February has been American Heart Month since 1963, and it's surely no coincidence that February features Valentine's Day. For the American Heart Association, it's a month devoted to increasing public awareness of heart health and raising money.

In support of such a good cause, a gentleman from Ohio (Jeff Ondash) raised money for heart health by giving away free hugs outside a Las Vegas casino. After 7,777 hugs in 24 hours, he had surpassed the previous Guinness record of 5,000. Mr. Ondash, who is 51, was motivated by the memory of his father and brother, who died prematurely of heart problems.

Warm Up

o Michael Buble - I've got you under my skin
o Jamie Cullum - These are the days
o Linda Ronstadt - That'll be the day

Stretch
o Willie Nelson - Stardust
o Willie Nelson - Georgia on my mind

Circle
o Greencards - The Ghost of who we were
o Keb Mo - Closer

Across the Floor
o Madonna - Holiday
o Ritchie Valens - La Bamba

On the Floor
o Ben Webster - Someone to watch over me
o Ben Webster - Stardust
o Ben Webster - Over the rainbow
o Ben Webster - Where are you
o Ben Webster - You better go now

Warm Up

o Elton John - Blessed
o Renee Olstead - On a slow boat to China
o Rod Stewart - It had to be you

Stretch
o Caccini - Ave Maria
o Kitka - Tikho Nad Richkoyu

Circle
o Bello Veloso - Toda Sexta-Feira
o Jehro - Continuando
o Otis Spann - I got a feeling

Across the Floor
o Steve Tyrell - On the sunny side of the street
o Jimmy Reed - Found love
o Taj Mahal - Keepin out of mischief now
o Linda Ronstadt & Ann Savoy - The one I love is gone

On the Floor
o Bach - Suite No. 3 in D, Air 'on the G String'
o Bach - Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F minor/ Largo
o Bach - Concerto in C minor for violin, oboe and orchestra/Adagio
o Bach -Violin concerto in D minor/Largo ma non tanto
o Bach - Violin concerto No. 2 in E/Adagio

Warm Up

o The Ink Spots - My Prayer
o Rod Stewart - Embraceable you
o Jason Mraz - I'm yours

Stretch
o Ella Fitzgerald - Reach for tomorrow
o K D Lang - Hallelujah
o K D Lang - After the gold rush

Circle
o Liz Wright - Stop
o Blues Etilicos - Canceriano sem lar
o Paulina Rubio - Alma en Libertad

Across the Floor
o Los Enanitos Verdes - Tan solo un instante
o Los de Abajo - El Indio
o Guy Lombardo - Three o'clock in the morning

On the Floor
o Steve Erquiaga - Pavane for a dead princess
o Steve Erquiaga - Two Preludes (Chopin)
o Steve Erquiaga - Arioso (Bach)
o Steve Erquiaga - Under the Tuscan Sun
o Steve Erquiaga - If Dreams Could Dance

Warm Up

o Big Bands - You made me love you
o Rod Stewart - As time goes by
o B52s - Love Shack

Stretch - Scarves
o Offenbach - Tales of Hoffman Barcarolle
o Delibes - Lakme/Viens, Mallika
o Eva Cassidy - Songbird

Circle
o Emmylou Harris - Here there and everywhere
o Frank Sinatra - You make me feel so young
o Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

Across the Floor
o Mamas and the Papas - California Dreaming
o Elton John - Philadelphia Freedom
o Guy Lumbardo - Now is the hour (waltz)

On the Floor
o David Lanz - Whiter shade of pale
o Enya - Evening Falls
o Enya - Marble hallways
o Enya - Watermark
o Enya - A day without rain
o David Lanz - Dream of the forgotten

Warm Up

o Rod Stewart - I only have eyes for you
o Rod Stewart - Let's fall in love
o Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris - For a dancer

Stretch
o Caccini - Ave Maria
o Rachmaninoff - Vocalise

Circle
o Eric Clapton - Malted milk
o Cher - Believe
o Four Tops - I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)

Across the Floor
o Elton John - I don't wanna go on with you like that
o Fleetwood Mac - Say you love me
o Guy Lombardo - Tennessee Waltz

On the Floor
o Iz - Kaulana Kawaihae
o Iz - Opae E
o Cesaria Evora - Crepuscular solidao
o Cesaria Evora - Xandinha
o Cesaria Evora - Cize

Warm Up

o Madeleine Peyroux - I'm All Right
o Kiri Te Kanawa - I got the sun in the morning
o Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Rich Woman

Stretch
o Tracy Chapman - I'm ready & Save a place for me
o Natalie Cole - The very thought of you

Circle
o Renee Olstead - Breaking up is hard to do
o Eagles - Peaceful easy feeling
o Ella & Louis - Comes love

Across the Floor
o Belanova - Me Pregunto
o Kasey Chambers - If I were you
o Sinead O'Connor - Her mantle so green

On the Floor
o Peggy Lee - Come rain or come shine
o Peggy Lee - Deep purple
o Peggy Lee - The Man I Love
o Peggy Lee - Unforgettable
o Rosemary Clooney - Tenderly
o Bruce Cockburn - Closer to the light

Warm Up

o Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Killing the blues
o Talking Heads - Take me to the river

Stretch
o Richard & Linda Thompson - Dimming of the day
o Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris - You'll never be the sun
o Carl Orff - In trutina from Carmina Burana

Circle
o Loreena McKennitt - Tango to Evora
o Natalie Merchant - Wonder
o Willie Nelson - If you've got the money I've got the time

Across the Floor
o Nikka Costa - Everybody got their something
o 101 Strings - Edelweiss
o 101 Strings - Fascination

On the Floor
o Aaron Neville - Cry me a river
o Aaron Neville - Come rain or come shine
o Aaron Neville - The very thought of you
o Aaron Neville - Blame it on my youth
o Aaron Neville - The shadow of your smile
o Aaron Neville - Our love is here to stay

Warm Up

o Iz - Somewhere over the rainbow - What a wonderful world
o Neville Brothers - Little piece of heaven

Stretch
o Ella Fitzgerald - I cried for you
o Ella Fitzgerald - I hadn't anyone til you
o Ella Fitzgerald - I'm getting sentimental over you
o Ella Fitzgerald - Misty

Circle
o Madeleine Peyroux - Smile
o Emmylou Harris - Mr. Sandman
o Jarabe de Palo - El Lado Oscuro

Across the Floor
o Paris Combo - Fibre de verre
o Stevie Wonder - Signed sealed delivered
o Pink Martini - Let's never stop falling in love

On the Floor
o Caccini - Ave Maria
o Rhineberger - Cantilena
o Debussy - Reverie
o Franck - Panis angelicus
o Elgar - Salut d'amour

Warm Up

o Rod Stewart - Smile
o Pink Martini - Hang on little tomato
o Carly Simon - You belong to me

Stretch (Partners)
o Hot Club of San Francisco - Till we meet
o Linda Ronstadt - Blue Train
o Norah Jones - Lonestar
o Tracy Chapman - Less than strangers

Circle
o Willie Nelson - Crazy
o Lennon Sisters - Sentimental Journey
o Toots and the Maytals - Still is still moving to me

Across the Floor
o Keb Mo - Soon as I get paid
o Jimmy Reed - Found Love
o Linda Ronstadt & Ann Savoy - The one I love is gone (waltz)

On the Floor
o Bach - Air on the G string
o Bach - Keyboard Concerto No 5 Largo in F minor
o Bach - Adagio concerto for violin and oboe
o Back - Adagio violin concerto 2 in E

Warm Up

- Hot club of San Francisco - Lullaby of the leaves
- Sandrine Kiberlain - M'envoyer des fleurs
- Brett Dennen - The one who loves you the most

Stretch
- Eva Cassidy - Over the Rainbow
- Kitka - Tikho Nad Richkoyu

Circle
- Bing Crosby - Blue Skies
- Elastica - 2:1
- Martina McBride - Happy Girl

Across the Floor
- Carly Simon & James Taylor - Mockingbird
- Ann Savoy - Lulu Revenue dans la Village
- New 101 Strings Orchestra - Vito's Waltz

On the Floor
- George Winston - Angel
- George Winston - No Ke Ano Ahiahi
- George Winston - Ike Ia Ladana
- George Winston - Joy, Hope and Peace
- George Winston - Waltz for the Lonely

Warm Up

- Elton John - Blessed
- Jack Johnson - Symbol in my driveway
- Bonnie Raitt - I will not be broken

Stretch
- Cecilia - Prayer
- Massenet (Yo Yo Ma) - Meditation from Thais

Circle
- Jamie Cullum - Singin in the rain
- Bob Dylan - Things have changed

Across the Floor
- Temptations - My girl
- Shelby Lynne - I Walk the Line
- Kasey Chambers - Mother (waltz)

On the Floor
- Iz - Kaulana Kawaihae
- Kohala - Honolulu city lights
- Kohala - Sunflower
- Kohala - Moloka'i sweet home
- Kohala - Highway in the sun

Warm up

• Neil Young - Harvest Moon
• Queen Latifah - Hard Times

Stretch

• Linda Ronstadt - Cry me a river
• Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - Summertime
• Willie Nelson - Stardust

Circle

• Franco De vita - Tu de que vas
• Eva Cassidy - Wade in the water
• The Beach Boys - Surfin USA

Across the floor

• Santana - Smooth
• Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Love Over and Over
• Lennon Sisters - Fascination

On the floor

• Steve Erquiaga - Pavane for a dead princess
• Steve Erquiaga - Two Preludes (Chopin)
• Steve Erquiaga - Arioso (Bach)
• Steve Erquiaga - Themes from Cinema Paradiso
• Steve Erquiaga - Under the Tuscan Sun
• Steve Erquiaga - If Dreams Could Dance

I suppose I always love all the music I use in class, but this playlist has some of my most favorite favorites - Hot Club of San Francisco, Roy Orbison, Linda Ronstadt. Enanitos Verdes is one of my favorite groups. I use several of their songs in classes.

For the Linda Ronstadt songs that are listed in On the Floor, I remove the introductions with a software program. That's partly because I also use these songs for Stretch, and the introduction doesn't work well for Stretch. The complete songs would work fine for On the Floor, though.

The Rod Stewart Great American Songbook albums have many songs that are perfect for Warm Up, Circle, or Across the Floor. There are four of them:

It Had to Be You,

As Time Goes By,

Stardust, and

Thanks For The Memory .

The Voice of the Violin album has many songs that work well for Stretch and On the Floor. Same for the Secret Garden albums.

Thanks to Theresa for all the music and so much more.

This was the first class of the fall semester.

For Warm Up, Renee Olstead (like Rod Stewart) is great for updated versions of old standards.

This was the first time I used Il Divo. I figured it would be too dramatic for On the Floor, but it works well for Stretch.

All the On the Floor music is available on a wonderful album called Touching Beauty. In this post I've linked to other albums on Amazon and iTunes, since the Touching Beauty songs aren't available as MP3s.

Here are three songs - the first two from the group the Neville Brothers and the third from an Aaron Neville solo album.

You may know Aaron Neville from the song Tell it like it is, which was a hit in 1967 (here's a YouTube version). The Neville Brothers are a New Orleans band that's been around since the 1950s. They've never received as much acclaim as their fans feel they deserve.

See the first music post for details on the playbar, Amazon, and iTunes.

The Neville Brothers - Little Piece of Heaven

From the album: Valence Street
Warm Up Two (5:08)

Three more songs I used in class this week: Shakira for the first Circle song, Michelle Shocked for larger leg movements in Circle, and Sacha Nairobi for Across the floor.

The whole Michelle Shocked album (Short Sharp Shocked) is great. I use four songs from this album in classes, but When I grow up is my favorite.

See Tuesday's post for details on the playbar, Amazon, and iTunes.

There's so much good music that it's hard to know where to begin. I'll start with something I used today. It was the last class in the summer session for Mountain View students, and I used some old standards for warm-up.

If you click the "Play" button below, you can hear 30 to 60 seconds of the song. On the playbar that comes up, volume control is just to the left of the graphic that looks like a speaker. It's a vertical fader. I've reduced the volume of these songs in hopes they won't be too loud. The default volume setting is in the middle of the fader, so you can make the volume louder yourself.

If you don't close the playbar, it will go on to the next song (when you're viewing the entire post). This music-playing applet is available from Yahoo and it's free. Click where it says "learn more" for details.

The Amazon graphic takes you to Amazon's website, where you can hear a different sample from the same song. Same for the iTunes button.

Peggy Lee - I've got the world on a string

From the album: Great Ladies Of Song / Spotlight On Peggy Lee
Warm up One (2:21)

Play: Peggy Lee - I've got the world on a string

A Rosen Method Movement class takes students through a sequence of movements. The sequence prepares the body to move with ease across the dance floor. All movements are done to music, but not just any music.

The songs used in a class need to have a tempo that's not too fast and not too slow. A tempo that allows moving in both single and double time ("let's do that twice as fast") is ideal, but not a deal-breaker.

Selecting music always brings up a number of subjective issues for me. I avoid religion and politics, for example. I don't use rap because some students find it offensive, I try to strike a balance between music that students would clearly enjoy (standards, familiar songs), music that's more of a stretch, and my personal favorites at the moment.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on joyful dancing, here's the video Where the Hell is Matt? Thanks to a Rosen Method friend, Joanna, for sending it.

The video includes dancing in 42 countries. I especially like the crabs on the beach on Christmas Island, Australia and the dog in Kuwait City. And that short kid on the left in Sydney who dances by kicking his legs out to the side? I love to do that. It just happens! Everybody loves to dance. It doesn't matter how you do it.

When I try to explain Rosen Method Movement (RMM) to people, I like to quote Marion Rosen on the way you feel after a movement class: "Our goal is to make people feel happy and motivated to dance, rather than drag themselves around. We would like them to feel physically well when their bodies move, and emotionally cheerful."

The secret to Rosen movement classes is the music. Everyone responds to rhythm with their muscles, bones, and soul. With the right music, you just can't help moving. When you move with a group, the joy is contagious.

I'm a Rosen movement teacher, so it's no wonder I was moved to tears watching this Minnesota bridal party express their joy as they move down the aisle, feeling the music with their bodies and souls.

Michael Jackson. August 29, 1958 - June 25, 2009

Losing your job is a powerful stressor that can have a long-term impact on health. A 2006 study by Sullivan and Wachter found that, in the 20 years following the loss of a job, your chances of dying increase by 15 to 20 percent. This makes a lot more sense to me than Chris Ruhm's recessions-are-good-for-your-health studies.

Losing your job is often preceded by an incredibly stressful period of not knowing what to expect and fearing the worst. My friend Michelle Millis Chappel, singer/songwriter/musician and high tech usability consultant, wrote about her recent experiences at Yahoo. First there were the incongruities.

The fact that Yahoo would be having another round of layoffs was first announced at a company-wide meeting an hour before Yahoo threw a huge Oktoberfest party in which beer, bratwurst and German chocolate cake were served to everyone on campus. A week later we received sparkling wine and cupcakes to celebrate a recent Developer Network (YDN) success. Many people were curious as to why so much money was being spent on these parties, not to mention the upcoming Christmas party, because Yahoo was in such dire straights.

There was a massive re-org, generating lots of rumors.

One woman who lost all her reports packed up her desk weeks in advance of layoffs because she couldn't take the pressure anymore. ... Some people just stopped working altogether because there was nothing to do. ... The VP of my division sent LinkedIn invites to all his reports ..., so we figured that meant he was going to be asked to leave. But we weren't sure because he was such a stellar boss. It made no sense. It was a crazy time.

Yahoo ended up laying off 10 percent of its workforce on December 10. Michelle, who was working there on a six-month contract, was not among them. To cheer up her friends and colleagues, she wrote and recorded a music video, "Screw You Yahoo."

Nothing against Yahoo, says Michelle. It's one of her favorite companies to work for. "You rhymed the best."

I love music and hope to write more about the relation between music and health in 2009. In the meantime, here's the video Playing for Change.

The Playing for Change Foundation provides resources to musicians and their communities around the world and is dedicated to achieving peace through music.

May 2009 bring you health, contentment, and abundance.

A few holiday gifts to share.

Here's one of my favorite YouTube videos, Free Hugs. It's 3:39 minutes, the length of the Sick Puppies song, All the Same.

This one, Free Parking, has a theme similar to Free Hugs, but it's by filmmaker Kurt Kuenne and is quite a bit longer, 16:23. Watch the beginning and see if you want to continue. It has a (minimal) plot.

Here's a description of Appreciative Inquiry, an organization development practice related to the message of Free Parking:

It's Thanksgiving and I'm feeling 'Ich habe genug' (I have enough). I'd like to share some poetry, music, and a film while continuing the 'death' theme of my last blog post.

First the film, Wit, starring Emma Thompson and directed by Mike Nichols. It's the story of Vivian, a woman with ovarian cancer who spends the end of her life in a hospital. Talk about aggressive treatment of the terminally ill. She's basically a guinea pig for an experimental drug that has no chance of saving her life. The young doctor who oversees her treatment will get a publication out of the case. He's a resident planning a career in research and has no interest in ever seeing patients again. He's only there because it's one of the requirements on the road to becoming an MD.

Wit is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Very minimal. Lots of monologue. Vivian was a professor of English literature and quotes the metaphysical poet John Donne (of "Death be not proud" fame) throughout the film. The contrast between the poetry and the setting is beautifully done. Donne had much to say about death, but he lived in an era when death had a different meaning. Or more precisely, when death had a meaning.

Sounds a bit gloomy, I know, but it's an excellent film. Watch it with a friend, if you can. It's very thought provoking. This is exactly the way we don't want to die. The more we're aware of what we don't want, the more we'll be motivated to change the way things are.

Next, a poem by Jacques Prevert, "Pater Noster." The poem received some publicity when Meadow Soprano read the first few lines to her Level 1 ICU-docked Dad: "Our father, which art in heaven, stay there. And we shall stay on earth, which is sometimes so pretty."

Here is the French version. And here's an English translation.

Clifford Hospital, Guangzhou (Canton), China

Philip Larkin's poem "The Building" is about a hospital. Here's the complete poem, and here are the last few lines:

All know they are going to die.
Not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end,
And somewhere like this. That is what it means,
This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend
The thought of dying, for unless its powers
Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes
The coming dark, though crowds each evening try

With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.

I've been partial to Larkin ever since I read "This be the verse" at an impressionable age.

And continuing the theme of Genug, here's the Bach Cantata, "Ich habe genug".