When opening up about her routine in the midst of the pandemic, the mother of Kate Hudson talks about how her start as a dancer set her on the path to understanding mindfulness.
- Apr 14, 2020
AceShowbiz - Goldie Hawn is making sure she dances every day to help her get through the coronavirus lockdown.
The "Death Becomes Her" star began her career as a dancer before finding fame in Hollywood and winning an Oscar for her performance in the 1969 film "Cactus Flower", aged just 24, and says her original profession set her on the path to understanding mindfulness.
"Starting out as a dancer gave me an aspect of mindfulness that I didn't even realise that I was getting," she tells The Guardian. "Because to dance is to be aware of every piece of your body while you're moving. It's like a meditation unto itself."
With Americans and people across the world stuck in their homes due to lockdown measures imposed to stop the spread of the virus COVID-19, the actress has been using dancing and positive thinking techniques to keep mentally and physically in shape.
"Before you go to bed, think of three things that went well today," she explains of her lockdown routine. "I don't care if it's a little crazy thing - it doesn't matter. Take some music you love and if you can't dance, go do 10 minutes of jumping jacks. Get yourself all cheered up."
Discussing her love of dancing, the star adds: "When I talk about dancing through life, it really is how we move. It's how we face today, how we walk into a room, how we pull ourselves up and feel that what we have inside of us is valuable and important."
Goldie is a longtime devotee of meditation and has designed her own mindfulness routine for kids with psychologists and neuroscientists - which is now in use in many schools, including more than 250 in the U.K.
Talking of how the programme helped kids after a trial conducted with researchers at Canada's University of British Columbia, the 74-year-old says it immediately made a difference to younger children's wellbeing.
"These children had changed in a matter of four months, and had a whole new way of being," she explains. "They understood their emotional systems in the brain, that the hippocampus is where they remember, (and) the amygdala, which is fight-or-flight."