Sara Comes Dancing

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to “TesseLeads” with your host, Tesse Akpeki and co-host Paula Okonneh. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space where guests share how they are navigating diverse ranges of challenges confronting their dilemmas and shaping their futures. The theme today is “Sara Comes Dancing” because our guest is none other than Sara Ramsey. And off Microphone we had a good laugh, because we realized that we are part of a club called “Lipstick United”. And Sara, what do you have to say about that?

[00:00:48] Sara: Yeah, we’d all put our lipsticks on we noted as we came into this. So I asked Tesse and Paula, I said, cause you know what happens to a woman without lipstick and which they replied no. And I said, nothing.

[00:01:07] Tesse: You know, it’s so funny.

[00:01:12] Paula: Right. So that’s why “Lipstick United” or is it Lipstickers United. I don’t know which one we’re gonna keep. But yeah, we definitely have a bond, don’t we?

[00:01:23] Tesse: Yeah, I like Lipstick United.

[00:01:27] Paula: Lipstick United.

[00:01:29] Tesse: Oh wow. Sara thank you so much for bringing such a sense of fun. Now I get rather curious, what has led to your love of dancing?

[00:01:41] Sara: Yeah, it wasn’t just the lipstick, honestly. It wasn’t lipstick. I mean, I started dancing when I was six years old. I was the youngest child. My mom was like, this girl has too much energy. We need to do something. So I was sent off to the local dance class and I just fell in love with it, and it became my, became my life. I just loved going and I competed and there was all sort of friends there. And I was competing until I was about, I don’t know, 19 I think. I danced in the, I didn’t come anywhere. But I danced in the world amateur championships at the Royal Albert Hall. So that was very special. I love dancing. And then I reached 19, decided that I wasn’t gonna be a professional born dancer after all. And went into the world of work and sort of taught a little bit. But kind of went into it. So went completely from being something sort of very physical to went all into a left brain world of just thinking and doing all that stuff, and sadly, sadly, didn’t really dance very much at all. Until a few years ago. So I think probably falling in love with dance actually happened a few years ago. I think for me it was other people were baking sourdough in Covid lockdown, I really fell in love with dance.

[00:03:01] Tesse: Wow, that’s amazing. And you know in that time of your dance passion and everything, did you meet anybody famous or anybody who we could recognize. Now I’m gonna put it out there that I am a Strictly Come Dancing fan. Was there anybody whose faces on strictly that you know you actually met on that journey? Come on. Bragging rights, bragging rights.

[00:03:25] Sara: Yeah, I’ve competed against a few of the pros. But Anton Du Beke, I have done more than my fair share of Fox trotting with Anton Du Beke. And he is a pure gen and wonderful man to foxtrot with.

[00:03:38] Tesse: Anton. Wow. Yeah. I wonder how anybody can top that. That’s fantastic. Paula Anton du Beke is one of the judges on “Strictly Right Now”. But he’s one of the nation’s favorite judge you know people, as a professional dancer and now as a judge. He actually won an award recently on NTA for the best judge of the year. .

[00:04:00] Paula: Wow. Wow. So we are hubnobbing with the best here, right?

[00:04:05] Sara: I know. I’m so pleased. I, yeah, I’m so pleased for him. I knew him pre  fame and, no it’s great. He’s doing what he loves, which is fabulous .

[00:04:15] Paula: Well, it’s obvious that you love dancing. How has that enriched your life? Again, this is a audio podcast. I can see the smile and the energy stewing from you. But tell our audience how dancing has enriched your life, and I’m sure they can probably glean something from that.

[00:04:33] Sara: Yeah, absolutely I do love dancing. I’ve always loved it. You know, I’ve always been first one up to move around and just the joy of the dancing and the music. I love that. I think where it’s really enriching my life beyond a good boogie with friends, is just kind of, I think we all go around a bit on our heads, like on the sticks of our bodies that moves us around. I think it’s amazing to just really get back into your body. I get up now in between, like during the day and you know, I’ll wander around and have a dance. Cause it’s just, there’s something about just feeling really grounded in your body and just feeling your body. I’m so fascinated by the mind and body, cause whereas we can try and think everything through rationally, actually we need to connect with our body. Our bodies know a lot, and there’s a lot of instinctive there. I think we can make much better decisions. And manage our own emotions and ups and downs if we can really sort of stay in our bodies, and dancing is a brilliant way for doing that. In lockdown, I did a course on, everyone was doing their different things and how they were trying to spend their time. With me it was dancing, I studied the psychology of dance. And how dancing as well is really good for connecting people. So there’s one thing, we’re just moving. They say dance. If you’re gonna get up and do something, dancing is one of the best things you can do. Better than sort of reading or going cycling. Dancing is much better for you. But the power of connect is just fantastic. I developed a course that I did for teams, so at the start of their weekly meetings, they would get up and do some dancing. Which is really fun and just a good way to get up and just the more when people dance in sync with each other, it helps to build trust and connection between people. So that’s what I really love about dancing. That’s the most thing. It’s the way it can connect people to themselves and to each other.

[00:06:26] Paula: I love that. Tesse?

[00:06:28] Tesse: I love what Sara was saying, like you do Paula about connect people to themselves and connect them to each other. You know, connecting to ourselves, sometimes we don’t connect to ourselves. And how can we connect with others if we don’t connect with ourselves? So I just love that. And how dance can be that channel to do that connection. I’m just loving it Paula. I’m just loving it. As Sara is speaking, I’m actually thinking about leadership. And Sara, I’m curious about your thoughts on how the concept of dancing and leadership can be shaped up? You know, how as a metaphor for leadership, how does dancing shape effective leadership? Do you have any thoughts that you can share with us on that?

[00:07:11] Sara: Yeah, I love the analogy for, I think dancing in life, but also dancing in leadership. I think as we go around, we all need to be more agile and move. And I think there is something about dancing. We don’t know what’s coming up to us in life, but we can sort of dance with it. Good, bad changes. We can move around, we can learn to lead, we can learn to follow in different situations. So I think there’s something about sort of the joy of dance as well. Just that sort of movement. We’re all working with each other and I think if we can see ourselves as in a dance with each other. And sometimes maybe it’s a tango and it’s a bit of a big thing. And other times it’ll be a jive and sometimes we’ll just be doing a sort of a slow dance together. So I think that’s just kind of quite a fun way to look at it as we’re all trying to work with each other.

[00:08:00] Tesse: There’s something as you’re saying that Sara, that comes to my mind. Cause sometimes when I’m listening to the judges on “Strictly”, sometimes they’re saying things like shade and light. Sometimes they talk about containing themselves, the dances containing themselves. And sometimes they talk about pace and they talk about positioning. Shed some light on these things in relation to leadership, what are they talking about?

[00:08:27] Sara: Yeah, I think there is something. You know, when people start saying, I used to think that life was about, sometimes I used to say the black and white, sort of the polar world we have. And sometimes I used to say, oh, it’s navigating the gray, right? Working out which gray. And I’ve kind of gone away from that recently to go, life’s about being zebra. It’s about being like blacks, you know? It’s like, it’s about, you know, being both extreme sometimes. So it’s about, you know, shades and light and dark and gray and energy and stillness. All of those things are important in life. And I think for organizations and leadership as well. I think it’s not about being full on the accelerator and drive all the time. It’s about sometimes having a real energy spur. Sometimes sort of stepping back and reflecting and looking around at different areas as well. It’s about different people, you can all be at different sort of energies and it’s sort of a choreography of people doing different things rather than everybody all at the same time. And I think there’s a rhythm, one of the sort of analogy that tend to use with organizations now is finding organizations rhythms. What’s its rituals and rhythms, just to keep a pattern that everyone can run to as well, and keep everyone in line really.

[00:09:36] Tesse: Honestly, I love this choreography of life. Having people know what positions they are going to be in. Who leads, who follows, all those kind of things. You’re just shedding so much light on what obviously is your passion.

[00:09:51] Sara: Yeah, absolutely. And I think around decision making, I think as organizations become much more collective and much more self organizing, really understanding about, you know having the rhythm of how decisions are made and when are they made. And just creating those structures for people so that everyone can then dance and do their own pirouettes as they need and be their own beautiful selves. But doing it in harmony with the group as well. So knowing when to come together and to do a group piece and when to go and do their own thing as well.

[00:10:22] Tesse: So the June pandemic, you say that you went to the place of dance. What did that place of dance give you? Cause that was the pandemic at the worst of times. It was very isolating. It was a horrible time for the world in general and for particular people, it hit them even harder than others. What was dance able to give you at that point?

[00:10:41] Sara: For me, it was suddenly I’m an extrovert. I was suddenly completely on my own. So dancing for me was the way to connect with myself and connect with others. You know, we’d have dance zooms and things like that. So for me, dancing was the way of connecting and just getting up, and I was just dancing around and connecting with the music, and really getting out of your head as well. I think we sort of live in our head. And particularly I think when it’s difficult times and there’s anxiety to just completely sort of just feel life and actually process the emotions. I was recently on a workshop, I’ve fallen in love from doing very structured dancing when I was young, to now doing what’s called open floor dancing. Which is really sort of just letting your body move and the emotions through that. And it’s so good at just processing your emotions. Shaking out, shaking out the nails as some people used to say, and just sort of feeling that through and processing it. So I think there’s something about just embodying emotions. I think you can, sometimes you can think things through and you can deal with things. Maybe if you are, whether you angry, frustration, whether you’re sad, whatever you are feeling, you can try and work it through in your mind. But actually just letting your body feel it and just process it, then the emotions kind of wash through you. And you can kind of, you know, and if you went through and then get to a sort of a more joyful of happier place at the end it.

[00:12:07] Tesse: I’m loving it. Paula, what’s coming into your mind as we listen to Sara?

[00:12:11] Paula: I mean, it has, I mean, fascinating. And I’m just wondering if, without giving any names, if you can, you know, just tell us a fun story about someone in leadership who you saw dancing transform.

[00:12:27] Tesse: Yay. Great question, Paula.

[00:12:29] Sara: Good question.

[00:12:31] Paula: Yeah.

[00:12:33] Sara: I think probably, and just with names, I think there is something about people getting into their bodies. I think that the most sort of powerful thing I’ve seen in a work situation, I think is when people who work together start dancing together. Especially when they are sort of co-leaders. And it’s really interesting to understand there’s something very basic about people moving together and how they move. And I think sometimes what shows up on the dance floor is how things happen in real life, and they can see who tends to lead, who tends to follow. How are you dancing? And I think just moving, by moving in sync with each other you build that trust, you build that connection. You can start really getting into those sort of real co-creative moments. You build quite a strong link, which it would be very hard to do that without, physically it could take you years whereas actually moving together. There’s something quite sort of primal I suppose about that. So I’ve seen people really co-create who don’t know each other well and just. Because to co-create, there’s a vulnerability there, and I think once you start moving and building that trust, it’s very powerful. So I think that’s the things that I’ve really seen. And I’m keen to explore that more. I’ve been doing some work with Hermann Muller , who’s a mind body therapist. And really it’s kind of getting people into that co-creation space and moving together and seeing what comes out of that. It’s an adventure.

[00:14:03] Paula: It sounds like an adventure, which is exactly what “TesseLeads” is all about, you know?

[00:14:09] Tesse: Adventure yeah. You’ve  got it Paula. You never know what’s going to come out at the end, but you just kind of stay open and vulnerable to find out.

[00:14:19] Sara: I’m fascinated as well. One of the things that I’d love to do, I think is particularly quite a lot of women, I think, who sort of, probably my generation I suppose, going into the workplace, going very sort of left brained, kind of very much in our heads and trying to work things through. And I think there can be a bit of a disconnection really. And I think starting to really kind of reconnect with that and be more embodied, which I think is quite a female way of being as well is really interesting as well, I think.

[00:14:51] Tesse: That’s fascinating being back into your body, connecting with parts of your body. As you’re saying that Sara, one of the things that strikes me in Africa, there’s a bit about knowing what part of your body, your emotions are, you know, and locating where that is, you know. And often for me, mine is in my stomach. It’s in my tummy. When I’m really nervous my stomach gets so tight, you know. And so sometimes when I’m in meetings and stuff and that my stomach is getting tight, I’m kind of thinking, what’s going on here? What do I need to do? Because it’s actually speaking, giving me a message. Does that sound just totally not making sense or what do you say ?

[00:15:33] Sara: I think that’s true, and I think it’s when we override our body, our body tells us a lot. And I think it’s when we override that. I know with me it’s when I override that and think, oh no, I’m just being silly. That’s the things I don’t regret a lot in life. But often I think, oh, I kinda knew that. I think there is something about our body and tuning into that is really important, I think.

[00:15:55] Tesse: Yeah. Paula well thought you’re very quiet.

[00:15:59] Paula: I am intrigued and bowled over by you know the interconnectivity between, you know, leadership and dance and the rhythm. And you know how, especially as Sara said in some organizations where people are just put to work together and once they start dancing, they get in sync. And I may be wrong. But they get in sync and so it seems like they come out of the dance session or whatever with better synergy than when they went in. That’s what I’m really kind of thinking about.

[00:16:34] Sara: There’s a real connection. There’s a real connection there. That’s really kind of quite amazing to see. I was doing some work with one organization where it was a team all around the world that never met each other. And you know when everyone’s dancing to Stevie Wonder in sync. Not only is it fun, there is a real connection there.

[00:16:54] Tesse: Yeah, I mean I love the idea of dancing to Stevie Wonder in sync. And you know, as you say that one of the words that comes to me in relation to dancing is somatic dancing. Focusing on inner experience of dancing and movement. Does that kind of resonate with some of the things that you are sharing with us today?

[00:17:14] Sara: Yeah. I dunno much about somatic dancing actually. That’s a new one on me. I need to explore that one.

[00:17:21] Tesse: I think we’ll talk a bit more about that. But you know, I used to be very skeptical, I have to say about somatic dancing. Until I met a lovely woman who lives in San Francisco and she was into it and she got me curious about it. And now, I just think that sometimes it’s really an interesting way of doing exactly what you’re speaking about. Actually being in the movement, and actually intentionally focusing on an internal experience of movement rather than external experience or result of movement. So sometimes, particularly now that I’m kind of a bit stressed, et cetera. I actually do this with myself where I’m listening to music and I’m dancing on the inside.

[00:18:06] Sara: Oh wow. Amazing.

[00:18:07] Tesse: Yeah, and it actually helps me. Paula sent me some music yesterday and it’s kind of like finding a way to listen to the music and then it’s an internal movement. I find it very, very de-stressing.

[00:18:23] Sara: Okay. That sounds amazing. And so it means you don’t actually have to get up and move as well. You can just, I think I need, cause otherwise I just dance everywhere at the moment, I don’t care.

[00:18:33] Tesse: It’s kinda of relieving of trauma as well, you know. And what I find for me, it’s actually introducing a kind of lightness around the thoughts. So like thinking of a thought as a feather.

[00:18:47] Sara: Yeah.

[00:18:47] Tesse: And like, and then you’re listening to the music. What I find is it actually helps detaching the thought from the intensity. This somatic stuff is quite helpful. I started from being quite skeptical, so let me put it that way. Quite skeptical.

[00:19:03] Sara: No, I think that, I think it makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. And I think it’s interesting with the trauma, you know, different levels of trauma that people go through. I think that is something where, you know, that disconnection from the body, it’s more of us doing that than we realize, I think. And I think anything that sort of help embody us and to help sort of help process those emotions and then also sort of help us stay grounded to sort of help us moving forward, I think is just really, yeah, is really fundamental. And dancing isn’t for everyone. I kinda get that. I think it’s an easy route, you know, into things. And it’s good physically, but I think to me, it’s more about this thing emotionally and mentally of what it can do. And I think it’s interesting about the emotions is how you can, you know what the body does affects the mind, but the mind affects the body as well. And so just sort of starting to express different things through your body and just letting yourself dance like no one’s watching, isn’t it? It’s always the expression.

[00:20:06] Paula: That’s so true. That’s so true. You know, I could stay and continue listening to you till dark. It’s dark.

[00:20:13] Tesse: So could I, Yeah.

[00:20:16] Paula: It’s not dark where I am. But are there any other things, I mean, we heard about somatic dancing from Tesse. Is there anything that we don’t know that any little thing that you haven’t told us about?

[00:20:29] Sara: Yeah, to me it’s like getting people, I think sometimes people are frightened by the word dance. But just getting up and moving, right? Five minutes here and there is the thing. And putting on the music, whatever it is that you like and for the mood that you are in as well. You know, I think sometimes we get stuck in emotions. It’s like, if you feel angry, if you feel sad, just shake it out, really. Shake it out, have a clearance of it. And with your teams as well. You know, like, I think it is, you know, people are often online. I think we’re sitting there in long zoom calls. It’s like, let’s have a dance. There’s like two types of dancing. If you dance in sync, it will build connection between you and your team members. If you dance freestyle, that will create problem solving and innovation. So before you have anything, you might just want a bit of freestyle dancing.

[00:21:20] Tesse: I love it. I totally, it’s very fascinating, you know. Rich, rich things that we can do. You know, anybody can get up and do free dancing, you know.

[00:21:33] Sara: Yeah. Enjoy it and your will move. It just, the key thing is to get out of your mind. I think just your body kind of knows how to move to what it needs to do. So just go with it.

[00:21:43] Tesse: I love it.

[00:21:45] Paula: Absolutely love it. So we’ve heard something different today from Sara, haven’t we? I learned something every day and I certainly haven’t been disappointed by you Sara. Thank you. And to our guests, your precious stories and lives matter. Sharing them with others could support, encourage and nurture them, just like we heard from Sara. Listeners may be reassured by knowing that they are never alone .To our listeners we ask that you head over to “Apple Podcast”, “Google Podcast”, “Spotify”, or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and please click subscribe. If you find “TesseLeads” fascinating, please let us know in your review. And if you have any questions or topics you’d love for us to cover, send us a note. If you’d love to be a guest on “TesseLeads”, head over to www.tesseleads.com to apply.