Salsa!!
It's almost beginning to outrank weightlifting for me. Weightlifting did tons for my life: expanded my social circle, gave me self confidence, gave me more charisma (my physical presence impresses people), gave me a steady purpose in life... Plus, when I battle the weights, they represent the sh!t I've endured in my life. I approach training with lots of mental power and anger, overcoming the battle with the weights and pushing out a few more reps when my body tells me I can't, represents overcoming all other sh!t in my life. The muscles on my body are a manifestation of my anger towards all the pain and injustice I've had to endure in the past. All that negative sh!t gets transformed into something positive and lasting: a muscular body. Every day I go to the gym, I overcome another obstacle (the gruelling workout. And yes, I do workout like a madman) and I become stronger than the day before (sort of...coz of course it takes your muscles a few days to actually recuperate and grow). It's a process of constant growth, both physically and mentally. Each day, I am a stronger man than I was the day before...
Anyway, dancing Salsa has become sort of the next step after weightlifting. Weightlifting forms the core, it's the basis for a constructive and positive life to me. It sort of keeps me alive, prevents me from feeling weak and perhaps slipping into depression (depression is always luring on me, it takes me over whenever I let my guard down). But surviving isn't enough, just staying alive isn't enough...you need to
enjoy life! That's where Salsa comes in...
Dancing is a very intriguing thing... You just move your limbs in sync with music and somehow that brings you joy, haha. More about that here:
http://www.joyfulaging.com/JoyfulDancing.htm
Dancing on your own brings feelings of joy, dancing with a chick brings even more joy. Moving in synch with her body, smiling at each other, playing the eye-contact game, touching each others bodies. A whole sh!tload of positive hormones, neurotransmitters etc. get released inside of you. After a night of dancing, I'm just so fvcking happy, you know? The effects are even still there the morning after as I go to work with a smile on my face
And you can do this almost any day of the week! Forget those lousy times where you had to wait until Friday or Saturday night to go out... Salsa nights are organized daily!!
Apart from the joy it brings, dancing is the perfect hobby for someone who aspires to be a DJ.
* Get good at approaching? I approach a dozen girls in one night on the dancefloor! Just walk up to them and grab their hand, you don't even have to say anything lol. Of course, dancing etiquette says you just approach her to dance and not to pick her up. But when approaching women for a dance becomes a normal thing to you, approaching girls on the street or in the club becomes a lot more easy too! And obviously, if you like the girl, you
DO approach her to pick her up and the dance is just a pretense to pick her up.
* Get good at kino? Dancing
IS kino! You hold her hands, you put your hands on her shoulders, her hips, her back, her waiste. You NEED to touch her those places in order to make her do the dance patterns! When you meet a girl on the street or in the club, you can't just hold hands with her or put your arms around her waiste! You need to push through her defences, expand step by step. But in dancing, you do all those things right away as you step onto the dancefloor with her, often without having said one word to each other yet!
* Get good at keeping a conversation going and practising ****y&funny? Well, obviously yoú're gonna talk to the girl during the dance or afterwards. And since yoú dance with a dozen different girls in one night, you get lots of conversational practise.
* Improve social skills/social circle? Everyone knows everyone in the salsa scene, not just in one city but often also in the surrounding cities (as dancers from closeby cities will often visit parties in those cities as well). You get to know LOADS of people, both men and women and from all ages (the age range is very wide at salsa parties, from 16 to 60!)
* Meeting women? Lots of women there, no different from a Saturday night in the club!
It's
Scaramouche and late
Jophil who kind of inspired me to pick up salsa dancing (plus the final scene in Swingers
) and I'm forever thankful to them. Honestly, I think it's RIDICULOUS that this stuff isn't mentioned as a mandatory part of the DJ path. It should be a basic advice for anyone who wants to get better at pickup and become a DJ. When you address an AFC it should be like:
Get rid of the nerdy haircut, start working out, and start dancing salsa!
The only negative about it, is you need to put quite some practise in before you become good and stop looking like a clumsy noob on the floor. But that goes for most things in becoming a DJ (it's no like doing a bootcamp is any easier!) and this is just another obstacle you'll LEARN to overcome through this! Stepping onto the dancefloor, knowing that the people standing on the side are watching you while you dance, can evoke quite some feelings of social anxiety in the beginning. But once you learn not to care about this, this victory will radiate to any other situation where you have to deal with social anxiety! You will grow as a person, learn how to be confident and handle yourself in social situations etc.
Hell, I can go on and on about the benefits. I truly believe taking lessons and attending salsa parties should be made part of the DJ Bible somehow, there are really SO MANY points of contact with everything that SoSuave is about!
