This edition of our newsletter is a special one.
Are you subscribed to our podcast (Thriving Dancers Podcast)?
Thriving Dancers is chipping away at its mission to change the dance industry for the better, one healthy and happy dancer at a time.
We had our first guest a few episodes back. My conversation with Jena was a hit! The feedback has been beautiful.
These podcast conversations are meant to provide different perspectives, teach a new concept or tool, and give you, the dance mom, a voice.
Last week's episode is the one I've been itching to do for some time. I finally got my brain to put into words what I've been feeling about using AI for health-related advice.
No worries, it's not "AI-bashing" or "worshiping!"
I wanted to do this episode before I move forward with any tips, tools, or additional experts, because it is important to understand how we can use AI as dance moms to our advantage (and to our dancers').
This week's episode will be with another guest expert, and we're talking about the most wanted 'skill' in dance -hypermobility. But it's not what you'd expect.
Here's a quick recap of the last two episodes, in case you're a reading-type of person :)
08-17-2026 Episode: The dancer everyone calls flexible
You know the one. The dancers who get picked for the contortion tricks. Their splits look like nothing. Everyone comments on how bendy they are.
Those dancers are also the ones who bruise constantly, walk into doorframes, spill things, cannot stand still for five minutes without needing to sit down, and have "growing pains" that never quite go away.
I sat down with Sharon Harrasser of 13 Zebras Wellness. Sharon is an integrative health and wellness coach with a master's in complementary and alternative medicine, an Ehlers-Danlos advocate, and she lives with hypermobility herself. She danced, too. Tap, ballet, then jazz, starting at five. She stopped around puberty because her joints kept sliding out of place, and nobody around her knew what they were looking at.
Her answers came decades later.
We got into what hypermobility, HSD, and hEDS actually are (not the same thing, and the difference matters more than most of us realize), why puberty is so often the moment things start falling apart, and what separates a dancer who is not trying hard enough from a dancer whose connective tissue is not cooperating.
Sharon also named something I had never had words for. She calls it the party trick. The bendy thing your kid does when people ask, the one everybody claps for. She explains what that trick is quietly costing.
Fair warning. A lot of you are going to hear the list of small, dismissible things and start thinking about your own kid. And then about yourself. There is a reason for that, and Sharon gets to it near the end.
08-10-26 Episode: What AI will never ask you
I am not anti-AI. I use it to save time so I can have a life. When I hand it a task, and it saves me five hours, I feel great about it.
But I went in and tested it the way I've seen dance moms use it. I played a mom who's brand-new to holistic and integrative health, hesitant to go straight to something invasive, and just trying to find out whether there was another path worth exploring.
The AI gave me information. Plenty of it. Supplements, studies, what the research says, sources on request.
But none of the thinking.
Because AI answers the question you asked. It does not stop to wonder whether that was the right question.
There is also a section on what happens to the information you type in. That is the part people keep telling me they had never once thought about.
TO DO THIS WEEK
- Enjoy the last few weeks of summer!
- Think of the 3-5 things you will do THIS dance season differently.
- Listen to the podcast episodes and let me know what you want to learn about next!
Here's a link to the podcast portal. You can also listen to it through any other podcast platform you listen to all your podcasts at (Apple, Spotify, Audible, iHeartRadio).
 |
Something New at Thriving Dancers
So many moms ask me all the time: "Where do you get your supplements? What essential oils do you use? What's the best brand? Where do you get this device? What is the best XYZ?"
Instead of repeating, and repeating, and repeating myself, I decided to add an 'Honest Reviews' page to our website where we'll post reviews of various products we use. I have no affiliate links or commissions from these, so these are true and honest from our use of the products, my extensive research, and trials of various products from juicers to where you can get the cleanest and most affordable wild salmon ;)
Yes, I will cover it all because...
Dance moms' most precious commodity is TIME,
And I'd like to help you save time by cutting the time it takes to 'figure out' yet another thing you have to decide about!
Check out the reviews here, and please let me know what else you want to know: https://moms.thrivingdancers.com/blog
Send me any product reviews you're curious about, and if I've used it, I'll make a post about it. If I haven't, I will research it, try it out, and give you my educated opinion.
And as always...
...Remember if you have any follow-up questions on this newsletter or podcast, send me a DM on Instagram or email me your takeaways, questions, or concerns. I'll review them and share my thoughts on your next step.
team@thrivingdancers.com
PS: At Thriving Dancers, we don't use AI to write our content! We do use it to help create helpful infographics, check grammar, and pull specific research studies we're looking for. So what you'll always get from Thriving Dancers is human-synthesized, thought-through content that's always authentic! That's why sometimes you'll see NotebookLM on some of the included images, if we use it to create a helpful diagram :)
Dance Mom: Welcome to Thriving Dancers World! If you received this email as a forward from another mom and found it helpful, please sign up HERE so you won't miss out on future updates from us. You never know, something in our newsletter might have the power to transform your dancer's dreams for the better!
