How you can dance away the burnout feeling

Local studio offers stress relief

ORLANDO, Fla. – If you've been feeling stressed out or maybe experiencing a lack of energy, you may be suffering from burnout.

Andrea Blome, a health and wellness professional, said she knows the feeling all too well.

"After a while those long days and all of that stress and pressure that you're put under does catch up with you and if you don't manage it, it does create a lot of problems including burnout," Blome said.

In January, Blome joined the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Orlando to help manage her busy days at work.

Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress, which the World Health Organization classifies as an occupational phenomenon.

"Every day you have emails and text messages and phone calls, working with different individuals and to be able to come in here and completely forget about (that) because I'm focused on the task at hand, really allows me to practice mindfulness in my own daily life and lets me take a break," Blome said.

Grigor Asryan, owner of the Orlando studio, said several of his students turn to dancing as an outlet from their workload.

"When you start dancing, you just forget about things that (were) bothering you or stressing you out. It just opens up a happiness," Grigor Asryan said.

Angela Asryan, one of the instructors and co-owner of the Fred Astaire Dance Studio, said they offer something for everyone.

"We teach everything from ballroom to Latin, waltz, tango, fox trot; we do cha-cha, rumba, swing, salsa," Angela Asryan said. "As soon as they start dancing it all kind of goes away. They start to smile and they're laughing, and it's really just after a few minutes of dancing and they're already feeling better." 

Another of their students said dancing helps her deal with work-related issues but it's also helping her cope with the loss of her dancing partner, her husband who died a few years ago.

"It was a year after my husband passed so I needed to start healing again and I had a lot of stress at work," Debbie Carpenter said. "It's a joy to walk in here every day. I walk in and from a work standpoint, I just take a deep breath, I let it in, I let it out and I just release in here."

Grigor Asryan said the positive effects of dance are often immediate.

"Sometimes they come and say, 'You know, I didn't feel like coming in,' but as soon as they get in, it's just they go, 'Oh, I'm so happy I got in.' It just (changes) the whole mood," he said.


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