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I’ve been thinking about exercise. Partly because it’s spring — well, currently waffling back and forth between spring and Springter in Toronto — and partly because I’ve had yet another health professional talk earnestly at me about moving my body.

In response to which I pointed out, as I have so many of the times before, that my entire life is a range of motion exercise.

The problem with exercise is that my body is so damaged by RA that almost any activity will cause a flare. So I find extremely slow ways to push myself to gradually build strength. I have some exercises I do on days when my body can handle them. I go for long walks/drives which builds strength and stamina.

But it takes forever. Months instead of weeks and years instead of months.

This latter form of exercise is can be hard for some health professionals to understand — after all, I just push the joystick on my power chair, so how can that have any effects on my body? But it’s like this: my feet don’t rest lightly on my foot rests. They both basically stand, primarily on my left foot rest, and that means every bump translates through the chair and into my body, effectively being a small resistance moment. It’s not comfortable — there is a section in my video on coping with having a cold or flu when you’re on Biologics that shows how. If you forward to about 8:47, you can see the reaction in my face as I hit a bump and then another and then another.

So, yes. Whenever I take a long walk, I do hurt for a day or two, but it’s usually the kind of pain that I can handle with some extra rest and painkillers. It’s my version of having had a very thorough session at the gym.

But I can’t take a long walk every day. Aside from the pain and recovery period, I don’t always have the time and during the winter the weather is prohibitive to such excursions. Summer will be different –the weather is getting better and I plan to find a way to make the time for at least a small to medium walk most days.

But it’s not enough. Because this is so season-specific, whatever gains I make during the warmer part of the year will ebb away when it gets too cold to move. So I spent some time thinking about that.

And I think I may have found a solution.

Dancing.

Some of you might be going “well, duh, Lene. ever seen an aerobics class? A Zumba class?” And to that I answer that I haven’t, because most gyms don’t really offer programs that I can participate in.

Also, my dancing is decidedly… Well, it probably doesn’t look like dancing. More like someone’s stuck a live wire in me causing me to jerk wildly. But inside of me, I feel graceful. Sometimes.

My late friend Helen used to call it chair dancing. Which is what you do when your body is too wrecked to dance the way it’s usually done and instead you move along to the music from a seated position.

It works. You can still feel a slow delicious ache building, you still get your heart moving and most of all, it puts a smile on your face.

So that’s what I’m going to do from now on. Start the day with a dance. After my shower (warm-up), after I get dressed (to discourage the neighbours from calling the police), but before anything else. Crank up the music and dance.

Like no one’s watching and scaring the cat.

Because it helps me move and it makes me happy and that’s a damn good start to the day.

Want to join me?

Let’s dance.