Heart Sick

JAZZERCISE FOR THE SOUL
CLASS TITLE: HOPE DEFERRED BURN
INSTRUCTOR: LIFE

Welcome, everyone. Mats out. Water bottles nearby. Kindly place emotional baggage gently to the side of the room.

Today’s focus: Unfulfilled dreams and their tendency to metabolise directly into existential thigh storage.

Warm-Up:
March in place while repeating: “It will happen soon.”
Increase tempo each time someone says, “Just be patient.”
Feel that? That is optimism starting to stretch.

Side Step Touch:
Step right — that is the job you thought you should have had by now.
Step left — that relationship that was “definitely going somewhere.”
Repeat until mild resentment forms in the calves.

Arm Raises:
Lift arms overhead and reach for “someday.”
Hold. Hold. Still holding.
Notice how the burn intensifies the longer you suspend resolution.

Hope deferred does not disappear. It lingers. It circulates. It ferments.

When longing has nowhere to land, it does not evaporate. It converts. Into irritability. Into envy. Into that low-grade ache when someone else posts their “dream come true” announcement.

That is the full-fat chocolate ice cream effect.
You did not even remember eating it.
But there it is. On your hips. On your mood. On your heart.

Okay. Cardio burst.

High Knees:
Run in place while repeating, “I’m fine.”
Notice the wobble in that statement.
Your body knows when you are not fine.

Deferred hope makes the heart sick. Not evil. Not dramatic. Sick. Heavy. Sluggish. Inflamed.

When something meaningful is delayed long enough, it starts to tax your system. Here is where the jazz hands come in — the second half is wild.

“A longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Drop into squats.

Feel the grounding. Fulfilment roots you. It steadies your breathing. It nourishes instead of drains. It feels expansive instead of constricting.

Tree pose. (Yes, actually.)

When desire finally meets reality — when the call comes through, when the apology lands, when the body stabilises, when the dream shifts from “maybe” to “here” — your whole nervous system recalibrates. You stand taller. Your gaze softens. Your inner monologue quiets.

Fulfilment does not just feel good. It reorganises you.

Cool Down:

Place one hand on your chest.

Hope is not dangerous. But unmanaged hope — unexamined, unexpressed, ungrieved — can quietly thicken into bitterness.

Here is the twist: sometimes the fulfilment is not getting what you wanted. Sometimes it is releasing the timeline. Or reshaping the dream. Or admitting, with radical tenderness, “That one hurt.”

You cannot spot-reduce deferred hope. You have to digest it.

Stretch.

Breathe.

The goal is to keep it moving. Talk about it. Adjust it. Grieve it. Reignite it. Let it evolve.

Otherwise, it sits.

And it sticks.

But when longing finds its root — even a small one — you do not just lose the weight (the emotional baggage, but I am rolling with the sweatband here).

You grow branches.