In A Social 'Funk'? Pickleball, Dance And Other Physical Group Activities Could Be A Solution

Around five years ago, when Micah Mumper relocated from New York to Long Beach where he knew no one besides his wife, he found himself, as he puts it, in a funk.

“Depression would be the emotion,” said Mumper, 33, who moved to the area for a job. “It was kind of a dark place — not a very fun place.”

While he had a brother he saw occasionally nearly 40 miles away in Orange County, he and his wife fell into a rough pattern that would last for several years.

They hardly left the house or interacted with anyone besides each other, he said, and generally lacked motivation to do basic things like clean up after themselves.

“We were just sort of going through the motions,” Mumper said. “It would cause friction between us.”

He desperately needed to find community, he added, but couldn’t quite get himself to take the first step.

It wasn't until last year at his brother’s 40th birthday party in Orange County that he noticed his brother had something he was missing: a large group of friends.

And there was a trend: most of them, it seemed, met by playing pickleball. Sure, it feels like everyone — and their literal mother — has embraced the sport as of late. But as it turns out, pickleball would be the catalyst for Mumper to get out of his funk.

The pickleball prescription

His brother’s friends were all quite welcoming and encouraged him to start playing, Mumper recalled. “I thought, OK, I want what they have, why not.”

He found a local league in Long Beach, and forced himself to show up to a pickup game one Wednesday afternoon. It pretty quickly turned things around.

Plckelball players Ryan Benson and Maile Sterling bump each other in support while playing at the Santa Monica Pickleball Center.

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“It gets me out of the house, it gets me around other people," he said. “I'm really hitting my stride and pickleball has been a really big part of that.”

At a time when more and more people say they are experiencing feelings of loneliness — particularly in a huge, fast-moving city like Los Angeles — many like Mumper struggle with feelings of isolation and yearn to make meaningful connections with others.

Through the whacking of a ball that sorta resembles a wiffle ball, hundreds of thousands of people have found fulfilling friendships and an overall sense of community through the sport that’s blown up in recent years.

“Basically 90% of my friends are through pickleball,” said Sona Kim Davis, the marketing director at Santa Monica Pickleball Center. “It’s really crazy, like people really do come together for this sport.”

The power of moving in sync

It’s not just pickleball that can pave the way for community building. Group physical movement in general, like sports leagues and dance classes — particularly in adulthood, when there are less natural opportunities to make friends — offer an especially effective route to make strong connections and soothe feelings of loneliness.

“We have pretty good data to suggest that behavioral synchrony can lead to feelings of higher closeness and trust with the people we're in sync with,” said Jamie Krems, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA who specializes in human friendship. “That’s particularly the case when you’re in sync in larger groups.”

While most group activities boost one’s sense of belonging, studies show that moving in sync can build even stronger social ties and promote a deeper sense of well-being.

To understand why moving in unison with others promotes closeness, Krems said we must look to our evolutionary past. Doing hard work in coordination together, for example, would have been imperative for survival and protection against outside threats, she said. Moving in sync also creates a similarity in how those within the same group perceive and respond to the world, leading to feelings of closeness and rapport.

“That feeling of rhythm and coordination and synchrony might be one of the best ways to engender these feelings of closeness and pro social behavior,” she said.

Part of it has to do with endorphins, which some researchers have called the “neurochemical glue” of human relationships. Scientists have found that moving in sync triggers the endorphin system, which enhances good feelings, more strongly than the effects of the activity itself.

As for Micah Mumper, finding such an activity flipped his entire world upside down, for the better, he said.

“I feel a hundred percent better than I did before I started playing pickleball,” he added. “I feel not as depressed. I feel a whole different view of my abilities to go out and socialize. It's given me this new confidence.”

Patrons play pickleball at the Santa Monica Pickleball Center.

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Dancing and the 'feel good' hormone

On a recent Thursday night at The Victorian in Santa Monica, dozens of patrons with wristbands filed into an oblong-shaped room with a disco ball hanging from the center of the ceiling, salsa music blasted from the speakers.

Nicole Gil, a dance teacher and founder of Dancer University, walked to the middle of the room, a pop-star microphone strapped around her head.

“We’re gonna make two circles, ladies on the inside, gentlemen on the outside,” she said as those in the crowd, a bit timid, took their places.

Instructor Nicole Gil leads in a salsa class at the The Victorian.

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Each week on Thursdays at The Victorian — and most other nights at various clubs around L.A. — Gil teaches salsa and bachata classes to groups of mostly beginners.

While she’s passionate about these forms of dance for their artistry, she said what’s most special about it is the community that’s corralled around it.

“Everyone's laughing about it together, feeling silly together, out of place and out of their comfort zone,” said Gil, who also met her fiancé through dance. “I think that is something that really helps you connect with people.”

And researchers agree. Studies show that dancing in sync — more so than just dancing alongside others — boosts the production of endorphins and leads to social closeness and bonding.

Patrick Padilla, a 27-year-old engineer who recently moved from Saint Louis to Lawndale, attends class as a way to meet people in a new city.

“I like the energy,” he said. “Getting to meet a bunch of new people outside of work. It's really a great way to stay active and then also meet new faces.”

As a bonus, he said he gets to channel his “inner child.”

“As a little kid I liked getting onto the dance floor and just doing my stuff,” he said. “When I grew up, I'm like, what if I could put a little bit of form to all that energy?”

Dancers participate in a salsa class at the The Victorian.

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While the classes are meant for beginners, many come week after week. Each class starts with a lesson, followed by “social dancing,” or freestyle dancing with a partner (which is the standard format for salsa and bachata classes anywhere).

“I've definitely made friends here,” said Joseph Blakey, who lives in Venice and has attended the class several times. “It’s something that requires a partner, so you're always looking for more people to do it with. People want to talk. People want to hang out with you. There's just something about going out dancing with people. And there's something very welcoming about this space.”

Aside from the social engagement, Blakey said learning a new form of dance is sort of like a meditative practice, helping him to stay present.

“You’re engaged in this activity and you’re just enjoying it, the moment,” he said. “It gets me out of my head.”

Gil emphasized that it's not unusual to come solo — many of the attendees did show up alone. In fact, she recommends it.

“You might actually have a better time, so you can focus on your partner and being musical for the duration of the song,” she said.

And for those who feel daunted by the idea of dancing with or in front of others, Gil urges people to just show up — once — even if you have no intention of dancing.

“You might build it up in your head like ‘Oh I’ve got to look for parking, then I’ve got to walk there and it’s cold,” she said. “But once you do it, once you realize that it really wasn’t that bad, I think that helps you get off the couch. And after that you’ll be hooked.”

The magic of a studio

Through a breezeway lined with a melange of palms and desert plants at Hyperion Arts in Silver Lake, a small, eccentric studio tucked in the back of the building is filling up dancers for Intermediate Ballet.

They're in their 20s, in their 60s, in leotards and classic pink tights, or leg warmers and sweatshirts. They are mostly women (one man). Some were once professional ballet dancers, others have only started dancing here.

There’s a whimsical feel about this room, one of the two studios that make up Studio A Dance. It's old — the building was constructed in the 1920s — and quiet, with stained glass windows and string lights lining the ceiling.

In the middle of one of the busiest enclaves of L.A., it’s like you’re entering a place where time stands still.

“Nothing else matters when we’re in there,” said Cat Moore, who is the director of belonging at the University of Southern California and took ballet classes at Studio A for several years. “It’s just you and your body. And by just being there, the other dancers give you this strength and support in just really powerful ways.”

About 10 years ago, in the middle of a “shocking, terrifying” divorce, Moore said she was barely able to eat, sleep or otherwise function in her day to day life, now a single parent to her young son.

She said she was living in survival mode, and felt like her life was slipping through her fingers.

Then, randomly, she stumbled upon a dance studio on a walk home from her local coffee shop and “felt a pull” to sign up for a ballet class: “The last thing I wanted to do was move or exercise, but I sort of knew if I didn’t take a first step, things would get really, really bad,” she added.

The studio, which has gone through several iterations since it was established 41 years ago, offers a variety of classes for adults and kids throughout the week, from ballet to hip hop to contemporary dance.

Throughout this time and no matter the type of class, the mission behind Studio A, as established by its owner Bill Brown, has remained the same: to be a safe haven for Angelenos to not just dance, but to find happiness, as Brown states in a mini film about the studio.

Moore recalled walking into her first class never having danced ballet before and immediately feeling at ease. She said it was the welcoming atmosphere, and how the other dancers were eager to help her with the basics like how to stand at the barre and encouraged her to follow their footwork.

But she said there was also something about the teacher, Cati Jean: “It was like she just had magic coming out of her, is the only way I can describe it. She just had this presence that is so full of life.”

Jean, who is originally from France and has lived in Silver Lake for 25 years, said that's intentional.

“When you bring this aliveness, this openness, it has a ripple effect,” she said, “And that’s what dance does anyway. The artistry, the physicality, the emotion. It brings you alive.”

Moore said that during this traumatic time in her life, Jean’s classes helped her build strength — physically, of course, but more so emotionally.

“I can say for sure that it’s one of the main things that kept me alive during that time,” she said. “Getting back into your body is one of the most fundamental ways to reconnect to yourself.”

Since the publication of the New York Times best seller The Body Keeps the Score in 2014, the idea that our bodies store emotions and trauma has become somewhat mainstream. Dance therapy and other forms of physical or “somatic” techniques have been established as effective tools to help unlock, process and release these difficult emotions that are stored in the body.

Yet the power of dance classes to create a sense of community is perhaps the most healing part.

“I had just such a profound experience of feeling connected to this group of women, and we were hyper focused on doing these moves,” Moore said. “It gave me something to focus on during the worst period of my life.”

COVID made the effect of the community aspect particularly apparent, when Jean continued to teach classes over Zoom so her dancers could at least work on their technique at home. But it was missing “la magie,” she said in French. The magic.

“We need to feel each other’s energy, in the same room, focused on the same thing, together,” Jean said. “It’s like a nutrient. We can’t live without it.”