Happy New Year!!

It has been so busy a new year.  I went to work on New Year's Day.  After working, Dan and I attended my editor's wedding in the evening on January second (my editor, David, is editing my upcoming book, IN SEARCH OF SOMATIC THERAPY).  The weather was heavy with rain but the wedding had so many people and was a very relaxed ceremony.

It has been three years since Dan injured his knee and his doctor said to forget about dancing. He recommended surgery and said he had a 75% chance of recovery, but also a 25% chance of not walking without a crutch. It was a pretty bad injury. He loves dancing, so he was depressed over his condition for a while. I thought maybe he would still be able to dance again, so I gave him daily massage to his knees. I am a medical massage therapist, and he is a doctor, so together he might at least avoid surgery and maybe even dance again some time. Now he is dancing! I am so happy and amazed at how people can recover with the right kinds of somatic therapy.

January seventh, we took a dance lesson from Mr. and Mrs. Miwa who are Japanese professional dance teachers.  They are professional competition finalists in Japan and just retired from competition. They are a very nice couple and beautiful dancers.  I was so excited and also nervous.

Mr. Miwa gave the lesson to me in Japanese and Mrs. Miwa to Dan in English. I understand in my own first language (most of my lessons and coaching have been in English). Sometimes English lessons are challenging for me to fully understand and I have to rely on watching and copying..

I am so appreciative of the lesson and we have practiced much of what we learned since. It is very interesting that when we took the lesson, everything seemed so easy, but when we practiced it later, it seemed more difficult. Even so, it was so much easier having the lesson in Japanese!

Anyway I am very lucky,I still dance with Dan and we are trying to develop performance and competition routines again. Three years ago, I could not imagine that we would dance together again.

So far, 2015 is a great year!