A tough crowd...

I recently had the opportunity to teach belly dance to a group of pregnant teens.

For almost a year now, I had been having a conversation with Eileen - the childbirth educator who works with the teens in the hospital's Adolescent Reproductive Health Service - about wanting to offer my belly dance for pregnancy and birth classes to this group. Well, I finally had the chance to try it out! The opportunity was prompted by one of the FOBs in the class saying that he had seen something on TV about belly dancing being helpful for birth - and so we took the bait!

This was a group of about 7 , nearly full term young women, some with their male partners, one with her mom and aunt, one by herself, and all African American.

Teens are such a tough crowd! With my strong urging, I got them to stand up and get out of their chairs and to each tie on a coined hip sash. I was unable to convince any of the guys to put on a hip sash - usually in adult groups at least a few of the men are willing... I did a very limited instruction in hip movements, snake arms and shimmies. The shimmies brought out a lot of giggling!

They are so self-conscious. No one wants to stand out or indicate that they are actually having fun, or appreciating it, or getting it...

I gratefully got some feedback from Eileen the next day:

"I saw one of the young women, Janiel with her sister Trisha, this morning when she came in for her appointment in the clinic. For you: Janiel sat through some of it, she was in the corner away from the door, Trisha was getting into to it too......well, both of them were still beaming smiling when I saw them this morning, said that they were talking about it all night, laughing."

Yay! I can't wait to do it again!