Many people put off getting started with Salsa lessons because they worry about not having rhythm.
I’ve always believed there’s no such thing as a human being without rhythm – and I can prove it it in a matter of minutes the first time anyone walks into my studio.
Why do I know this to be true?
Because the whole human body is run on rhythm:
Heartbeat, respiration, digestion, menstruation, sleep/wake cycles…these are all rhythmical processes.
These rhythms are so important within our bodies, that if something goes wrong with them, or they get messed up in anyway, we notice it as our health will deteriorate rapidly.
Our brain is the master controller of all these rhythms so it has to understand them at a basic biological level. And it runs them on autopilot 24/7 without us being aware most of the time.
The brain itself is basically a pattern recognition machine and it locks onto the patterns in music very easily.
You’ll know this if you’ve ever had the experience of finding yourself tapping your foot to a song you hate. The brain doesn’t discriminate, it’s just connecting with the rhythm in the music entirely of its own accord.
And this brings me to another important rhythm which is present in the human body – walking!
Try and walk in a completely random, unpredictable timing instead of a steady one, two, one, two, right, left, right, left march and you’ll see.
Your brain and body much prefer to be in a rhythm than not.
So if rhythm isn’t the problem, what is?
Basically it’s getting the right body parts to arrive in the right place at the right time in the music – a coordination and body organisation problem, not a rhythm one.
And usually not helped by the fact that most Salsa music is way faster than most humans naturally move in their day to day lives, and more complex than the rock, pop and electronic dance most adults grew up with in the UK.
The good news is when we break all of this down into simple bite-size chunks and work with super-slow music, as I do in all my my private beginner lessons – you can gain the skills needed to move rhythmically, efficiently and naturally to music far faster than you might currently believe.
You have rhythm.
Let me prove it to you!