{"id":3731,"date":"2014-07-10T14:16:46","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T18:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/tsparents\/?p=3731"},"modified":"2014-07-10T14:16:46","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T18:16:46","slug":"my-medicine-of-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/tsparents\/my-medicine-of-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"My Medicine of Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post originally appeared on\u00a0BrittanyFichterWrites.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t watch\u00a0Dancing with the Stars<\/em>\u00a0often, but when I heard that there was going to be a \u00a0Disney night, I couldn\u2019t resist. And I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n

I grew up dancing. It was always one of the biggest parts of my life, but I didn\u2019t realize how much it did to improve my Tourette Syndrome, OCD tendencies and anxiety until I graduated from high school and my tics began to get worse. I\u2019ve given it quite a lot of thought, trying to put into words what my body and soul feel when I\u2019m dancing, attempting to make sense of why dance so helps calm my mind and loosen my tics that cling so tightly to me.<\/p>\n

This is what I\u2019ve come up with.<\/p>\n

How Dancing Improves My Tourette
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If you\u2019re not familiar with Tourette, having it makes you feel like you\u2019ve got a million little bursts of energy all over your body. These bursts of energy make you feel like you need to constantly move, your tics (involuntary vocal sounds or physical movements), itching to escape. Suppression is possible, briefly, but what you\u2019re left with is a body with a ton of energy that has nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n

Unless you dance.<\/p>\n

For years, my dance studio attended competitions. Dance competitions, if you\u2019ve never attended one, are chock full of detail. Scores are about much more than simply remembering the dance. Here are a few of the places that judges look to add or take points:<\/p>\n