Dance That Keeps You Young

Dance can feel like a simple pleasure, but what if it is also one of the most underused tools we have for healthy ageing? I’m joined by Faye O’Connor, a registered dance movement psychotherapist and the founder of Xpress Yourself Dance CIC, to unpack what really happens when older adults move together and why it matters for prevention, connection, and quality of life. 

We get into the practical health benefits of dance classes for over 60s: balance and coordination work that supports mobility, routines that deliberately change to push learning and stimulate the brain, and a realistic view of falls prevention where reaction and dexterity can make the difference. We also talk about pain, arthritis, and the fear of movement, and why the right kind of supportive, welcoming session can help people feel safer in their bodies again. 

Some of the most powerful moments are about dementia care. Faye shares how movement can become a real conversation when words are no longer available, and how music can hold emotion and unlock memory, even if only briefly. We also explore neighbourhood health, the promise of social prescribing, and what it looks like when community organisations spot local needs early and build services that people actually want. 

If you care about preventative healthcare, dementia support, community wellbeing, or social impact, this one is for you. Subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs a nudge to move, and leave a review so more people can find the podcast.

Contact Xpress Yourself:

Website: https://www.xpress-yourself.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/Xpre55Your5elf/

https://www.youtube.com/@XpressYourselfKD

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Make an Impact Podcast, where we dive deep into the stories, strategies, and solutions that drive real change. I'm Heidi Fisher and I work with organisations on a mission to tackle poverty, reduce health inequalities, and create lasting social impact. In each episode, I bring you inspiring conversations with change makers, social entrepreneurs, and thought leaders who are making a difference.

Whether you're looking to boost your impact measurement, learn from innovative projects, or find fresh ideas to transform your work, you're in the right place. Welcome, Faye. I'm so pleased that you're able to join me on today's podcast episode. Could you just introduce yourself to the listeners, please? Hello. Thank you for having me, Heidi. My name is Faye O'Connor, and I'm a registered dance movement psychotherapist and the founder of Xpress Yourself Dance CIC.

 What do you do on a day-to-day basis? Yeah. So Xpress Yourself [00:01:00] CIC was started in 2013, and our vision is for healthy ageing for everybody through dance and movement. We started in 2013, and then in 2021 we registered as a CIC, coming out of the pandemic.

And we work and we deliver dance classes, so Keep Dancing dance classes for people over 60 across Birmingham, Solihull and Walsall. And we also work in care homes, and we also do a lot of work delivering sessions in dementia cafes. And then to add an extra string to our bow, I recently completed my master's in dance movement psychotherapy at the University of Derby to better understand, dance and why we dance.

 People will tell me that they've had a really good session, but I was interested in why. Why is it good? What's happened for you? [00:02:00] What's changed? How did that movement shift something inside you and shift a rhythm? And that's where the dance movement psychotherapy comes in. And the dance movement psychotherapy comes in a lot with people who are living with dementia, who no longer have verbal communication.

And quite often I have the best conversations with those people through dance and movement, and I can have a whole conversation with people who are no longer able to communicate with words. And that's the beauty of our work really. Yeah, and we really strongly believe that you don't stop dancing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop dancing. Because there's something in us that shifts when we dance and we move and it makes us feel young Wow. Amazing. So what on earth made you want to get into this and to do dance with older people?

Who are now obviously known as young [00:03:00] people- Yeah ... based on what you said. Absolutely. I was lucky enough to have an opportunity to start to work with older people. I'd started out working as a freelance dance artist, and an opportunity came up, and it was a regular opportunity, which sometimes is not always the case as a freelancer.

A regular slot of work to work with older people. And when I started working with the group of people, I recognised quite quickly that they chose to come to the class each week. I have worked with lots of children's groups, and often, sometimes it's not the case that children actually want to dance.

But I started teaching this group, and they would turn up every week, and they would choose to be there every week, and it was very different. It was like they were showing me their own autonomy like, "I have a choice, but I choose to come to this class."

And then I got really interested in working with older adults [00:04:00] and curious about whether dance keeps us young or dance helps us to prevent falls or cognitive decline. And just started to work and then research and go onto different training courses and recognised that actually when I was working with people that were more frail, that dance gave them an opportunity to express themselves when words are no longer there.

It was a way that they could communicate a story, or they could be part of a group, or they could be part of a community, and I really loved that Wow. It sounds like it's one of those things where you were meant to do it and the opportunity just came along. Yeah. A nice little bit of synchronicity, I think.

You mentioned in there you think it can prevent falls and keep people younger. You probably know that [00:05:00] I'm a little bit obsessed with preventative healthcare versus helping people after the crisis and when they're in need of acute care.

From what you're saying, it sounds like dance is actually a really good preventative healthcare mechanism. Yeah. It is. It challenges our balance, it challenges our coordination, it challenges the rhythm in our body. And the way our Keep Dancing classes run is that we deliberately change the routines each month because we want the brain to go, "Ah."

"I don't know what I'm doing." Because actually when we're learning, it's when the most neural pathways are created. We want to prevent cognitive decline for people. We joke , and it's not really a joke because I do think it's true, is that after people have joined in with our dance class, their brain has had more of a cognitive workout than it would have if they were sat down completing a crossword because they've [00:06:00] experienced so many different layers all in one experience of just learning a new dance routine.

And in terms of preventing falls, it's quite interesting the language around preventing falls because we can all trip over. We can all slip over. But it's our reaction in the fall that's important. We've had people that have come to our dance classes and they've come with a cast on their wrist because they've had a fall, and I've said, "Oh that's really great that you've broken your wrist," and which is obviously looked at with horror because nobody wants to hurt themself.

But they've had the dexterity to put their hands out to stop the fall, and actually a wrist is gonna recover much more quickly than a broken hip. And It's gonna be very inconvenient to have a broken wrist, and there's still gonna be lots of appointments and physios to go to, but actually because they've maintained their ability to move around [00:07:00] they've had the dexterity to put their hands out which has prevented a further fall .

A broken hip is not a good injury to sustain. So I always congratulate them. Because they've maintained keeping active, they've prevented the worst-case scenario. Yeah. So yeah, I am really keen on preventative health, and it's always... I think I read a statistic about our health is 80% in our hands.

So 20% is hereditary, and 80% is the stuff that we can do to impact our own lives. And if we're afforded the privilege of getting old If we have been active and maintain being active, and even if we're not active in this moment, we can choose to be active and improve the quality of our life.

People will come to my classes, and say, "I've got some arthritis," or, "I've got some [00:08:00] osteoarthritis." And I'll say, Most people have in our classes you're amongst other people. But I think some people have been so scared to move because they don't want to aggravate it, but then they come to the class and they go, "My knee feels so much better now", because they've moved and they've kept everything moving around their body.

Yeah, to hopefully keep that knee that little bit stronger. Yeah. It sounds like a good plan. You talk about hips and arthritis. I've obviously had my hip replacement earlier this year I don't have arthritis, but I have a metal bit in my hip instead. But yeah it was definitely not the easiest thing trying to keep moving when you've got that pain all the time.

I completely relate to someone saying, that actually their knees or their joints hurt, which is not something that, if you'd have asked me a few years ago, I would never have had that insight into it. But now- Yeah ... it's very much, yeah, very aware of it. [00:09:00] One of the things you mentioned in there was around people with dementia and I've seen before where dementia patients have been, like, played bits of music to trigger memories.

And it's interesting because our mirror neurons are still working in our brain. I have been in a care home this morning, and there's somebody who sat in a chair, and he's not talking and looked really vacant.

But I get to their level, and I get to their eye level, and I start to move my hand, and it's always an invitation. And then suddenly they can see that I'm moving my hand, and they start to move their hand, and then I move my hand, and then they move their hand, and then actually we're turn-taking. We are in a conversation with one another.

One of my favorite stories is that I went to a dementia cafe to deliver a session, and it was a dementia cafe for people living with dementia and their [00:10:00] carers. And there was a husband and wife sat next door to each other, and I had a feeling that the wife, who was the carer, had a really difficult experience that morning.

It'd been a lot of work to get her husband to that dementia cafe, and you could tell in her body that she was exhausted, and he didn't recognise her and he didn't know her name, and he was very angry towards her. And then throughout the workshop a piece of music I'd chosen was Frank Sinatra, New York, and they were both dancing together, and then suddenly he looks at his wife and he said, we used to have this at our house parties."

And suddenly they were back in the room together, and they sat and they had this conversation, and the wife was trying to eke as much out of him as possible to connect with him and to be like, "Yes, I'm your wife. I'm here." And then the conversation stopped, and they went back.

But I think the music holds emotion, and actually a person [00:11:00] living with dementia still has emotion in their body. Yeah. Yeah Wow. That has to be expressed some way. And when they hear the piece of music that's really familiar, that brings back the memory, and then if they can then express that through movement or words, then it's really powerful for that person.

The other thing that I wanted to ask you about is neighbourhood health. Obviously the NHS is trying to move from national to neighbourhood health and to have more community-based delivery, delivery in neighbourhoods organisations like yours doing the delivery and things. What are your thoughts around neighbourhood healthcare? We're already in neighbourhoods anyway, and when we're working with a group, we can recognise so many different themes of what's happening in that local area.

We know recently we've had lots of [00:12:00] child bereavements. And we can notice the trends because we're checking in with the people. If our participants don't attend the dance class for a certain amount of weeks, and they've not let us know, they've got an appointment or coming up on holiday or something, we check in on them to make sure that they're okay.

And we find out so much information about what's happening in the local area. Like we're a CIC and we're a small organisation, and we then try and go, "Oh, this is a theme. This is a service that is potentially needed." And also it's really valuable because we get to find out the services that people would like.

We were running a tea dance, and somebody said to us, "You know what I'd really like? I'd really like an opportunity where I can dress up and go to a disco. Not something where I learn what dances are happening, but I'd like to dress up, and I'd like to go to a disco and just dance how I want to dance."

And so was born the [00:13:00] Daylight Disco, where people now have that opportunity to dress up, come along to our event, and have the opportunity to socialise in a different way. They said, "I'm getting older, and I don't have any weddings to go to anymore. I don't get invited to birthday parties, but I still have some sequins in my wardrobe that I want to wear So when you're working with smaller groups and within neighbourhoods, you can really identify themes of what's happening across that local area or what services would be beneficial to the community.

Yeah. Do you think that with all that knowledge and insight you have at a neighbourhood level that feeds back into what the ICBs and the NHS actually ends up delivering or not? I don't know. I think it's always been our dream, and my dream, for a doctor to go, "Oh, it sounds like you're really lonely, [00:14:00] and it sounds like you're not moving much.

Why don't you go along to this dance class, and we'll prescribe you 12 sessions?" That's always been my absolute dream to get to. Yeah. You might do. If they get these neighbourhoods health centres off the ground you might be based in one and have a room there. So the other health services will be sending people across saying, "Go and knock on that door over there.

They can help you." Yeah. That would be the dream. 

So just taking you back a little bit in your history why did you decide to set up as a social enterprise? It's a good question. I was trading as a sole trader and then the pandemic came. Yeah. And that ... Obviously sole traders got no support through the pandemic. But also we were like, "We need to move our classes online. We need to keep people moving and dancing." And when [00:15:00] we moved people online, we recognised our impact of our work because before we just used the metric of people attending every week.

They come every week, and they choose to come every week, therefore, they like coming every week. But then during the pandemic, people would come online, and we recognised quite quickly that for some people we were their only contact touchpoint in that week.

And then it was then that we recognised the significance of our work. It wasn't just a dance class, it was so much more. And during the pandemic we ran an online tea dance, and we put videos out to promote this tea dance, and somebody from a local charity spotted the video and contacted us and was like, "We could work with you to run online tea dances." Which was brilliant, and people would get delivered cake to their house, and then we'd all dance online together. But p-part, part of her work was to s-support businesses and develop [00:16:00] businesses. And when she'd meet with me to talk about the tea dance, she'd say, " you're doing more work than a dance class. You've got social impact. You should be a CIC." So with her support, we registered as a CIC. The word obliterated is quite strong, but we were obliterated during the pandemic. We couldn't get into care homes. Care homes couldn't do online sessions because they were so busy looking after people and we had 30% of our usual cohort of people dancing with us.

So we were really not gonna be able to sustain the organisation much longer. And then we worked with this person, and she said I'll support you to become a CIC. You get yourself a board together and you can apply for funding." And then we were able to apply for funding so that for some classes when they returned, the class was free.

So there was an enticing other reason to come to the classes to start to build our numbers again. Because we found as well that while [00:17:00] some people wanted to dance, they were very scared to come out and they didn't want to dance, and that's taken us up until now to start rebuilding our classes since 2021, 2022, when we could return back to the work.

So that was the reason really that we became a CIC. Wow. It s- sounds like a tough time. I try not to remember back to those days. Anytime anyone mentions it, I'm like, "No, I've erased that from my brain," because it was just so stressful in so many different ways.

Last couple of questions from me. You'll be relieved today. You mentioned in there about the impact that you were having and it was more than just dancing. Do you have a formal method for measuring your impact now or are you still developing that?

Yeah, it's still very much a work in progress, but last year we published our first impact report, and that was on a survey that we'd sent out to our participants to [00:18:00] complete. We recognise the value now actually of inviting our participants to complete surveys, but also we want to make sure that it's not just a survey.

Our hope this year is that our impact report, that we're able to deliver like an experiential workshop where we invite our participants to come along to develop the insight of the feedback that we get. I think we did it on the Aston course, the Aston university course, where we write the feedback down on Post-it notes, and we always capture that.

But sometimes the feedback that we'll get is, "It was a nice afternoon." Which is wonderful, and we're really glad that people have had a nice time, but it doesn't tell us anything. Because you could go to any activity and have a nice time. So we recognise that we need to consider, be more considerate in how we work with people so that they can [00:19:00] find more insight into why was it a nice afternoon?

How did you feel when you arrived, and how do you feel now? And If we ask better questions and give people the opportunity to be creative and find their own meaning, and then share that with us, that actually our impact will be more rigorous. Yeah. That sounds like a good plan.

I'm very much for get started and figure it out as you go along approach in most cases. Because if you don't get any information you know that the information you were getting was just telling you that people were having a nice time, and therefore you're now thinking about what can we ask instead to get more information?

Whereas a lot of people would have never asked those first set of questions, so they wouldn't have even got that basic level of information. So it's good to see that you're actually thinking how can you develop this and progress it even further. The last question from me then is just really around what are your future [00:20:00] plans and what are you hoping for over the next couple of years?

Our future plan is we would really like our own venue. So most of our classes run across the community, and that will always be part of our work. But to have a base where we can invite our community to come to our place would be really brilliant, to have some sort of standing and to build ourselves within that community as well.

I think just a space where people can come and be together. We also want to develop our, Psychotherapy work and those sessions. And also, like I say, we want to be on a doctor's prescription that gets handed to us and we go, "Oh, 12 sessions.

Wonderful. Come and join us." That's really a big dream of ours. And then also in terms of working with people with dementia to to put work out there that informs people [00:21:00] how we can communicate with people and ensure that people still have meaningful life experiences is really important.

So if there are any GPs listening, anyone in the NHS anyone that's developing the neighbourhood health plans and would love to get you involved in that and being paid to deliver your work, how can people get hold of you?

So we have a website. We are Xpress Yourself, and Xpress is without the E which is not ideal for websites. But X Xpress Yourself without the E, so xpress-yourself.co.uk. We are on Facebook Xpress Yourself, and we have a lovely Facebook community. We also are on YouTube, Xpress Yourself.

And you can find tutorials and movement workshops that you can join in with from home. And that's where we're at. Perfect. And I'm on LinkedIn, and also Xpress Yourself is on LinkedIn as [00:22:00] well.

So we're trying to cover as many platforms. Yeah. I will put the links to your social media and website in the show notes so people will be able to get ahold of you. Final thing to say is, Faye, it has been really lovely talking to you this afternoon.

It's been really fascinating to hear that actually dance is such a vital health service which even I didn't realise how impactful it could be until I've spoken to you. So thank you for taking the time to share that with me. Oh, thank you, Heidi.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Make an Impact podcast. I hope you found today's conversation as inspiring and thought provoking as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others who want to create positive change. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and learn more about my work at Make an impact cic.co.uk Until next time, let's keep making an impact in the world.