I Wore My Jazz Dance Shoes to the Gym. Please Don't Judge Me!

I wore my jazz dance shoes to the gym.  [Insert celebratory JAZZ HANDS here!]  Anyone who knows me well enough can tell you that I know next to nothing about sports and that I can't think of anything more excruciatingly painful and miserable than going for a run.  I don't understand you runners.  (BTW I am convinced I have exercise-induced asthma, but that is neither here nor there.)

The only sporty shoes I have are a pair of newbies I bought nearly 10 years ago, and one shoe doesn't even have a pair of laces.  Ridiculous, I know.  I was sharing with a new friend at church yesterday that I felt like my depression was starting to become a problem again, as if I "hit a wall."  Honestly, I am not as familiar with depression in myself as I should be, because it wasn't until I returned from a couple years in Beirut that it hit me hard.  I had always thought of myself as this super peppy person inside my own little happy bubble before, so the onset of depression a couple of years ago was quite frankly confusing and foreign to me.  Anyway, this dear sister has also struggled with depression in the past, and the first question out of her mouth was: "Do you regularly work out?"  She told me about how exercising regularly and eating a "clean diet" has helped SO much more than any other medication or treatment ever has.  Before I knew it, I had a gym date the next morning.

Back to the shoe dilemma.  Thankfully, I saw on the schedule that there was a barre class around the same time we planned to meet.  Instead of trying to pretend like I was a runner, I figured I could just wear my jazz shoes to barre!  In barre, we basically used the same techniques and exercised a lot of the same muscles as I used to during warm-ups in jazz, lyrical, and ballet dance classes in my former life.  So why not just wear my jazz dance shoes?  :)    

This was my first barre class.  Everyone else wore tennis shoes or went barefoot, but I feel like my jazz shoes really did the trick.  I was able to maintain the balance and mobility I needed to do the exercises properly.  

Here's to friends who force you out of your comfort zone!  Here's to barre classes and to hardly being able to walk for the next two days!  I'll be back!