Breast Cancer Dance Parties With Beyonce Are Even Better After Surgery
Pink Ribbon chocolate lollipops for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Dancing through breast cancer has gone viral thanks to Deborah Cohan. She held a Beyonce dance party with her surgical team before undergoing a double mastectomy, and videoed the result. Amazing, courageous, and inspirational all apply, and still minimize the event. And the video has resonance beyond the immediate moment of its recording. It also points to the power dance might play after the surgeries are over during cancer recovery. In fact, " Dance Exercise for Cancer Recovery" is the motto for a volunteer organization, " Moving For Life," that is using the power of dance to heal and support cancer recovery.
MFL was started by an exercise physiologist named Marta Eddy, a psychologist named Allison Stern Rosen (herself a cancer survivor and someone who is also a colleague and dear friend), and Jan Alpert, a TV producer/writer who has reported on women's health issues. Part of why I'm introducing their story here on a "Leadership" page at Forbes is because MFL needs local leaders to bring its unique brand of healing to local communities.
Moving For Life classes have been held in 3 states (NY, NJ, CA) with a fourth on the way (OH). 5 additional countries are also in the pipeline. I hope you'll agree-if not now, soon-that MFL classes should be an option everywhere women are recovering from breast cancer. They just need local leaders. If you have some leadership capital just sitting around, MFL would be a good place to invest it.
The stakes are high. No matter how one dances into breast cancer surgery, there will probably be significant post-surgical challenges, especially if chemo is needed: fatigue, joint pain and weakness, balance problems, peripheral neuropathy (aka, "fire feet"). MFL can help. A recent study at NYU Medical Center of women who participated in a MFL exercise program just twice a week for 8 weeks found it resulted in "statistically significant average weight loss, as well as a greater enjoyment of exercise and decrease in treatment-related pain."
And there's more than numbers at play here. There's life. Before MFL when Dr. Rosen was trying to fight her way back she tried exercise, but found standard exercise options did not meet the unique demands of cancer recovery. Eventually she started putting on some tunes and moving: "I could sway and rock. At last, I had discovered a way to regain my strength. Joy is too calm a word to describe what I felt. I had a future again."
So, she reached out to her two co-founders and they combined expertise. Moving For Life is the result.
Dance on over to the Moving For Life web-site, learn more about what they are all about, and contact them if you think you might want to help bring MFL to your community.
And just in case you have not seen Deborah Cohan's amazing video, here it is:
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