Jiggle it...just a little bit

A few months ago, my darling ‘little sister’ Amanda asked if I would ever consider taking a belly dancing class with her. I told her no consideration would even be needed, as my answer was an immediate YES. I love trying new things, and that sounded like a VERY fun new thing.

She did a bunch of research (she’s done this before and knew exactly what ‘we’ were looking for), and on Monday night I attended my first class of a 4 class session. For whatever reason, in my head I had assumed belly dancing would be easy: you frolic, you jiggle, you wiggle, you’re done. At best, a phenomenal ab workout, right? In addition, you get to wear a hip scarf, which was pretty and teal and full of jingly coins. I immediately started walking around and shaking my ass in order to make as much noise as possible.

At 7pm, the instructor walked to the front of the class, and her body was RIDICULOUS. She was a young, graceful brunette with creamy white skin, a lot of which was showing between her hips and her ta-tas. Simply the way she carried herself, so strong and elegant…ah, beauty. She stood still, raised one arm and extended her hand, and then the fun began.

As it turned out, the class was focused on fitness as well as teaching the different styles and movements of belly dance (FYI…the Egyptian-style shimmy is totally different from the American-style shimmy). We focused on circling our wrists (not easy) and doing releves (not sure if I’m spelling that right), which simply means calf raises one zillion times. We did frolic, running all around the room like a bunch of assholes making jingly noises…and the end, we did get to shimmy. Holy SHIT did we shimmy. The shimmy, unlike what I previously believed, actually comes from your legs rather than your hips. The basic pretense of what we did Monday was to clamp our inner thighs together and alternate pushing out our knees until we were doing that at g-force speed. No joke…I was somewhat concerned about starting a fire between my legs because the friction was intense, yo.

To summarize, I have found a new activity to supplement my running/yoga which:

• is fun
• is set to very cool music
• makes me laugh
• includes fun accessories such as jingly hip scarves
• will soon include tiny finger cymbals and scarves (!)
• embraces the feminine curves, of which I have an abundant supply
• actually looks down upon a 6-pack stomach, of which I have a nonexistent supply

My thoughts on this?