WE TAKE FIVE’s Founder Story
“A visceral experience makes us all feel like we belong and our bodies are allowed to take up space.”
I am Roza, a Russian-born professional dancer, a Reiki Master, and founder of WE TAKE FIVE. We create time-efficient and sustainable micro wellness programs for individuals and enterprises, by taking 5-minute movement breaks with our clients to help them embody the habits that will allow them to achieve their personal goals.
I’ve always been one to accept a challenge. I am one of those people who learns how to swim by falling off the boat. The speed at which that learning process or progress happens feels very exciting and rewarding. And that “instant gratification” allows me to move on to learning the next skill.
Something that I had to learn the hard way was that in order to sustain these learning strides I have to have a boat to fall off of and climb back on to. For the longest time dance has been both an intense learning experience and the boat for me simply because it is so connected to the body and mindfulness. As dancers we practice body mindfulness 24/7, and have all these tools literally at our fingertips.
The problem that I have been seeing throughout my whole career was that concert dance (and this is a generalization) is viewed as a form of entertainment that is separate from the audience member’s body. That being said, for those of us living a more or less body active lifestyle a dance performance can be a very visceral and healing experience that allows us to feel that we and our body belong in this much bigger thing. And those who do get the luxury of experiencing a dance performance in this way are the people who tend to appreciate the artform itself.
What I recognized very quickly was that a lot of us are not as physical as we used to be when we were younger, when we didn’t have to sit in front of the screen all day (and that was way before COVID), and we had a lot fewer tasks and responsibilities. We forget how good it feels to move when we stop for one reason or another. Which leads to physicality becoming this extracurricular activity that you have to do because someone says it is healthy to do yoga a few times a week.
But for a lot of people that kind of movement is a huge time commitment. Energy commitment. It requires a lot of internal and external motivation. The body is a tangible thing and any change takes quite a bit longer than ordering a package from Amazon. The reward is so far away. Or if I am being more specific the first time reward is a spike, but the second and third ones are a lot less noticeable.
That is why I am dedicated to our 5-minute method. We can do anything for 5 minutes. That is one of the key productivity tricks tried and proven by coaches all over in a war against procrastination.
But most importantly, because it is only five minutes, psychologically our expectation for a reward is very low. And that is what makes us feel good afterwards. Our expectations are exceeded and the seed for a mindful movement habit is planted. All it takes from there is a little nurturing and watering until we can let it grow on its own. Because our body is a system that is designed to facilitate that growth.
From a service provider perspective it is my job to make the path to the service as smooth as possible. That’s why all of our breaks are 5 minute breaks that are made to be done right in your chair, cutting out all the extra decision making processes.
The biggest thing of all is we get to connect with real people through movement. And especially when working remotely it is a rare opportunity to get on the same page and have this shared experience before we go into our next meeting. The visceral experience makes us all feel like we belong and our bodies are allowed to take up space. Our opinions are valid and valuable.
What do you think?
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