Dancing Where There's Music

A recent issue of the New Orleans Times-Picayune included this review of a book I'm sure to get on my shelf soon enough.

Robert Rand was a fixture of the DC cajun/zydeco dance scene, back before it packed up and moved to Baltimore. He wrote a book, Dancing Away An Anxious Mind: A Memoir About Overcoming Panic Disorder (University of Wisconsin Press, $24.95), which follows "his course of terpsichorean therapy and the other unexpected benefits dance brought to his life."

I particularly loved reading this part of the review:

"Because he already knew and loved Cajun music, Rand chose to learn Cajun and zydeco dancing. Enter Courtney 'Coco' Glass, native Alabamian, by day a federal government employee, by night a part-time dance teacher and regular at Tornado Alley, the successor to the famous Twist and Shout, one of Washington, D.C.'s most famous dance spots. Glass took the shy and anxious young man under her wing. At first, Rand approached learning to dance the way he would approach learning a new language, with all his typical seriousness and intensity. People suffering from intense anxiety often spend their hours in scrupulous examination of their own mental and emotional processes, to the exclusion of actually living their lives. Thus panic disorder, like many other psychological problems, arises at least in part from an excess of self-consciousness. But in his sessions with his dance teacher, Rand discovered that it is impossible to simultaneously lose yourself in dancing and be self-conscious. As a result, slowly, the healing charms of dancing asserted themselves."

Uh-huh. I can relate.