyping each other up and just like celebrating life is what it feels like. That's what dance is is celebrating the movement of life. And so through these classes you get this opportunity and they gamify it to where they count every class. And so when you hit 50 classes, you get celebrated. Hit a hundred classes, you get celebrated. 500, 300, whatever the markers are you, you get to continuously celebrate the movement in your life.

Creating a New Dance Wardrobe

Speaker 1 6:50

A movement is something that's such a core value to me. There's just something to moving with people and moving through experiences, and one of the things that we get is to let go. And so to be able to let go in these dance classes, I had to set myself up for success, so I utilize the things that I do know about the mind and I know about anchoring, and I know about the body and I know about associations, and so I went ahead and made sure that I created an entirely new wardrobe for these classes, and I'm going to talk you through that in the next few minutes about why I made certain choices as to what I wear to class, and there is an intention behind every aspect. So the first aspect is my hair. So wearing my hair up in a ponytail or up in a bun is something I traditionally did in dance classes, where I was very like think ballerina very proper, very rules driven, wanting to seek perfection driven, wanting to seek perfection. And so there's something to feeling the tension of my hair being up on my head that causes me to be in a much more uptight position. So in these classes I tend to do whatever I can to wear my hair down, because hair down equals relaxed and you get the bonus of being able to do a little hairography and like whip your hair around, whip your head around a little bit more and kind of like exercise those neck muscles. You got to be really careful, make sure to warm it up, but exercise those neck muscles by flipping your hair around a little bit more and it just adds to that fun, that creativity, that expression that we were just talking about.

Speaker 1 8:47

The next aspect of what I've changed in what I wear in my wardrobe is loose cargo pants. So sometimes they're sweats, sometimes they're these like cargo pants. I've gotten a bunch of different ones recently to just try out the different fabrics, see which ones I like to dance with a little bit more. Some of these are like I've got a couple of these like metallic, bright metallic, like silver and blue, um, and these like purpley ones. All from Amazon, that it's it's like.

Speaker 1 9:18

Unfortunately, the material doesn't breathe very well, so it's like this stretchy balloon, like material, so it very much can get you overheated in class, and so I have to figure out a way to maybe like cut some slits in them, like strategically create a design of some sort. I don't know yet what I'm going to do, because I love them so much and they're so much fun to dance in. I just need to make them more breathable, because I definitely created like a little hot air balloon in my pants the other day because I was like pulling up on them and I just both my ankles popped out like little hot air balloons because they have tension at the bottom. It was the funniest thing. So I just like open the waistband a little bit to let all the steam come out. These classes, I tell you, you are just going full out and it is so much fun. So these loose cargo pants allow me to keep a mindset of loose rules where I get to play with my pants a little bit more. They're a little bit more flowy. It kind of gives me that hip hop vibe. So it really helps me to groove it out. It really helps me to like get into that like playful mood where I just kind of explore the music and explore the movement and how it makes me feel, versus feeling like I need to work on having perfect lines and being in the right position at the right time. Like there is such a different feeling there.

Custom Pink Sneakers and Rhinestones

Speaker 1 10:41

The last aspect of what I've just added to my outfit, which kind of ties it all together, is I got a custom pair of hot pink high top sneakers and these I love. I found like this really off brand I like I never heard of before. It was called Lucky Step and so it says that right on the tongue of it and I was like you know what, if I'm going to have any logo or anything showing that's the cutest thing in my opinion Lucky step, hell yeah. So I went ahead and got these. So far they're turning out to be great. I'll let you know, I guess in a couple of months, how they hold up.

Speaker 1 11:15

I'm just wearing them to these dance classes. I don't wear them anywhere else around the streets. In fact, I wear normal street shoes in and then change into pink sneakers and I rhinestoned them because why not? Why not add that little bit of dancer flair and that shine and that sparkle to it? There was this really cool like inset inlay part on the heel that went all the way around. That was nice to be able to put like two strips of really solid clear. But these are like not just the clear see-through rhinestones, these are actually the really high quality Swarovski rhinestones with the foil backing which makes them look like they shine, with all the different colors, the deep purples and all of these different. They were the really pretty high level ones that we used in competition. So, needless to say, I paid a pretty penny for them.

Speaker 1 12:11

So I put two strips of the thicker ones in the back, on the base. I'm really excited because those are not going to get bumped as much, so I think they're going to stay and I was able to put a good thick amount of the glue there. Then I put another strip in the front or along the toe line. These are the ones I think are going to get kicked off over time, because my toes are going to eventually like bang into things line. These are the ones I think are going to get kicked off over time, because my toes are going to eventually like bang into things. They're also they sit out a little bit further than the rubber, so they're likely to pop off. So we'll see how long those hold, um, and whether or not it's a long-term thing or not. I might just end up gluing them back on over and over, but who knows I also on the tongue there was like this little inset part with like a circular or oval kind of shape, and so I filled that in with a mixture of the two different sized rhinestones to kind of fill it in.

Speaker 1 13:03

But the idea with these shoes is not the rhinestones, that was just a fun little afternoon activity that I had the other day because I love rhinestones. It's just, it's really truly a part of me. I just don't express that part of me as frequently, but I absolutely love them. So I had to rhinestone them for me. And then the next step is I have been bringing a black Sharpie in and I am having all of the instructors first sign the tops of the toes of the shoes so when I look down in class I can see all their little signatures. And then I'm going to have everybody who attends the class with me sign their little signatures around the outsides of the shoes so that I can carry everybody's energy with me while I dance and I can remember them and these can be my fly girl energy shoes.

Finding Your Movement Community

Speaker 1 13:52

And so I'm really excited about these outfits that I put together, like wearing my hair down, wearing these little like loose fitting crop tops and these loose fitted cargo pants and these big high top sneakers Like. It really gives me this like vibe that I get to be more playful and I get to feel different than I feel elsewhere. So it's not anything like what I wear elsewhere. It's very like a thick, heavy shoe. It makes me move a little bit differently than if I had like lighter sneakers on and little like if I was just in my normal, like light sneakers and like black leggings and like a fitted sports bra or something like a flip fitted tank top. That would just make me feel like every single other day. And so what is going to be different? How am I going to actually get into it? Change my mindset, change my experience. How we experience our wardrobe impacts how we show up. How you see yourself in the mirror impacts how you show up. I actually really have enjoyed wearing crop tops recently.

Speaker 1 15:06

Or like tucking my shirt up and into the front of my sports bra so that the front of my stomach shows, because I tend to release my stomach and have more of a relaxed core. And so when I dance, that's not safe, because you're not protecting your spine, you're not protecting your back. You have to make sure all of your movement is connected, starting from the core. So being able to see my front core because the core is actually the entire center of your body from, like, your shoulders to your hips, the entire area front, back and surrounding it's all your core. But I visually seeing the front rectus abdominis, the six pack region here it gives me a visual cue that I am not engaging my entire core, because if that is relaxed, that means there's other areas that are either overcompensating or not working at all. And so it gives me the mental cue to tighten, to tuck, to actually engage, to start breathing more with my diaphragm from an intentional place than being in that relaxed state, especially in a dance class. And so I have really enjoyed these shifts in my attire, not just to look cool in class, not just to draw people's attention.

Speaker 1 16:21

Yes, I do get bright, pink hot pants. Yes, I do get these metallic, shiny, bright blue and purple pants. I do those things because the lights are dark and it looks like a club and it's shiny and like they. Just it's fun. It is so much more fun than just wearing black everything. For years all I ever did was wear black all the time and I was comfortable in it, but that's because I was hiding, I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to cover up, I was feeling safe in not having any expression, and now I want to express more of myself, so I'm embracing these. That's why the shoes are hot pink. I would not normally choose hot pink things, but those shoes are hot pink because it represents a different version of myself that I get to become.

Speaker 1 17:10

In those doors, in those walls, I get to become this version of, like the inner gangster, right, I don't know what that even means, but that's what I'm embodying, and it's not even anything in the negative sense. It's all positive energy, it's all good vibes, it's all fun, but it is just different. It's not the person that I am here when I'm teaching. It's not the person that I am here when I'm teaching. It's not the person that I'm here when I'm with clients. But it is at the same time. It's so unique, but it is an experience that has elevated my frequency recently. It is something that has brought me so much joy. It is something that has brought me so much inner love, inner knowing. It is something that I am deeply grateful for. Thank you, carly, for inviting me, if you ever listened to this. Thank you so so much for inviting me to these dance classes.

Embodying Your Fly Girl Energy

Speaker 1 18:07

I had no idea how much this was going to impact me, how much this was going to shift and change me in all the right ways. And maybe fly dance fitness is not for you, and that's okay, because it's not going to be for everyone, trust me, but it was 100% for me. So find your thing, find somewhere you can go that movement is celebrated. Maybe it's a CrossFit, maybe it's a running club, maybe it's a bowling alley, maybe it's a yoga studio, maybe it's a Pilates class, maybe it's a shuffle class, who knows?

Speaker 1 18:47

Go, find something that celebrates a form of movement that you enjoy and that will make it easy to stick to, and then you will be like the two women that I just danced with on Sunday morning, who are 69 and 70 years old, who have been dancing together for over 18 years Because they know it's good for their brain and their body and they want to keep being able to keep up with your great grandchildren.

Speaker 1 19:16

And that's what inspires me. It's not the young women who are ripped and have the six packs who are getting it and like all, like looking cute with their dance moves. No, it's these women who are still up and moving every single week, multiple times a week, dancing in fly dance fitness classes, listening to the same explicit music that I am letting their inner gangster out so that they can be the best grandmothers possible, live a long life, have brains that are healthy, stave off dementia, alzheimer's All of these different things happen from dance, from movement. So find what moves, you find who moves, you find the right room and embody your version of Fly Girl energy. I promise you things will get better.