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Zumba Classes: Dancing Your Way to Fit

A fitness company known for its Latin dance-based group classes

Kate_sept2004 / Getty Images

• Original Zumba

History of Zumba

Types of zumba classes, how zumba works, benefits of zumba, disadvantages, safety considerations, how zumba compares.

Zumba is one of the best-known fitness organizations in the world, with more than 200,000 class locations available in 180 countries. And while the brand is best known for its signature "Zumba" Latin dance fitness class, the company offers several additional workout formats, from strength training to kid's fitness classes and even water aerobics classes.

Each workout involves highly choreographed movements set to upbeat salsa and international music. Essentially, Zumba is a fun, high-energy workout experience that keeps you excited to exercise and return for more.

What Is Zumba?

Zumba's most well-known and popular program is its namesake class, Zumba. This high-energy dance class features intervals that help improve cardiovascular fitness while also enhancing balance, coordination, agility, and to some degree, strength through the application of beginner-accessible choreography.

You don't need special dance skills to have a great time in Zumba class. People with natural rhythm may pick up on the moves faster, but no one is keeping score, so just dance, let go, and have fun.

Zumba classes typically consist of Latin-inspired songs, starting with a slower warm-up song, building intensity throughout the workout, and ending with a cool-down song. Even if you're not a strong dancer, the choreography is repetitive and designed to be built upon, so most people will catch on to the moves as they go.

Zumba was officially founded in the United States in 2001 by Alberto "Beto" Perez, a Colombian dancer who started the fitness class in the '90s in his home country. Perez's "rags to riches" story could be considered serendipity—he was teaching an aerobics class at his local gym when he realized he'd forgotten his usual music.

Why Is it Called Zumba?

Zumba got its name from its similarity to the Cuban music genre rumba. Music is a big factor in Zumba classes.

In 2000, Perez launched Zumba fitness class in the United States. In 2001, he partnered with two investors and released a series of three Zumba DVDs available through an infomercial.

The dance fitness concept wasn't new when Zumba rose to fame, but the high-energy fun of its classes was. Plus, Zumba's timing was ideal. In the early 2000s, large fitness centers, like 24 Hour Fitness and Lifetime Fitness were popping up everywhere, often including group fitness classes as a benefit of membership. These gyms were looking for unique classes to add to the draw of their clubs, and Zumba fit the bill.

Zumba tends to appeal to a predominantly female audience, but everyone is welcome. And because the choreography is accessible even to those with "two left feet," people of all ages and dance abilities have flocked to Zumba, especially during the peak of its popularity between 2005 and 2015.

As a result, the brand added numerous programs to make the class and choreography even more accessible to people of all ages, genders, and fitness levels. Zumba classes include:

• Aqua Zumba : Perfect for those with lower-extremity injuries or needing low-impact exercise, Aqua Zumba takes the Latin dance craze to the pool.
• Zumba Gold : This modified version of the standard Zumba class is geared to an older audience that wants the same fun music and flair as a traditional class but performed at a lower intensity.
• Zumba Kids : Designed for kids between 7- to 11-years-old, Zumba Kids modifies and breaks down traditional Zumba moves, then adds games and activities to the class to keep children engaged and interested as they break a sweat.
• Zumba Kids Jr .: Similar to Zumba Kids, Zumba Kids Jr. is modified for the 4- to 6-year-old audience and is positioned even more as a "dance party" to help keep this age group on "task."
• Zumba Step : The same Latin-inspired dance choreography, but with the addition of an aerobic step to increase the intensity of the workout and add more leg-strengthening moves due to repeatedly stepping on and off the elevated surface
• Zumbini : This once-a-week, 45-minute class is designed for the littlest Zumba fans between 0 and 3 years old; the little ones and their caregivers meet to bond over music and engage in age-appropriate active play; think less "workout" and more "learning experience."

As strength-training classes gained popularity over the past decade, pulling people into CrossFit gyms and choreographed strength classes, the Zumba brand worked on adding more strength options to its repertoire, including:

• Strong by Zumba : A high-intensity bodyweight training workout with movements choreographed to the beat of the music; pushups , squats, burpees, and lunges are staples of this routine.
• Zumba Gold-Toning : Just like Zumba Toning, but at a lower intensity designed for a somewhat older audience.
• Zumba In the Circuit : Designed as a circuit, alternating between Zumba dance moves and strength-training exercises for a full-body workout intended to improve cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength.
• Zumba Sentao : Uses a chair as a "dance partner" to focus on core strength without using weights.
• Zumba Toning : Incorporates the use of Zumba Toning Sticks (or light weights) to add an element of strength training to familiar Zumba dance moves.

Almost all Zumba classes are designed as 45- to 60-minute group exercise classes led by a Zumba-certified instructor. These are typically offered at gyms and fitness centers, although Zumba instructors are welcome to market classes on their own, hosting workouts at parks, schools, or other venues.

Zumba Basics

Zumba classes consist of a series of Latin dance songs, each with highly choreographed dance movements that build on each other. The first song offers a slower beat to help you get warmed up, with each successive song building in intensity and challenge, with a few lower-intensity dance series built in for recovery. The Zumba workout wraps up with a cool-down song.

Between songs, you can grab water and take a second to catch your breath before the next song starts.

Schedules for Zumba are typically based on the gym or fitness center where classes are hosted. For cardio-based fitness classes like Zumba, it's ideal to get on a regular schedule and participate in at least two to three classes weekly.

Overall, Zumba feels like a dance party disguised as a workout—which is exactly what people love about it. Zumba is a safe, fun, and effective workout for most people who want to enhance their cardiovascular fitness through dance. There are few drawbacks to the program, but general precautions you should be aware of when starting any new workout routine.

Below are the benefits of Zumba class from physical to practical considerations.

Accessibility

Due to the program's widespread availability and the varied class style, Zumba as a brand is quite flexible and suited to almost all fitness levels and interests.

Even if your local gym doesn't offer Zumba classes, you may find that a nearby swimming pool offers Aqua Zumba or an independent instructor who provides classes with a pay-per-class structure at a nearby park.

How to Find a Zumba Class

Check online or call your local gym studios to find Zumba classes near you. It's a popular class that has expanded to many locations.

General Fitness

Given Zumba's sustained popularity, many studies have been performed on the efficacy of the workout. One recent review found that Zumba was effective at improving aerobic capacity (cardiovascular fitness), while limited additional evidence pointed to possible enhancements to muscular fitness and flexibility.

Sustainability

One of the most critical factors in exercise is adherence—continuing the exercise program after you start. Generally speaking, the more enjoyable a program is, the more motivated you will be to continue. And the more consistent you are with a program, the more likely you will experience positive results.

A 2014 study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness found that a Zumba intervention in sedentary adults with metabolic syndrome "showed good feasibility and adherence," which points to the positive sustainability of the program as a whole.

Energy and General Health

While almost any sustained workout program may help boost mood, self-esteem, and energy, Zumba has a few peer-reviewed studies pointing to its psychological benefits.

Namely, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that healthy women who participated in an 8-week Zumba program experienced positive changes in perceptions of physical strength, autonomy, and purpose in life, improving their overall feelings of health and well-being.

The cost of Zumba is variable, depending on where you take the class. If you're paying on a fee-per-class basis, you're likely to spend between $5 and $25 per class, depending on the setting and instructor. If you're a member of a gym where Zumba is offered, class may be included as part of your membership.

If you're on a budget, you can purchase a DVD or digitally stream for a home workout. The flexibility of price, depending on location and needs, makes the program financially accessible for most people.

Zumba doesn't make unrealistic claims about calorie burn or the potential for weight loss or strength gains. Instead, their marketing focuses on improving fitness in a fun way that helps enhance how you feel every day—and more than delivers on those fronts.

Zumba has a lot of benefits, but there are some potential disadvantages to consider.

Lacks Strengthing and Flexibility Components

The literature is clear that Zumba can provide cardiovascular benefits, but the jury is out on whether there are significant benefits to flexibility and strength. Unless you're taking Zumba classes, such as Strong by Zumba, that expressly incorporate strength-training moves as a primary component of the workout, you shouldn't view Zumba as a well-rounded general fitness class.

In addition to taking two to three Zumba classes a week, you may also want to add a few strength training and flexibility activities to your schedule. Consider trying a 30-minute strength circuit followed by a 10-minute stretching session on days you're not doing Zumba.

All fitness programs, regardless of type, carry an inherent risk. You could pull a muscle, twist an ankle, or fall. If you do too much too soon, you can risk excessive soreness or symptoms of overtraining .

That said, the Zumba brand has gone out of its way to develop programs designed for all audiences and age levels, offering varying levels of intensity and challenge to reduce the risk of potential injury.

Zumba is considered a generally safe fitness activity, but because all physical activity carries inherent risk, you should consider your physical health before diving into a program. Make sure to wear shoes that allow you to slide .

If you have a known lower-extremity injury or a history of ankle or knee problems , talk to a healthcare provider before trying Zumba, or start with a lower-impact version of the program, such as Zumba Gold or Aqua Zumba.

And if you're brand-new to dance choreography, don't overdo it and push yourself too hard. Give yourself time to master the movements at your own pace. Moving quickly or without coordination can lead to an increased risk of injury. The critical thing to remember is to ease yourself into a program and listen to your body, taking rest when needed.

Zumba is a fun, effective dance workout that is a good option for people who enjoy upbeat music and an energetic group exercise environment. Here's how it compares to other similar classes.

Jazzercise is the original dance-fitness class that took the world by storm in the 1980s and 1990s. While it experienced a bit of a resurgence in the 2010s, Jazzercise has yet to return to the popularity of its heyday.

That said, like Zumba, it offers choreographed dance moves to upbeat music in a fun, group environment. If you want the atmosphere of Zumba but don't feel comfortable with the booty-shaking vigor of Zumba's dance choreography, Jazzercise might be a mellower option.

BUTI Yoga is a workout that combines high-intensity exercise with African dance-inspired choreography and yoga flows. The nice thing about BUTI is that it really does hit all the bases for general fitness—you'll develop strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance .

The program is also available online and through independent instructors at gyms and fitness centers, so you can access classes pretty much wherever you are.

That said, the movements are less appropriate for a general audience, making it more suitable for healthy adults with a solid baseline of fitness, rather than an older audience or those with known health issues or injuries.

Barre Classes

Barre fitness classes are popular programs most often available at boutique fitness studios. These workouts focus more on flexibility , muscular endurance , and core strength and less on cardiovascular fitness. Movements are slower and more controlled, and while the classes are choreographed, you're not trying to keep up with a series of fast-paced steps.

Barre workouts may be an excellent supplement to Zumba, as strength and flexibility are a greater focus. They're also considered a low-impact workout which can be a good option for beginners or those with known lower-extremity injuries. However, Barre classes often come at a higher price, ranging from roughly $15 to $35 per class.

A Word From Verywell

Zumba provides a fun, positive workout with options appropriate for all ages and ability levels. There's a lot of independent research to support the program's efficacy and not much to detract from its potential benefits.

However, if you don't like dancing, fast-paced choreography, or Latin-inspired music, Zumba might not be a good fit for you. If you're looking for an addictive, high-energy group dance workout set to upbeat music, Zumba is great.

Vendramin B, Bergamin M, Gobbo S, et al. Health benefits of Zumba fitness training: A systematic review . PM R . 2016;8(12):1181-1200. doi:10.1016/j.pmrj.2016.06.010

Araneta MR, Tanori D. Benefits of Zumba Fitness® among sedentary adults with components of the metabolic syndrome: A pilot study . Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness . 2014;55(10):1227-1233.

Delextrat AA, Warner S, Graham S, Neupert E. An 8-week exercise intervention based on Zumba improves aerobic fitness and psychological well-being in healthy women . J Phys Act Health . 2016;13(2):131-9. doi:10.1123/jpah.2014-0535

By Laura Williams, MSEd, ASCM-CEP Laura Williams is a fitness expert and advocate with certifications from the American Council on Exercise and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Essay on Zumba Experience

Students are often asked to write an essay on Zumba Experience in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Zumba Experience

What is zumba.

Zumba is a fun dance workout. People move to lively music. It feels like a dance party, not exercise. It mixes low and high moves so anyone can do it. Zumba helps your body and mood.

Music and Moves

Zumba uses catchy songs. You shake and twist to the beats. It’s a mix of salsa, hip-hop, and more. The steps are easy. Instructors show you what to do.

For Everyone

Kids and adults can enjoy Zumba. You don’t need to be a great dancer. It’s about moving your body and having fun.

Zumba makes you stronger and happier. It’s a great way to make friends and stay healthy.

250 Words Essay on Zumba Experience

Zumba is a fun way to exercise. It’s like a dance party where you move your body to lively music. People of all ages can enjoy Zumba, and you do not have to be a good dancer to join in. The steps are easy to follow, and the main goal is to move your body and have a good time.

Benefits of Zumba

Doing Zumba is great for your health. It helps your heart because it’s a type of cardio exercise. It also makes your muscles stronger and can help you feel happier. When you’re dancing and listening to music, it’s hard not to smile. Plus, Zumba is a social activity, so you can make new friends while dancing.

The Zumba Class

In a Zumba class, an instructor shows you the moves. You don’t need special equipment, just comfortable clothes and shoes. Classes usually last for an hour and the music includes different styles like salsa, hip hop, and samba. It’s a mix of fast and slow rhythms, which makes it exciting.

My Zumba Experience

I tried Zumba and had a blast. At first, I was nervous because I thought everyone would be better than me. But I was wrong. People were focused on having fun, not being perfect. The instructor was friendly and the music made me want to move. By the end, I was sweaty, tired, and very happy. I can’t wait to go again.

Zumba is more than just a workout. It’s a chance to dance, laugh, and feel good. If you’ve never tried it, give it a go. It might just be the most fun you’ve ever had while exercising!

500 Words Essay on Zumba Experience

Imagine a room full of people, music blasting, and everyone dancing with big smiles on their faces. That’s Zumba for you! Zumba is a fun dance workout that mixes fitness exercises with Latin and other international music. Unlike regular gym workouts, Zumba feels more like a dance party than a fitness session. It’s a popular activity for people of all ages who want to get fit while having a good time.

The Music and Moves

The best part about Zumba is the music. It’s lively, upbeat, and makes you want to move. The dances include moves from different styles like salsa, merengue, and hip-hop. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to dance, though. The steps are easy to follow, and the main goal is to keep moving and have fun. Over time, you’ll find yourself getting better and even learning some cool dance moves.

Health Benefits

Zumba is not just about dancing and having fun; it’s also a great workout. It gets your heart pumping and helps improve your stamina. You can burn a lot of calories, which is good if you want to lose weight or stay in shape. It also helps with flexibility and balance. Because it’s a full-body workout, you’ll feel stronger and more energetic after each session.

Making Friends

Zumba classes are a wonderful place to meet new people. Since everyone is there to enjoy and exercise, you already have two things in common. It’s easy to make friends when you’re all laughing and trying out new dance moves together. Plus, having friends in class can make you look forward to your workouts more.

The Emotional Boost

Doing Zumba can make you feel happier. It’s like when you hear your favorite song and can’t help but feel good. The combination of music and exercise releases endorphins, which are chemicals in your brain that make you feel happy. So, if you’re having a bad day, a Zumba class might be just what you need to lift your spirits.

One of the best things about Zumba is that anyone can join in. It doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you’re a boy or a girl, or if you’re not in the best shape. Instructors often offer different versions of the moves to match your fitness level. So, whether you’re a beginner or have been exercising for a while, you can find a pace that’s right for you.

What to Expect in a Class

If you’re going to your first Zumba class, wear comfortable clothes and shoes. Expect to sweat, so bringing a water bottle and a towel is a good idea. The instructor will lead the class and show everyone what to do. Just follow along, keep moving, and don’t worry about getting every step perfect. The most important thing is to enjoy yourself.

In conclusion, Zumba is a joyful and energetic way to exercise. It combines dance, music, and fitness into an experience that’s fun for everyone. You can get healthier, make new friends, and feel happier all at the same time. If you haven’t tried Zumba yet, you might want to give it a go. Who knows? It could be your new favorite way to stay active!

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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Zumba: What It Is, Health Benefits, and How to Get Started

Few exercise classes have had Zumba's staying power. This dance workout — which looks and sounds more like a dance party — remains a popular go-to for fitness-minded folks around the world.

Indeed, Zumba is currently practiced by 15 million people in 180 countries, according to the company .

Here’s everything you need to know about what Zumba is, the health benefits, and how to get started.

What Is Zumba?

Zumba is a Latin-inspired dance workout created in Colombia by the celebrity fitness trainer Alberto “Beto” Perez in the 1990s, according to an  article in the June 2012  Journal of Sports Science & Medicine . It’s often described as a dance party rather than a workout, because participants are encouraged to move to the beat of the music more than follow the choreography exactly.

Unlike other fitness classes, like step aerobics or hip-hop, Zumba is a trademarked name that refers to classes, programs, and services offered by the brand Zumba Fitness, LLC. That means only those who have been licensed by the company can offer Zumba classes. Instructors have to undergo training through the company before they can be licensed to teach Zumba.

But make no mistake: Zumba is a workout. It’s primarily a cardiovascular activity, “helping to build stamina while burning calories,” says Carolee Poythress , a personal trainer certified by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and the cofounder and fitness director of  Excel Body Fitness , a studio that offers Zumba classes in Cary, North Carolina.

Zumba can be added to your weekly routine as often as you’d like, though one to three times a week is ideal if you want to do it regularly to allow time in your week for other types of workouts, says  Alayna Curry , a fitness instructor certified by the Athletics and Fitness Association of America and a licensed Zumba instructor based in Orlando, Florida.

She also recommends adding strength training to your routine two to three days a week. “This will help you increase your strength and lower your risk of injury [during Zumba classes and outside of them],” Curry says.

The Health Benefits of Zumba

There are many health benefits associated with this Latin-inspired dance workout.

Research published in December 2016 in the journal PM&R found that regular Zumba classes were an effective type of aerobic activity; they improve participants' cardiovascular fitness and may improve strength and flexibility , too.

Like other types of aerobic exercise , Zumba has been linked to improved markers of cardiovascular health. In one small  study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness , sedentary obese women saw significant reductions in blood pressure and triglycerides (a type of fat found in the blood) after attending two weekly Zumba classes for 12 weeks.

Plus, many people find dance workouts like Zumba a great way to relieve stress. Classes are fun, Poythress says. “Several participants refer to their Zumba class as therapy.”

While research on Zumba's effects on mental health is lacking, some studies have linked exercise with mood-boosting benefits. A  study published in March 2018 in Frontiers in Psychology found that people with mental disorders saw mood improvements after a single bout of moderate exercise.

As with any form of exercise, you should do Zumba regularly to reap these benefits. Time spent doing Zumba counts toward the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise you should be doing (at minimum) every week for optimal health,  per U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines .

“Zumba can be done on a daily basis, for as long as the person has tolerance for it, or it can be done on an intermittent basis along with other forms of exercise like walking or weight lifting,” says  Barbara Bergin, MD , a retired orthopedic surgeon in Austin, Texas, who now speaks publicly on health and preventing injury and disability.

Is Zumba Good for Weight Loss?

Zumba may help with weight loss, because it involves movement and therefore burns calories, Dr. Bergin says.

In the study in the  Journal of Sports Science & Medicine mentioned above, healthy women burned an average of 9.5 calories per minute during a Zumba class. That’s more calories per minute than other popular fitness classes, such as power yoga, cardio kickboxing, and step aerobics, reports the American Council on Exercise .

A  review and meta-analysis published December 25, 2020, in  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health concluded that there isn't sufficient evidence that Zumba is effective for weight loss, and that more research is needed. That review did conclude that Zumba was effective in terms of improving VO 2 max, a measure of aerobic capacity (and cardiovascular fitness).

FAQs to Know Before Your First Zumba Class

New to Zumba? Here’s what you should know.

1. What Muscles Does Zumba Work?

While Zumba offers a total-body workout, it primarily targets the muscles of the legs and core. “You’ll likely be doing a lot of shuffling side to side and hopping and stepping forward and back, which will engage your quads, calves, hamstrings, and glutes,” Curry says.

Depending on the style of the class and instructor, you may be doing a lot of upper body movement, too, she says.

2. Are All Zumba Classes Alike, or Are There Different Types?

The intensity of Zumba varies from one class — and instructor — to another. There are also classes geared toward specific populations and interests, including chair Zumba, aqua Zumba, Zumba for older adults, Zumba for kids, and more. You can find a  full list of the class options on the official Zumba site.

You have many options for finding a Zumba class that fits your schedule, lifestyle, and personal preferences. In-person and online Zumba classes are offered at many gyms, community centers, and boutique fitness studios. Keep in mind that Zumba is a trademarked workout, so you’ll want to find a class led by a licensed Zumba instructor. The official Zumba site offers a directory where you can search for classes led by qualified instructors in your area.

3. Do I Need Specific Shoes for Zumba?

Be sure you have a pair of supportive shoes for Zumba. “You need a style that will provide stability for your ankles and allow you to make quick movements in any direction,” Curry says. Light sneakers or sneakers made specifically for dancing are best. The most important feature to consider is support, “as you’ll be sliding and stomping a whole lot,” Curry says. Some people prefer mid- or high-top shoes for ankle support.

4. What Should I Wear for Zumba?

You’ll also want to wear clothes that are comfortable and allow you to move without restriction. “Zumba is primarily a cardio workout, so you’ll work up a sweat,” Curry says. Take that into consideration when choosing workout gear. Opt for moisture-wicking fabrics like polyester, nylon, and spandex.

Is There Anyone Who Shouldn’t Try Zumba?

Zumba may not be appropriate for everyone. Err on the side of caution and check with your healthcare provider before trying Zumba if you have a chronic heart condition, high blood pressure, or musculoskeletal issues like arthritis, Bergin says.

Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking

Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy . We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.

• Learn About Zumba.  Zumba .
• Luettgen M, Foster C, Doberstein S, et al. Zumba: Is the “Fitness Party” a Good Workout?  Journal of Sports Science & Medicine . June 2012.
• Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd ed.  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services . 2018.
• Araneta MRG, Tanori D. Benefits of Zumba Fitness Among Sedentary Adults With Components of the Metabolic Syndrome: A Pilot Study.  Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness . October 2015.
• Vendramin B, Bergamin M, Gobbo S, et al. Health Benefits of Zumba Fitness Training: A Systematic Review.  PM&R . December 2016.
• Chavarrias M, Villafaina S, Lavin-Perez AM, et al. Zumba, Fat Mass, and Maximum Oxygen Consumption: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . 2021.
• Brand S, Colledge F, Ludyga S, et al. Acute Bouts of Exercising Improved Mood, Rumination, and Social Interaction in Inpatients With Mental Disorders.  Frontiers in Psychology . March 2018.
• ACE Study Tests Effectiveness of Zumba, Confirms Focus on Party Can Be Effective Cardio.  American Council on Exercise . August 15, 2012.

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Zumba | What is Zumba? Everything You Need To Know

Want to know the benefits of zumba the history behind zumba or where to find a zumba class in the uk we have the answers....

Zumba is a fun, high-intensity cardiovascular workout involving a mixture of traditional Latin dance, such as salsa and mambo, as well as martial arts, belly dancing and water aerobics.

Zumba has exploded in popularity over the last few years in the UK, so what is this craze and why has it become so universally popular?

Officially arriving on the fitness scene in the US in 1999, Zumba actually first originated in the 80’s in Columbia. After turning up at an aerobics class in Columbia without his traditional music, instructor Alberto Perez founded Zumba by accident, by substituting his traditional aerobics music for Latin music . The class was an instant success and from this the trademark Zumba  ®  was born to Perez, Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion in 2001.

By 2007, Zumba had spread to 6 continents and established credibility with fitness icons across America. In fact the Latin inspired workout is reportedly performed by over 12 million people in 125 countries around the world.

The word Zumba actually means ‘fast moving’ and when fused with the word ‘rumba’ simply means fast moving party. A party that typically burns an impressive 500-1000 calories an hour.

What is Zumba?

The Zumba Costa Blanca school describes Zumba as a program that “fuses hypnotic Latin Rythms and easy to follow moves to create a one-of-a-kind fitness program.”

The class is made up of small dance routines featuring interval training, where a mixture of fast and slow rhythms are used to tone and burn fat. Don’t be put off if you have two left feet or zero coordination as the sessions encourage a range of ages and abilities with simple steps that are regularly repeated.

A Zumba class normally lasts between 50 minutes to an hour and both classes and video (DVD) sessions are available. Due to such success, in 2008 Zumba fitness launched their third DVD collection , adding toning sticks and Zumba LIVE workout. This means that you don’t even need to leave your living room to get in a calorie burning work out. It is great for increasing fitness levels, relieving stress and hardly even feels like exercise. 

Trained instructors have also created their own follow me style videos that you can find online and follow at home.

If you are into home workouts and are interested in Zumba, then you should check out some other online videos such as those teaching Yoga and Pilates .

Types of classes

Over the past few years, Zumba has expanded to incorporate a range of different takes on the original class, targeting children as young as 3 with their Zumbni sessions.

Some other of popular classes include:

Zumba Toning Classes- work by incorporating extra resistance using Zumba toning sticks or light weights, which work by engaging specific muscle groups including arms, core and lower body.

Zumba Gold- is based around the original moves used in Zumba but at a lower intensity, perfect for older adults and focuses on balance and coordination.

Zumba Step- focuses on strengthening the legs and bum and increases cardio and calorie burning.

Aqua Zumba- is a lower impact aquatic exercise based in a pool, using natural water resistance to help tone muscles. The benefit of this is the reduced impact on your joints in the water, unlike other sports such as running which can have high impact on knee and hip joints.

Music is at the heart of Zumba. It’s used to create a positive atmosphere, with high-energy beats that blend Latin music with hip-hop. Colombian dance music, Cumbia, incorporates accordions, percussion and guitars and is another popular accompaniment to Zumba classes. 

YouTube videos containing a whole 50-minute class worth of music are available with a simple internet search and even Spotify and ITunes have playlists designated to Zumba music , making it easy to complete at home or with friends.  

A dance top and jazz pants are recommended for Zumba however anything comfortable and easy to move in will work.

Zumba have their own range of fitness clothing , consisting of patterned leggings , harem jogger pants and an array of brightly coloured vest tops. Supportive trainers are also important to help cushion the impact of the routines on your ankles and knees.

Where to go in the UK

Zumba classes are available up and down the UK and classes are usually around £5 a time depending on the location.

10 sessions are recommended initially to produce positive results and offer better value for money. However the fun thing about Zumba is that you can pick and choose when to attend a class to fit around your schedule, as there is no joining fee or commitment.

Where to go in London

There are lots of different Zumba classes in London for all budgets and timetables.

Zumba London offers 30 days of unlimited classes for £25 with no commitment. Class locations are dotted all around London, including Waterloo, Urdang Dance Academy and Class Base only 2 minutes from Barbican tube station. The classes run all through the evening during the week and start from 9.30am on a Saturday.

There are also regular Zumba events held in London such as the Zumbathon Charity Event taking place on 19 th  March 5.00pm-7.00pm. International Zj Rotem Shmilo is running the workout at St. Michaels Catholic School in London and proceeds from the event will be donated to the Leukemia Care Foundation.

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Confessions of a Fitness Instructor

June 12, 2011

Frequently Asked Zumba Questions

I often get asked questions about Zumba through the blog, and in everyday life. So I thought today I’d write a Frequently Asked Zumba Questions post answering some of the most asked questions I am asked.

1.  What is Zumba?

Zumba is a dance-based type fitness class that originated in Columbia.  It takes rhythms from all over the world including (but not limited to): salsa, merengue, cumbia, reggaeton, belly dance, Arabian, African, Bollywood, hip hop, samba, axe, swing, cha-cha, flamenco … you get the idea.  For each rhythm, a number of the most common steps for that type of dance are simplified down into a form that is quick to learn, and easy to follow. 

During a traditional 60 minute Zumba class you will learn 13-15 songs (including your warm-up and cooldown).  The steps are not broken down for you beforehand, it’s more of a “monkey see monkey do” type of class.  Most songs repeat the same move quite a few times so you can follow into the dance quite easily. 

The songs are set up so that you’ll do a higher intensity song followed by a lower intensity song to provide you with an interval workout that torches tonnes of calories – and the best part?  You forget you’re even exercising!

2.  Do I have to be in good shape to do Zumba?

Not at all.  I have all ages (6-70) in the same class with every ability level possible.  The neat thing about Zumba is you only work as hard as you want to.  Two people in the same class could do the same steps and one may not even break a sweat, while the other is drenched. 

You only get out of it what you put into it.  Can’t handle high impact? No problem, your instructor should always demonstrate a low impact option. 

Need a break?  That’s cool too- just march on the spot or do your own thing until you’re ready to get back at it.

3.  But I’m not coordinated – I don’t want to look silly.

Forget about that!  Everyone is too busy worrying about what they are doing to notice what you are up to!  Besides, coordination is simply one aspect of fitness. It’s something that needs to be trained just like strength and flexibility.  The good news? 

Coordination trains very quickly – give Zumba (or any other workout like Step or Kickboxing) a try for 10 classes and I promise your coordination will improve substantially.

4.  Why don’t Zumba Instructors verbally cue or talk more during the class?

Some instructors talk more than others, I tend not to say too much while teaching unless it’s to get people pumped up, or if everyone has their back to me and can’t see my visual cues. 

I will also do more variable cueing in a small class – it just seemed odd not to talk in a class of less than 15 or so.

The actual reason is with the music as loud as it is during a Zumba class most people simply would be able to hear or understand what we are saying (especially in large classes), and it kills the party vibe. 

We want you to feel like you’re at a dance party and if we are telling you what to do every couple seconds it kills that vibe.  Your instructor should {hopefully} be able to cue most everything for you non verbally. 

Most instructors have their own cueing style so once you become used to your instructor’s style and know their visual cues you won’t even miss the verbal cueing.  It does make it a little harder your first couple classes, but it shouldn’t take any more than that to really fall into it.

5.  Why do Zumba Instructors wear one pant leg up and one pant leg down?

Because we think it makes us look cool 😉  Honestly, this isn’t something I do anymore but some do. I believe it comes from the dance background of allowing participants to see your lead foot a little bit more easily.

6.  What is the difference between Zumba and Zumba Toning?

Zumba is a cardiovascular based interval workout that has some light resistance training built into the class.  Zumba Toning is an interval class with a focus on light resistance training with some straight-up dance built into the class. 

A regular Zumba class will really help to increase your aerobic capacity and endurance, while a Zumba toning class will help to increase your muscular endurance. 

Zumba toning classes are meant as a primarily cardiovascular workout, but you will get some mild cardiovascular training during the interval and dance portions of the class.

8.  Will Zumba help me lose weight?

The short answer – yes.  The long answer – as with any weight loss plan you will need to pair exercise with healthy eating in over to achieve long term weight loss. 

I know many, many people who have lost a considerable amount of weight doing Zumba, and I know lots who don’t lose weight at all.  Like I said above, you only get out of it what you put into it.

9.  How many calories does Zumba burn/hour?

This, of course, depends on your height, weight, age, and workout intensity level.  I would say most people burn somewhere in the ballpark of 400-900 calories/class (I personally have burned up to 800 in a single class).

10. How often should I do Zumba if I’m just starting out?

If you haven’t been doing any regular exercise prior to starting Zumba, I would suggest no more than 1x/week for the first month or two. After that you should be able to safely move up to 2x/week and then add a 3x if you want to once you have built up some cardiovascular strength and endurance.

If you already exercise regularly you can certainly start out with 2 classes/week – just make sure you take your other activities into consideration so that you are not over-training.

I hope these frequently asked Zumba questions and answers answered your own questions. If not send me a message on my Facebook page and I’d be happy to answer any you still have! 

March 24, 2013 at 5:10 am

Hi! I´m a spanish zumba instructor. I like your blog very much. I think I have the answer to your request “Why do Zumba Instructors wear one pant leg up and one pant leg down?” . While instructor is dancing, people in the class need get reference to the right leg. And the most common signal is wearing one pant leg up. Thanks for your blog.

March 24, 2013 at 10:56 am

Thanks 🙂 I’ve had a few people give me reasons for it, but that’s the first time for hearing that one!

April 15, 2013 at 1:40 am

Love your articles. Please keep them coming

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7 health benefits of Zumba

Why Zumba is a great alternative to traditional fitness programs:

It’s fun. The more you enjoy your exercise routine, the more likely you are to stick with it. Many people say they have so much fun dancing that they forget they are actually exercising.

Great for weight loss . Zumba is a powerful exercise with a 600 to 1,000-calorie burn in just an hour.

Tones your entire body . You may feel sore in places you never knew existed, but it gets results. Zumba targets lots of different muscle groups at once for total body toning .

Boosts your heart health . You not only get aerobic benefits (it really gets your heart rate up), you also get anaerobic benefits – the kind that help you maintain a good cardiovascular respiratory system.

Helps you de-stress . Turning your attention to dance, and away from the daily grind, is a great way to relieve stress . Studies show that exercise is very effective at reducing fatigue , improving alertness and concentration, and enhancing overall cognitive function .

Improves coordination . In Zumba , your arms and legs are generally moving in different directions so it requires a good deal of coordination.  Repeated practice improves coordination and helps you feel more comfortable moving your body.

Makes you happy. Every time you exercise, you release endorphins , which trigger positive feelings throughout the body.  

Ready to try it? Start with these three simple moves . Don’t be afraid! Zumba is for any age and can be adapted to any fitness level.

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Zumba Origins: The History of How Beto Created A Dance Revolution

Last Updated on February 14, 2024 by Lifevif Team and JC Franco

If you have been to the gym lately, you have probably seen a Zumba class in action or even participated in one. Zumba is a Latin-based exercise dance style that seems to have taken the international fitness world by storm. We know that Zumba is fun, burns fat like nobody’s business, and is practiced actively by over 15 million people, but where does it come from and what made it so popular?

A Brief History of Zumba:

In search of the American Dream, Perez later moved to the US, where he first started teaching Zumba in Miami in 1999.  In 2002 , he released his first infomercial, and in 2006 he established the official Zumba Fitness LLC, leading to the worldwide phenomenon that Zumba is today.

The story of Perez is somewhat a “rags to riches” one. It is said that he was born to a single mother, and by the age of 14, he was working 3 jobs just to support himself and his mother. It is safe to say that for Perez and his family, life was a struggle in Colombia. It was Perez’s dream to make it someday as a dancer, but lack of money left him working merely as an aerobics instructor. While being an aerobics instructor provided value and paid the minimal bills, it wasn’t really the “big time” in the dancing world that Perez craved. 

Table of Content

What on Earth  is  Zumba?

Before we can dig much more into where Zumba comes from, let’s take a look at what it actually is. If you look online, you will find that there are various definitions of Zumba , but all of them say the same thing. 

Zumba is  a high-energy form of fitness with a combination of dance and aerobics fitness moves that help to shed weight, elevate mood, and provide a highly positive and supportive fitness/exercise environment. The classes are typically practiced with Latin dance music, but in recent times that is changing. Most of the dance moves that are taught in Zumba include some elements of Merengue, Salsa, Mambo, Flamenco, Cumbia, Rumba, and Hip Hop. 

Why Was Zumba Created?

As it turns out, Perez was using his passion to be innovative in a tricky situation when he forgot his aerobics music tapes behind that day in 1998. He had an insatiable passion for Latin music, dance rhythm, and high-energy fitness. Once he had hosted that first “accidental” class, he felt as if he had hit on something great. And of course, he had. This was proven by Shakira’s interest in him as a choreographer. It didn’t stop there, though. 

Beto wanted to create fitness classes that are an exceptional amount of fun but are also extremely effective too. His aim was to create fitness classes with a party-like vibe and positive influence. And he wanted these classes to be available to everyone, regardless of their age and current fitness level. Mission accomplished, I think! There are not many types of exercise classes that are anything like Zumba – and that was reason enough to push its development and make it an actual “thing”.

The History of Zumba – An American Dream!

A multimillion-dollar mistake (or opportunity).

Instead of following the same choreography and rep-counting of his typical aerobics classes, he decided to improvise by presenting a type of aerobics class that mixed in high-energy dance moves – perhaps the kind of dance moves he would have used when listening to his favorite Salsa and Merengue music. He found that his students absolutely loved the new workout and were having fun. In fact, they wanted more – and so  the idea of  Zumba was born .

You might be wondering how one class could inspire a worldwide fitness phenomenon. His first accidental class of Zumba (although he had not named the exercise class as yet) did not go unnoticed. So many people absolutely loved the class that word got out. 

Alberto “Beto” Perez Takes Zumba to Miami

He then reached out to  Alberto Perlman and Alberto Aghion , for financial and technical assistance with boosting his aerobic dance classes to greater success.  In 2002  , they formed a trio that set out to make their new dance class better known – and it really worked. The name Zumba comes from the Spanish word “Zumbar”, which means “ to buzz ”. It demonstrates (or sounds like) the fun, high-energy, fitness class that it is linked to.

2002 – 2006: The First Infomercial and the Establishment of Zumba Fitness LLC

It was in 2002, with Aghion and Perlman, that Perez released his very first televised infomercial on Zumba. Once the infomercial was out there, many workshops resulted – all of which were based on Zumba routines. The workshops were taught by means of DVDs, which the trio sold, and soon the international following was booming.

That is the definition of success! And, of course, business was (and still is) booming!

Let’s Zumba!

Now you know the intimate details of Zumba’s past, you can have peace of mind that you are investing time and energy in a work out system that is trusted by many. If you want to put the efforts of Perez to good use and transform your life and your body, take up Zumba. You will not regret it!

Lifevif Team

Related posts, first zumba class: recommendations from a zumba aficionado, zumba for men: 14 reasons for guys to join the dance craze, zumba 101: what to expect in your first zumba class (14 insights).

What are the Benefits of Zumba?

Medically Reviewed By: Dr. Damanjit Duggal, MD, MBBS April 22, 2022

Last updated on September 26th, 2022

Have you ever wondered why you could not get past a week with your exercise or jogging routine? Sometimes, you may be successful in clinging on to it for a month or so. But, what happens after that? Boredom steps in, and the motivation to get out of bed, each morning, slips away. Read this blog to know about the health benefits of Zumba dance.

You tend to lose mental strength to exercise. This negativity leads to laziness and is harmful to you if you are diabetic . The key to keep you motivated and help you to remain fit is Zumba.

Table of Contents

What is Zumba Dance?

What if you work out in a way that doesn’t seem like a workout? You must be thinking about whether that’s even possible. Well, it is! Have you heard of Zumba? Zumba, created by a Columbian dancer and choreographer, Alberto “Berto” Perez, is inspired by various styles of Latin-American dance forms.

It is a dance fitness program that helps you lose weight, get back in shape, and stay fit, all this while having loads of fun. Dance and music can uplift our moods and have proven to be great stress-busters, sometimes therapeutic, even. It is a great form of fitness program that blends them both with physical activity.

Zumba Dance Benefits in General

Zumba gives you a lot more than that, as we’ll see in a bit.

Burn those calories, instantly

To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume. Attend one Zumba class and you are sure to lose on an average 600 – 1000 calories. The combination of fast and slow-paced movements is carefully designed to accelerate fat-burning in our body. You can feel the change in a single class which is more than enough to motivate you to go to the next one.

The key to managing diabetes and having type 2 diabetic reversal , is essential to maintain proper weight. Numerous exercises and diet plans are suggested to have a proper weight control. Zumba is the best choice if you want to manage your weight to manage your diabetes.

Also Read: Indian Vegetarian Diet Chart for Diabetic Patient

It gives your body a complete workout

Yet another advantage of Zumba is the fact that it gives you a full-body workout . With movements involving head, neck, shoulders, waist, thighs, calves, and ankles; Zumba doesn’t let even a single part of your body remain idle. Your entire body moves in sync with the energetic music giving you an evenly toned body. Zumba also helps in strengthening your heart and respiratory system.

These types of complete workouts help the muscles to increase blood glucose absorption. This thus helps in blood glucose control and thus is vital for diabetic management.

You coordinate better

You may not realize this but while doing Zumba, your mind and body work quite hard to make sure your movements follow the fast beats of the music and that your steps are aligned with others who are also dancing around you. Regular practice of Zumba boosts your mind-body coordination.

Also Read: How to Lower Blood Sugar?

Zumba is fun!

Zumba is fast, intense, and rigorous. And Zumba is fun also. This is one of the main reasons why people who practice Zumba keep going back to it. They look forward to attending the class so they can dance away to the music along with their friends and family. Zumba also presents you with opportunities to socialize and make new friends.

Anyone and everyone can practice Zumba and reap all of its benefits. No matter what your current level of fitness is, the intensity of Zumba can be fine-tuned to suit your body. Kenneth Cooper, an Aerobics expert and the author of the book Aerobics rightly says, “Fitness is a journey, not a destination”, and Zumba is a great way to embark on this journey and make sure you never give up!

Also Read: Normal Blood Sugar Levels Chart for Adults Without Diabetes

Other Benefits of Zumba Workouts:

Zumba comprises various health benefits, like:

• Muscle Building: Zumba step workout includes weights. This helps build muscles in the arms, glutes, and legs.
• Muscle elasticity: Intended to improve muscle flexibility as Zumba moves tones and stretches the muscles of your body.
• Good for Overall Health: Zumba workout is just great for individuals with health problems like Diabetes, heart diseases, or high cholesterol. However, it is good to discuss with your doctor before going to the sessions.
• Improves heart stamina: Zumba is an interval workout. High- and mid-intensity interval dance moves get your heart rate up. Thus, it is just an ideal cardio workout program to boost your heart endurance and cardiac health.

Zumba Dance and Diabetes

Zumba grooves you to the beats of jazz music. You just can lose yourself in the MUSIC and find a FIT you. Feels more like a dance party than a workout! So joyous, refreshing, revitalizing, and full of energy! Zumba is a high-energy dance fitness program involving moves on international beats. 

All around the world, Zumba is being practiced owing to its health benefits, including mind relaxation, stress management, and physical fitness. Zumba is an exercise form that is not tedious but many people are fond of it nowadays. It creates an inspiration in people to exercise and get rid of their medical conditions. Zumba has better and multi-dimensional effects but it demands special or expertise training, continuous monitoring, as well as a fixed protocol.

American Diabetes Association (ADA) states that moderate-intensity aerobic exercise plays a key role in the prevention and management of Diabetes. A definitive study by Sigal et al., 2007 was carried out on 251 Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus patients. The study observed improvements that ranged from -0.38 to -0.97 % points in HbA1c levels from approx. 135 to 270 minutes of weekly exercise training for six months.

Another research study by Adriana et al., 2015 found that there was a significant improvement in body mass, fat mass, and fat percentage through the Zumba fitness program. The study was conducted on 12 females lying in the age groups 25-35 years.

Krishnan et al., 2015 performed a study in which 28 (14 Type 2 Diabetic and 14 Non-Diabetic) females were enrolled who had obesity as a co-morbidity. An improvement was seen in the form of motivation towards exercise and Zumba fitness. A remarkable loss in body weight and body fat percentage was noticed after they finished their 16-week intervention of the Zumba fitness program. The program was for three days weekly and the duration of the class was 60 minutes.

Apart from Diabetes or cardiovascular problems, the positive effects of Zumba have been widely studied. And an incredible improvement was noticed in the quality of life (QOL) of patients having neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease as well as musculoskeletal disorders.

Zumba Dance & Positive Impact on Diabetes

Numerous researches have proven the fact that moderate exercises help in lowering blood glucose levels. Due to exercise, the muscular absorption of glucose increases, and this increases insulin sensitivity [1].

Exercise of 12 to 48 hours is better to increase insulin sensitivity [2]. The exercise for a diabetic patient should be a combination of muscular strength and aerobic exercise. Zumba is the best choice in such a scenario.

Zumba has a combination of dance and aerobic exercises that makes it interesting.

28 overweight and obese women were asked to undertake 16 weeks Zumba course. Out of these 14 women were diabetic. The course comprised of dance classes of 3 days per week with each class of 60-minute duration. Zumba had the following effects on these people

• It increased the motivation to exercise
• There is an increase in the motivation for remaining fit & healthy
• The stress and negativity around decreases.
• It has helped in reducing weight and body fat. A single session of 60 minutes cans burnout 600 calories.

This fitness has helped them to manage their diabetes and have good diabetic control. It has proven to enhance insulin sensitivity. This has resulted in the good management of, especially type-2 diabetes. Thus, Zumba has proven to be a great way of remaining positive and have good management of diabetes .

Explore Tons of Zumba Dance Classes Through ClassHop

• Zink Fitness (B-63, Sushant Lok 1, Gurgaon)
• Moving Souls (21 Avenue, G Block Young Women’s Association (near PVR Cinema), Saket, New Delhi)
• Gold’s Gym (behind Gold Souk) (Gold Souk, 3rd floor, Sector 43, Sushant Lok 1, Gurgaon)
• Soul to Sole Dance Academy (Basement, Solo Victoria Hotel C-8, Greater Kailash 1, New Delhi)
• Squad Fit (No. 610-611, 6th floor, Tower C, Nirvana Courtyard, Nirvana Country, Gurgaon)

Also read: Conversion blood sugar

When is Zumba dance not safe for any person?

• Has or had a recent injury, let it heal before starting Zumba.
• Is pregnant.
• Have joint problems such as arthritis, this may worsen your condition if you start high-intensity Zumba.
• Have a history of asthma; Zumba can precipitate an asthmatic attack.
• Have severe physical limitations, like a spine problem; then also Zumba is not safe for you.

What is the best time of the day to do Zumba? I don’t want my blood sugar to drop while exercising.

The best time for Zumba is when you can devote your time and not skipping it. Also, it is a must that there is sufficient fuel in your system so that you can perform well. So, if you are comfortable one hour after having your food, that can be a great time for Zumba as you are well-fueled.

My father is suffering from Type 2 Diabetes for 20 years. He has changed his diet and is following strict diet control and is in pretty good shape. His Hb1AC has come down to 6.5. My concern is that if he continues to perform an exhausting exercise in the morning, frequently for 2 hours, before having something. I am worried about is it safe to exercise this long on a fasting state?  

It’s all dependent upon what his pre and post-exercise levels are along with his overall health and energy. If there are lows in his energy half an hour or one-hour post-exercise, then he must eat something before exercising. Something like a light herbal smoothie – containing a balance of green leafy veggies, fruits, vitamins , and minerals. This works well for a number of diabetics. In case of no issues post-exercise, then his body seems to have adapted to the routine and this seems to be working for him.

References:

• Vendramin B, Bergamin M, Gobbo S, Cugusi L, Duregon F, Bullo V, Zaccaria M, Neunhaeuserer D, Ermolao A., Health Benefits of Zumba Fitness Training: A Systematic Review., M R. 2016 Dec; 8(12):1181-1200. DOI: 10.1016/j.pmrj.2016.06.010. Epub 2016 Jun 16.
• Krishnan S, Tokar TN, Boylan MM, Griffin K, Feng D, Mcmurry L, Esperat C, Cooper JA. Zumba® dance improves health in overweight/obese or types 2 diabetic women. Am J Health Behav. 2015 Jan;39(1):109-20. DOI: 10.5993/AJHB.39.1.12. PMID: 25290603.
• Vrishti V, Ashwini D, et al. Project title – A comparative study of the effects of Zumba Aerobic technique versus walking on blood glucose level and quality of life in subjects with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. International Journal of Current Research. 2019 Apr; 11(4), pp 3173-3177.
• Sigal RJ, Kenny GP, et al. Effects of aerobic training, resistance training, or both on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes: a randomized trial. Ann Intern Med. 2007; 147, pp 357-369.
• Adriana L, Vladimir J, et al. Effects of Zumba fitness program on body composition of women. SportLogia. 2015; 10(1), pp 29-33.
• Krishnan S, et al. Zumba dance improves health in overweight/obese or type 2 diabetic women. Am J Health Behav. Jan 2015; 39(1), pp 109-20.
• Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation, Inc. Questions And Answers – Exercise. Available from https://diabetesaction.org/questions-exercise . Accessed on 13 August 2021.
• MedicineNet. Is Zumba Good for Losing Weight? Available from https://www.medicinenet.com/is_zumba_good_for_losing_weight/article.htm. Accessed on 13 August 2021.

This site provides educational content; however, it is not a substitute for professional medical guidance. Readers should consult their healthcare professional for personalised guidance. We work hard to provide accurate and helpful information. Your well-being is important to us, and we value your feedback. To learn more, visit our editorial policy page for details on our content guidelines and the content creation process.

Written by Rohan Verma

Rohan Verma is an experienced leader with an established ability to drive changes and make impact. Rohan has 10 years experience at McKinsey & Co, Nomura, and healthcare sector. Rohan believes in better, patient-oriented and evidence-based medicine, his practice focuses... Read More About: Rohan Verma

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My Crazy Life!

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Your Mind Is Being Fracked

The historian of science d. graham burnett on what’s at stake in the rise of an extractive attention economy and how we can reclaim our attention..

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

I think a lot about the way we talk about attention. Because the way we talk about something is the way we think about it. What do you always hear about attention when you’re in school? Pay attention, as if we have a certain amount of attention in our mental wallet, and we have to spend it wisely. We need to use it to buy algebra, rather than buying gossip or jokes or daydreams.

I wish that was how my attention worked. It certainly did not work that way then. I graduated high school with a 2.2 because I cannot pay attention. I just can’t, to information delivered in the form of long lectures. I wish I could. I try. My attention, it just doesn’t feel to me like something I get to spend.

It feels — I don’t know. It feels more like taking my dogs on a walk. Sometimes they walk where I want them to. Sometimes I’m in control, and sometimes I am not in control. They walk where they want to. They get scared by thunder, and they try to run away.

Sometimes a dog side-eyes them from across the street, and they turn from mild-mannered terriers into killing machines. Sometimes they are obsessively trying to get a chicken bone. And even when I hurry them past it, they spend the whole rest of the walk clearly thinking about that chicken bone and scheming about how to get back there.

My attention feels like that to me. And this is what I don’t like about the way we talk about attention. We are not always in control of it. We may not even usually be in control of it. The context in which our attention plays out, what kinds of things are around us, it really matters. And it’s supposed to. Attention is supposed to be open to the world around us.

But that openness, it makes us subject to manipulation. You really see that now when you open your computer or your phone. It’s like the whole digital street is covered in chicken bones. There’s lightning cracking overhead. There are always dogs barking.

And I worry about this for my own mental habits, for my kids, for everybody’s kids. I don’t think we’re creating an intentionally healthy world here. And so I keep looking for episodes we can do on this, and I keep feeling like we’re getting near it, but not quite there. Because the way we talk about attention, it just doesn’t feel rigorous enough to me. It doesn’t feel like it is getting at the experience of it well.

And so I keep looking for episodes we can do on this, people who have found a better way to study attention or talk about it or teach it. Then I was reading this piece on attention in “The New Yorker” by Nathan Heller, and I came across D. Graham Burnett, who’s doing all three.

He’s a historian of science at Princeton University. He’s working on a book about the laboratory study of attention. And he’s a co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention, which is a kind of grassroots, artistic effort to create a curriculum around attention. And yeah, that got my attention. As always, my email, [email protected].

D. Graham Burnett, welcome to the show.

Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here. Thanks.

So you’ve written that our attention is getting fracked. What do you mean by that?

Fracking. I suspect most of your listeners have heard that term. Fracking is mostly associated with this idea of getting petroleum resources out of the earth. But it’s a new technology for doing that. In the old days, pre major exploitation of petroleum resources, there were these big, juicy zits of high-value crude oil just sitting there in the earth, waiting to geyser up if you tapped them. Drill a hole — whew, gusher.

We’ve tapped all that out. The only way you can get the remaining petroleum and natural gas resources out of the deep earth is to pump down in there high pressure, high volume detergent, which forces up to the surface this kind of slurry, mixture of natural gas, crude oil, leftover detergent, and juice and nasty stuff, which you then separate out, and you get your monetizable crude.

This is a precise analogy to what’s happening to us in our contemporary attention economy. We have a, depending on who you ask, $500 billion, $3 trillion, $7 trillion industry, which, to get the money value of our attention out of us, is continuously pumping into our faces high-pressure, high-value detergent in the form of social media and non-stop content that holds us on our devices. And that pumping brings to the surface that spume, that foam of our attention, which can be aggregated and sold off to the highest bidder.

How do you define what attention is?

I would love for us to use this whole conversation to roll up on the shores of that deepest question again and again. So let me go at it one way. I’m in the process of finishing a history of science book about the laboratory study of this thing called attention since about 1880. In laboratories, using experiments, scientists have, since the late 19th century, sliced and diced a human capacity that they’ve called attention.

And it is that work that they did that has made it possible, I would argue, to price the thing called attention that we’re invoking when we use that fracking metaphor. It’s entangled with the idea of stimulus and response. The earliest experimental work on attention is about sitting folks in laboratory chairs and showing them certain kinds of displays, a cursor, a flash.

That triggering or targeting conception of attention has been the primary way that scientists, experimental psychologists, engineers, have conceptualized and placed in evidence a thing called attention. When they started doing early eye tracking experiments to follow where people’s gaze went, how much information they could take in at a glance, and figuring out how to quantify that — largely, it should be said, financed by friends in the emerging advertising industry — there was a kind of unholy symbiotic relationship that emerged between certain forms of experimental psychology and those who were trying to study how to sell mouthwash and cigarettes.

When those folks were doing that kind of work, they were certainly talking about a thing that was attention. They could call it attention. And it’s very similar to the thing that, right now, the most powerful computational technologies, the most sophisticated programmers and the most intricate algorithms are madly working to aggregate and auction continuously.

In your research, what’s been the holiest or most unholy attention experiment you’ve come across?

Oh, I love that question. Well, let’s do unholy. And maybe you’ll give me two. In the interwar period, a set of experiments called pursuit tests were used to train and assess the capability of military aviators. Pursuit tests were attention experiments, a little like forerunners of video games. Imagine a cursor that moves around on a non-computer screen. This is manual, like a clockwork cursor that’s traveling back and forth in front of you.

And you have a little envelope, a mechanical envelope that you have to move, manipulate kind of with a joystick, to keep bracketing that cursor as it moves around in front of you. And then we hook you up to a rebreather so that you’re gradually deprived of oxygen.

That’s a big twist. [LAUGHS] I didn’t see that one coming.

Yeah, we might also hook you up with headphones and run a lot of really loud and distracting noise through them. And we could also ask you to pedal or do other exhausting things with your body. There are a whole set of ways we could complicate this ecology. And then, as you gradually lose consciousness, you’re asked to continue for as long as you can, manipulating this envelope around the cursor.

This was understood to be an attentional test. It’s cybernetic, as you can see. It’s a way of integrating humans with machines. It uses attentionality as a way of measuring the kind of mechanization of the human subject in relation to a machine. Some people are better at it than others.

And let me assure you, if you’re going to put somebody in the cockpit of one of these very expensive fighter planes, you want somebody who’s really good at that. So I would call that one kind of an unholy — I mean, let’s be clear. I’m —

Yeah, fixating fighter pilots to see what happens to their attention. Yeah, I’ll categorize that in the unholy.

Yeah, I don’t want to sound paranoiac either. I’m in favor of fighter pilots who are able to pay attention —

Yes, I understand why they were doing it.

OK, yeah. Nevertheless, you can get a little shiver when you think about the way now, we’ve been, if you like, cybernetically integrated into our devices. And you can see aspects of that reality prefigured in the genealogy of experimental work on attention that I’m describing.

I’ll give you another one. The development during the Second World War of radar created unprecedented opportunities for defense capabilities in relation particularly to German U-Boats. Nevertheless, no matter how good your radar is, if the person looking at the radar screen isn’t paying attention to it, you’re totally screwed.

A really intense set of classified experiments took place during the Second World War to assess a very new problem — how long could people pay attention to screens? And what could you do to optimize their ability to keep paying attention to screens for long periods of time? That work gives rise to an understanding of the way people cease to pay attention, what comes to be called the vigilance decrement, the drop-off in vigilance to a statistically low frequency phenomenon.

And that work, too, can give you a little shiver to come to understand that there is, again, this deep, technoscientific story of studying a thing that we recognize as attention, but studying it in this highly instrumentalized way that is entirely bound to questions of stimulus and response, to triggering and targeting.

And we see the legacy of that kind of work, to this day, in the way we think about attention. That attention was sliced and diced in laboratories. And that very same thing is what’s now being priced with these calamitous effects in the way we experience ourselves.

I’m so interested by that form of attention. And it gets at something that has bothered me about a lot of the writing on attention and some of the conversations I’ve had on the show about attention, which is, it’s so wound up in this idea of attention as being something we should always have agency over.

I think that implicitly, in a lot of discussion of attention and a lot of research around attention, the attentional goal seems to emerge as a worker who never breaks focus on their task across the entire day. And so the enemy of attention in this telling is distraction. And I do feel that as a worker, right? I come in and I open my computer, and I immediately feel distracted by messages coming and Slacks and a million things.

And then, at the same time, that discourse, it points somewhere I’d like to go, but not the only place I’d like to go, right? I don’t imagine the good life as being a life where I have the attentional capacity of the perfect worker. Right? A lot of what I’m interested in theory with attention is, a sort of more open form of awareness, an ability to see other people more deeply.

And I’m a meditator. And so one thing I notice a lot, over time, is that what I think I should be paying attention to, and then what appears to come up with great value to me are not the same thing. Right? Too much agency over my attention, too much control is a way of not hearing other things in the world, too.

You put your finger on, really, the heart of the matter. So I want to suggest that part of what makes the conversation around attention right now, both so difficult and so important, is that secreted within that term are, in fact, two very different projects bumping up against each other.

In a laboratory, you use instruments. As it turns out, if you use instruments to get at a thing called attention, you end up finding an instrumentalized form of attention. Is that form of attention real? Absolutely. In fact, the technologies for making it real are powerful. You can quantify it. You can place it in evidence experimentally. Is it part of what’s in that sort of worker conception of attention that you invoked? Yes, as it happens, it is.

But that other thing that you’re kind of calling in when you talk about meditation, when you talk about awareness, when we invoke the sort of experience of being, the kind of ecstasy that can come with a certain durational flow of immersion in a person, a conversation, a book, the experience of reading, an object, that comes from a different place. It’s also in the language of attention, and it has its own separate history.

If you want to see both those operating now, let me give you two recent theorists of attention, both very prominent, whose accounts of what attention is are absolutely contradictory, perfectly paradoxical, but sort of both, interestingly, true. Two biz school theorists, Davenport and Beck, do a book called “The Attention Economy.” I think it’s 2001. They don’t actually coin the phrase, but they’re responsible for it sort of exploding into the collective conversation.

How do they define attention in that book? They say attention is what triggers, catalyzes, awareness into action. Attention is what catalyzes awareness into action. Definition that couldn’t be more different — the recently deceased French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, in a beautiful and difficult book called “Taking Care of the Youth and the Generations,” centers that book on attention.

What does he say attention is? He says, attention, playing with the “attendre” in French, is waiting, the exact opposite of catalytic triggering. It’s waiting. It’s, in fact, for him, infinite waiting. And what are you waiting on when you attend to an object? Wait on it. He says you’re waiting on the disclosure of the long webs of connectedness that are in the object. Which long webs of connectedness are a mirroring of the rich, long webs of connectedness that are in you?

So let’s imagine for a second that there was a painting on the wall of this studio, and you and I were looking at it together. We might look at that painting. It might be, let’s say, a religious icon or something. And you and I would bring to the experience of looking at it what we have. We would notice colors. We would think about other images like it we might have seen. We would think about the other images that might not be here, but that could be or the symbolic things that are in it.

And as we experience that kind of web of things that are in the image, we’d really be sort of seeing a long web of connectedness that’s in ourselves. And so, for Stiegler, attention is waiting on the disclosure of those long webs of connectedness, which are a mirroring of our own infinitude in the world. Attention, infinite waiting. Attention, triggering. Sharp contrast.

And let me try to bring in a third thing that I think is kind of exquisitely poised over and outside of that contestation between those two. In the early 20th century novel “Wings of the Dove,” the American novelist Henry James describes a really beautiful and intense scene in which a very, very ill woman, terminally ill woman, has a fleeting encounter with the doctor she desperately needs. She believes this doctor kind of knows what she needs to survive. She hopes that this doctor can kind of get her past her anguish.

The doctor’s very busy, and James depicts the scene where the two of them sit for a moment. And he describes the doctor as placing on the table between them a clear, clean crystal cup, empty of attention, an empty crystal cup of attention that the doctor places on the table between them. And that sort of figuration of attention as a kind of an empty cup that we place between ourselves and the object of our attention is like, I think it exquisitely invokes that idea of imminence, that kind of negative capability.

Anything’s possible here, the gesture of generosity. It has a little bit of that sense of waiting, but it also has a sense of a solicitation. Something needs to happen. So it includes elements of that catalytic, and it includes elements of that kind of mirroring, waiting image. And so, when I have to talk about what I think attention is, I’ll often use that image. Like, what’s attention? Attention is that kind of empty cup we can place between ourselves and the things we care about in the world and see what happens.

You’ve talked about how attention is — or at least the way we think about it now, is a modern construct. Can you talk a bit about that?

Let me give you one of the most amazing arguments about attention that’s ever been made by anybody, by my distinguished colleague Jonathan Crary. Jonathan Crary is an art historian at Columbia University. In a book called “Suspensions of Perception,” published around 2000, he made a super challenging argument about where that language of attention comes from and why, in the late 19th century, the same time that the scientists start studying it in laboratories, everybody starts getting worried about it and talking about it in a very particular way.

Crary argues that you don’t see a lot of discussions about attention in the 1780s, 1790s, even 1820. It’s not a thing. He says that worry about attention comes into being across the second half of the 19th century in a very particular way because of a very specific set of transformations in the experience of personhood. Imagine white guys in wigs with knickers on.

Those guys thought of themselves as a little bit like a camera obscura, right? Those boxes that have a little pinhole in them, like a forerunner of the camera. And the mind is like that box. There’s a world out there. There’s a world in here. There’s a nice mapping function between those two worlds. And therefore I, as a propertied white male subject, am good in the world because the world is out there and in me, in a relatively unproblematic way.

Crary argues, I think correctly, that that way of conceptualizing the human, the classical model of human subjectivity, implodes across the second half of the 19th century. What kills it? What does it end? We discover that, in fact, everybody doesn’t have the same picture inside themselves as what’s out there in the world, that we’re these oozy things made of meat, you know? And that actually, our eyes have blind spots. And suddenly the sort of physiological complexity of sensation makes a mincemeat of the classical model.

So then where are you in this kind of blooming, buzzing confusion of modernity now that you’re like an opaque, thick meat creature, instead of this nice camera obscura creature? Well, Crary argues that attention is born in that moment as a way of saying, again, that I hold together as one being, as I confront or encounter the world. Where are you? You are where your attention is.

Your will maybe, that’s that idea that somehow will has something to do with it. That for William James, attention and will were almost inextricable, right? That free will itself, if it existed, its locus was the moment in which I could choose to give my attention here versus there. And while everybody recognized that there was involuntary attention, there was this deep sense that attention was born in the late 19th century as a new language for talking about the coherence of the human subject.

Let me offer two responses that come to mind, and starting here. So obviously, he knows the discourse around attention much better than I ever will. But the first thing that I know where there was a lot of discussion and conversation about attention, going far, far, far back before the 19th century, is within religion.

So in Christianity, you have deep attention to attention among different kinds of monks and monastics. Buddhism has that. There are traditions in Judaism around that. I’m sure there’s much more in other religions that I know less well. Prayer is an attentional question. Meditation is a technology of attention as it gets talked about now. But you can frame it in much more spiritual ways than that. So what should that make us think that there was so much more, perhaps, attention to attention within the monastic religious traditions?

It’s a great question again, and I share your interest in those forms of attention. I do want to say that while it is certainly true that people have been concerned about how to hold before their minds and their senses objects since forever, and that religious spaces have been central zones for that sort of combat of the senses and the will, if one actually digs in on that stuff, the language often isn’t sort of the language we would use.

Contemplation, for instance, was a central preoccupation of monks.

But if you had brought them the kinds of questions that are getting asked by the early 20th century concerning that sort of stimulus response phenomenon or even the ways that William James will talk about attention, that would have been unrecognizable to them. That said, much of my own interest in attention actually comes out of my own meditational life as well. I care deeply about the spiritual traditions that inform our resources, as we begin to think about what to do now.

And there are some 20th century thinkers who have commented in really profound ways on the relationship between prayer and the thing we are now worried about when we talk about attention. The great French mystic Simone Weil comes to mind.

So Simone Weil, who skirted up to the edge of Christianity in different ways, but never crossed over, was a political activist, a labor activist, and ultimately, a kind of social justice martyr across the era of the Second World War, wrote passionately that pure, unmixed attention is prayer.

So for her, if you like apophatic attention, attention that won’t have an easy object or end or purpose. When I say apophatic, I invoke the tradition of negative theology, right? Two theological traditions. One where you try to get at God directly, one where you say, look, God is so beyond us. We’re not going to get to God. We’re finite creatures. God is infinite.

Our best chance to get anything like the God space is to enumerate everything that’s not God to get at God via the via negativa, the negative way. So we will enumerate the cloud of unknowing, rather than getting all puffed up with ourselves that we’re having a conversation with God.

I would argue that Simon Weil’s account of attention as a sort of radical, pure emptying of one’s self, an openness to immanence, is apophatic. It’s an attention that isn’t triggerable. It won’t target. You can’t bring it out in stimulus and response experimentations because it waits in a kind of ecstatic and infinite openness for that which it knows not.

So that’s the other question that comes up for me. There is an argument that what we are saying about attention now is just another moral panic of the kind we’ve been having since the early 19th century, that people were complaining about how we were losing our attention then. Trains were too fast, life was too fast. Everybody’s reading newspapers.

And it’s the same arguments, and yet, it’s all been fine. We worried about this with the advent of radio, with the advent of television. It just comes up and up and up and up. And then we just kind of move on to the next thing, and we worry about it again. And when people think about the attentional golden age, to the extent they imagine it, they don’t mean the 15 century. They mean right before whatever the thing they’re worried about now is, right?

Blogging was great. Social media was too far. Or if blogging was too much, newspapers were great, but digital news is too far. How do you think about that concern that you and me, we are aging and just part of a perennial moral panic?

I’m sympathetic to that critique of all this. By the same token, people have been deeply right, again and again, that things were changing. And things have changed in ways that were catastrophic, in addition to changing in ways that have been transformative and good. And some measure of what we need out of historical consciousness is the kind of critical discernment to make those judgments.

So, was there a moral panic about advertising in the early 20th century? There sure was. Why? Because people started experimenting with projecting advertisements using very bright lights, arc lamps on the underside of clouds. And everyone was like, this is horrible. I don’t want to read soap ads like on the night sky. And then people began to think it would be amazing to have amplified screaming ads floating in the air over cities so that you would have continuous barrages of sound advertisements in space. Also, horrible.

New technologies do really make possible new forms of human exploitation. This is real. The factory system certainly improved life in lots of ways. It made available much less expensive textiles, for instance. But you’d have to be out of your mind not to recognize that the aggregation of labor in the satanic mills of Lancashire created monstrous new labor conditions, against which people had to gather together and mount resistance.

I would argue that we are in a moment now in which this human fracking and the essentially unregulated commodification of this precious stuff out of which we make ourselves the instrument of our being, this is creating conditions that are at odds with human flourishing. We know this. And we need to mount new forms of resistance.

We don’t know yet what the forms of resistance will be, just like those early resistors in the factory system didn’t yet understand the way that labor politics and trade unionism would emerge as meaningful technologies of collective action. We don’t yet know what forms of resistance are going to emerge. That is what we need, is like all hands on deck for a kind of attention activism that raises our awareness. And this work is happening in lots of different places already. And we need to see what happens with it in the years ahead.

Maybe this is a digression, maybe it’s not, because you’re a historian who has dealt with this question, I think, a bunch. I’m fascinated by the way we think about past moral panics. Call them moral panics, right? The very term assumes just a hysteria that then went away. Often, when I go back and I read critics of a previous technological moment, it’s true on one level that, obviously, the world did not come to an end. We’re sitting here talking. And it is also often true that they were right.

You go back and read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” and the thing he is predicting roughly will eventually happen is that we will think everything must be entertainment. And so even things that should not be entertainment will become driven by and assessed on the values of entertainment. And it is just like a direct line to Donald Trump. And you could say, oh, we had a previous moral panic about television, or you could say, all these people were right. The world didn’t end, but a lot of bad things actually did happen.

I think about this with advertising. Mid-century, there is a tremendous amount of critique and interest in the rise of advertising. You can read “The Affluent Society” by John Kenneth Galbraith, and he’s very interested in this question. And my sense is, among economists and others, that’s looked back on as a little bit embarrassing, right? Like, look, there’s advertising, and it’s fine.

And I don’t know. I’m actually amazed. I moved to New York about a year ago. I’m amazed at how much advertising is permitted on the subway. Public space, right? The subway I would go into for a long time, it had a grayscale image advertising “The Exorcist” reboot — horrifying image, like two girls, black [INAUDIBLE] dripping from their mouth. I mean, just grotesque. Every morning, I would see it.

And it seems a little bit dystopic. This is public space. Why am I being — why every morning, when I bring my five-year-old onto the subways, he’s seeing an ad for a horror movie? But we’ve just gotten used to it.

I’m curious how you think about this discourse, this sense that the things we worried about in the past, we were obviously wrong to worry about. And as such, worrying about things in the present is probably going to be wrong, too. Because eventually, we’ll simply make our peace with it, and the world will move on. And if it does that, then, clearly, it was fine.

Yeah. Where even to begin? Oh, my heavens. I mean, those who have worried that things were getting worse have been essential to our being clear-eyed about our condition again and again. The process by which money value has displaced other languages of value, big picture, that’s one of the enormous secular trends one can discern over the last 150, 200 years. And I would say many of the things you just invoked are, in effect, explicable out of that dynamic.

Now, I don’t want to sound reactionary when I say that, and I also don’t wish to kind of invoke some fantasy utopia of the past, but we are more severed from each other now than at any time in human history, even as we have this kind of ersatz experience of our being aggregated in new and powerful ways.

We’ve seen dynamics that simultaneously severed us from each other and created new aggregations, for instance, the rise of nationalism across the 19th century, which was a kind of harrowing ideology that created new forms of collective identity and displaced experiences of intimacy at the same time with monstrous consequences. So it’s totally reasonable, I believe, to be extremely uneasy about the dynamics that we’re seeing.

One thing that has, again, bothered me about a lot of the discourse on attention is, I think, because we don’t have a good definition of it itself, we don’t, I think, think about it very clearly. We know what we often don’t want. A lot of us don’t want the feeling, the fractured, irritated, outraged feeling we have on social media or online. We don’t like learning and noticing in ourselves that the amount of time we spend on any single task on the computer has dropped and dropped and dropped.

A lot of us have this experience of fracture. So we know what we don’t want — this. I don’t think we have a very good, positive vision. How do you think about the creation of a positive vision of attention, given the extraordinary diversity of human experience and wants?

Yeah, it’s a very hard question. In a sense, you’re asking both a question about authority and also asking a question about prescription. Are we going to prescribe for people this versus that, and who will prescribe? I think of the extraordinary definition of education that Gayatri Spivak offers, which is the non-coercive rearranging of desire. What’s education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire.

And that rings for you?

I have to say it does.

That’s not how my education felt to me.

Well, I don’t think a lot of our educations work that way. So I would say that that’s a richly humanistic and, at the same time, critical account of education. It’s not especially an account of education that conduces to making optimized workers in the labor force.

But let’s just sort of unpack it for a second. We organize our lives around desire in some basic sense. You say, we just tell people that they shouldn’t want, enjoy, receive that little dopamine hit, feel good when they’re scrolling through TikTok. Well, OK. Our desires can go lots of different places. It’s also possible for us to put our desires in places that ultimately lead to our being unhappy and lonely, not flourishing.

The question of how to organize our desires, how to know what it is we want that is what we really want, or what, in wanting, most dignifies and extends our experience of being, as opposed to, again, severing and impoverishing us. That’s the hard work of education. And people have to work that stuff out for themselves, but also, they have to work that stuff out with other people.

That’s, in a sense, why the humanistic tradition brings with it tradition, stuff, the kind of best that’s been thought and said — texts, objects. Here, here, look at this. It’s not, “look at this, I’m going to force you.” It’s, “I want you non-coercively to discover that in being with this in these ways, something good will happen.”

Yeah, let me hold on to this idea of non-coercion. So first, for me, education was coercive. I did not want to spend eight hours a day sitting in these small classrooms being lectured at. Just didn’t. I had to — which I don’t think is a bad thing. I am not really one of these people who thinks that childhood should be up to the whims of the child. I don’t think I would have made good decisions as a kid. I’m not sure the decisions made for me were great decisions either — but nevertheless.

And something that has been on my mind has been how bad, I think, parents, at least of certain classes right now, have gotten at coercion. And it worries me because my kids are young. So it’s kind of easy right now, but I know it’s going to get harder. And I see all these parents who know that they don’t think their kids should have a smartphone when they’re 11. And they fall because, eh, the other kids do.

And I see in this debate that we’re having right now about smartphones and kids, what I would describe as a real discomfort with how to be paternalistic when paternalism is actually needed. So Jon Haidt writes his book, “The Anxious Generation.” Part of the book’s thesis is that smartphones and social media have kicked off a mental health crisis in our children. Then there’s a huge back and forth on these exact studies.

And one thing I really noticed in this whole debate, where I think the research is very complicated and you can fairly come to a view on either end of it, is that if you convinced me that my kids scroll on their phones for four hours a day, had no outcome on their mental health at all — it did not make them more anxious — it did not make them more depressed — it would change my view on this not at all. I just think, as a way of living a good life, you shouldn’t be staring at your phone for four hours a day.

And yet, I also realize the language of society right now and parenting doesn’t have that much room for that. And I think we have a lot of trouble talking about just what we think a good life would be. Not a life that leads to a good job, not a life that leads to a high income, but just the idea, which I think we were more comfortable talking in terms of at other points in history, that it is better to read books than to not read books, no matter if you can measure that on somebody’s income statement or not.

And so I wonder not just about the non-coercive rearranging of desire, but I also wonder about — I mean, I don’t love calling it the coercive rearranging of desire, but the ability to talk about what we think we should desire or socially approve of, and then particularly for younger kids, for whom their attentional resources are being formed, actually insist upon that.

So I want to ask you back a question in response to that, which is, just, where do you anchor your intuition that it is, say, better to read a book than it is to scroll on TikTok for four hours?

If I’m being honest as a parent, right — and I’m not saying I would legislate this — I anchor it in my own experience of attention. I think books are remarkable and specific in their ability to simultaneously allow for a deep immersion in somebody else, right? Another human being’s story or thoughts or mind, and also create a lot of space for your own mind wandering. And I will say — and it’s one of the reasons I wanted to invite you on the show. We’ll talk about the School of Attention that you’re part of in a bit. I will say that my biggest concern and the concern that nobody really has an answer to for me, because I do want to send my kids to public school, is that I care less about how they are taught subjects than how they are taught attention, what kind of attention they’re able to bring to the things they will want to know. But again, the thing that worries me is that I see so little discourse like that.

I’m enormously moved by what you’re saying. The dynamics that you’re describing are not unfolding in empty space. They’re unfolding in relation to a basically unbridled dynamic of financial optimization. Like, we just can’t leave capitalism out of this. The system in which we operate is centrally driven by return on investment, not by human flourishing.

And there may be no other way to organize large, modern, complex societies. But we would be insane not continuously to hold before us the essential adversary here. The corporations are not on our sides. And the fact that a major split of our contemporary economy has figured out how to monetize not just our labor, but our actual ability to give ourselves to what we care about, is extremely bad for our ability to continue to be non-inhuman beings.

I think I’m getting at something similar when I talk about my discomfort with how hard we find it to criticize choice. People mean a lot of things when they talk about neoliberalism, and I don’t love the term, one, because I think it annoys people and shuts them down. But the other is because it’s imprecise. But the thing I mean, when I talk about neoliberalism and the neoliberal age, is a period in which the logic of markets became the logic.

Absolutely.

And I think it has become very difficult to think outside of market logic. And when I read older texts, I see a lot more discussion of the good of virtues of — and a lot of it is very religiously inflected, to be fair. I mean, religion was an alternative structure of logic of meaning that was in contestation with economic ways of thinking about that. I think as religion has weakened not only as an organized force, but as a kind of conceptual way of looking at the world, capitalism market logic has taken over a lot of that space. And the market does not have our interests at heart.

You invoke religion as one of the traditions on which one has been able to draw for a discourse of value that would not reduce to money value. I would invoke to other kinds of institutions that have been really important. There’s the space of education. I mean, I basically believe that a lot of what we do in the humanities is a training of attention.

And partially, that’s like why we have to hold on to and protect spaces for humanistic work in our education, because a lot of the other stuff can be instrumentalized. It’s part of the reason it’s getting increasingly exterminated from universities because you can’t monetize it. And but I say all of that just because interpretation or meaning is so inextricable from the labor of attention.

And there’s a third, which I also think is interesting to consider, which is spaces of art, music, aesthetics. I mean, artists have always made fun of the bourgeois collector who showed up with a giant bag of money and said, show me the most expensive thing, and I’ll take it. And the people in the know and the space of the arts would snicker and say, how callow that he walked out with that. That’s not the good stuff.

So each of those spaces, spaces of religion and institutions of education, study, teaching, and learning, and then museums and spaces of artistic production, symphonies, music, each of those institutions has meaningful traditions of non-instrumentalizable attention.

Is attention the category of the thing we want or a subcategory of the thing that we want? So sometimes I wonder if attention is a word like health. If I told you health is important, you’d nod your head. You’re nodding your head, in fact, right now. If I said, I’m really trying to work on my health, on the one hand, you would get what I meant by that. On some level, I don’t want to die soon and young for a preventable reason. But I also wouldn’t really tell you anything. There’s so many subcategories to health, right? You go to doctors for different parts of the body. And there’s mental health and fitness and different kinds of fitness and cardiovascular and strength. And sometimes when we talk about attention, it feels to me like we are talking about a thing like health, the entire basket of different forms of awareness and experience we use when we are moving through the world.

And sometimes it feels like we are talking about something very specific, right? Cardiovascular fitness, not health, right? And then alongside that, there are all these other things you might want to cultivate and be concerned about. Which one is it for you?

I think you put your finger exactly on that duplex nature of our discourse around attention. Both those notions are in the language of attention that we use. And I would argue that what’s important now is that we have the richest conversation about attention to surface it as our collective concern in the way that this podcast and all the podcasts you’ve done on this and the wide range of authors, like Jenny Odell and James Williams and Tim Wu, all these folks who’ve written on this.

We need more of all of that because — and here’s where your language of health is exactly right — what we need is a kind of almost revolutionary rising of our awareness around the importance of this stuff. I’m old enough to remember a period back when nobody went running. James F. Fixx, right? He wrote the book on running in — what was it — ‘77. Before that, regular people didn’t go jogging. They didn’t go running. People who ran were people who were sort of athletes or people in school because they were doing collective sports.

Also, there weren’t gyms that regular people went to. Right? There were places like Gold’s Gym, where you could go if you were a powerlifter or a boxer. I’m talking 1974 or ‘75. The whole idea that ordinary people would concern themselves with their fitness is something that’s emerged over the last 40 years. It’s staggering to consider the scale of the collective awareness of our physical well-being. Now, does that mean that health itself is a new idea? No, people have been worried about their health since forever. But the specific activation of fitness, that’s a relatively new thing, and it’s really changed in our lifetimes. And I’m proposing to you that that’s going to happen again. Over the next 40 years, a collective recognition that our wellness in our attentional lives, our hygiene and health and our attention, is going to be constitutive of our experience of being. This is what’s going to happen. It’s going to reshape education, which, as you’ve signaled, needs to be for and about attention. That’s what it needs to teach. And it’s going to transform our other ways of being together.

So you’re trying to do some of this. You have, along with others, this School of Attention. What are you trying to teach?

Yeah, I love this stuff. I mean, we think of the school as a little bit Black Mountain College, creative, artistic collaboration; a little bit like something like the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, continuing education for people who want to read together and think and be together in person in a place; and then a little bit like the kind of radical labor schools of the teens and ‘20s, like the schools created by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which were more like activist projects to promote a certain kind of politics.

So that’s kind of the triangle in which we place the school. The school does not promote some single programmatic theory of attention. On the contrary, we’re interested in all the different traditions that can inform how we take attention forward. We had a senior Zen student do a course on Zen meditation as an intentional form. A class on cinematography as a medium in which attention is choreographed cinematically. A class on perfume where smell as a sensory modality is centered as a sort of attentional form.

We run workshops — and this is separate from the classes. We do free workshops. And the workshops are sort of opportunities to actually do some intentional stuff together, exercises in which people will, for instance, listen four times to the same four-minute piece of music under, again, different sort of mental orientations, but collectively, then take some notes and talk out what happened as they sort of used their attention.

And possibly the coolest thing we do at the school are these things called sidewalk studies, in which between 5 and 10 people will get together, usually a bar or a cafe, and they’ll read a carefully selected paragraph closely together and talk about it seminar style, having a drink. That paragraph is on a card. When you flip the card over, there’s a thing to do together, like a street action, like a kind of situationist style activity.

So an example would be like a great Audre Lorde passage on food in the city. The action is going into a bodega and actually examining the bodega for where surveillance is happening, where nourishment is happening, and then moving to the second bar and talking through what it was like to be in the space of the bodega with the Audre Lorde passage in our heads together.

And there are dozens and dozens of these exercises that are continuously being invented by folks in the school and doing them together. They do it because it’s a way of being together and practicing attention together to generate forms of solidarity.

I’m interested in that idea of practicing attention together. With my kids, when I think about this, one of the things that I wonder is when I ask, what do I mean by I want them taught attention? Some part of it is just I want them to have familiarity, a visceral, somatic familiarity with what different kinds of attention feel like.

I’m not sure I had that for a very long time. I’d, of course, experienced many kinds of attention, but it’s only later in life I become more mindful of what they feel like. And that’s helped me diminish the role of some in my life. The reason I’m not on Twitter or X anymore is that I don’t like the feeling of the attention it furnishes. I don’t like how I feel when I leave it. The reason I’ve sort of moved back to paper books is I do like the feeling of the attention. I notice that it is healthier for me. It sounds to me a little bit like something you all are trying to do is just creating contexts in which you experience different kinds of attention, so you have that internal map you can work with.

Absolutely. It’s a do by doing kind of thing. You actually have to come together with other people and surface the question of attention and then experience what giving one’s attention with others can do to be reminded of how precious that feature of our being is and discover what can be returned from the world to themselves out of opening themselves to it intentionally.

So I thought a good place to end here would be to do the deep listening activity, or at least a truncated version of it that you described earlier. So how do you lead people through this?

OK, so this would be an example of one of the exercises we might do at one of the attention labs at the Strother School. And we always like to make clear that we borrow from lots of different traditions. So this is very much like the kinds of exercises that the wonderful sound artist genius, Pauline Oliveros, would use in her practice.

It’s not exactly like her stuff, but we always kind of talk a bit about Pauline Oliveros, and we set this one up. And there are other sound artists who inform the kind of stuff we care about, Annea Lockwood and others. The exercise is going to have four phases. I understand that you’ve got a sort of sound piece queued up.

We’ve got it.

OK we’re going to actually play it four times. So your listeners have to be ready. You’re going to hear that piece of music, which is about how many minutes would you say?

I think we’ve cut it to 30 seconds or so.

OK, so it’s 30 seconds. We normally do this for a little longer, but all right. So wherever you are, get ready. You’re going to hear this 30-second sound piece four times. And I’m going to give you the mood under which you’ll attend to it. First, just listen. OK? First, listen.

Second listen, recall. What have you heard before?

Third listen, discover. What do you hear for the first time?

And four, finally, don’t listen. What do you find when you don’t listen?

So let’s talk back and forth. An observation about each of the phases. What happened in the first phase for you, Ezra?

The striking thing about listening to it the first time was the way my body’s response kept changing. So initially, it’s like you got these birds. It seems like it’s going to be a kind of nice ambient piece of music.

And then just like the intense, escalating tension, somewhat mounting dread, the noise goes up. The number of sounds happening simultaneously, it feels like it goes up. The volume goes up. So by the end, you’ve begun — or for me, I began as, oh, a nice — like, Jesus Christ, why did my producers choose this piece of music? So, yeah, it was a little bit — the first time, I was just on the ride of the bodily response to it.

For me, in the first attempt through, I was acutely attuned to 1,000 questions sort of pulling me in all directions. Because I’m accustomed to doing these kinds of things over a long time, so longer, more immersive, more people, so a lot of anxiety as to whether this kind of thing can work in this setting. So the truth is, I became aware about midway through that I was effectively not listening to the thing at all on the first time through, trying, but trying, but failing for me on the first one. We go to the second listen where we were trying to hear something that we’d heard before, recall.

The second one I was struck by — so I remembered the birds, right? I noticed they go on a little bit longer than I thought. And the second, I was a little braced because I remembered the feeling I had on the first. I was like, oh, as this keeps going, you feel worse. And so the remembrance was of what was coming in the way that then made me surprised by what was there in the moment.

Super interesting. This is so embarrassing, but I heard the birds for the first time in the second phase. [LAUGHS]

It’s not remembering.

That’s not. So it was a double catastrophe because I was like, how the heck did I not hear the birds in the first phase? My listening was so bad in phase one and two. Wait a second, I’m not supposed to discover new things until phase three.

So I had phase catastrophic disaster and felt bad about myself, but then sort of rounded on that and became aware of that inexorable march time that comes in and the harrowing fatalism that one associates with that musical mode. And so I had gotten to that in the first listen and was able to be like, OK, OK, I’m remembering that. I’m remembering that. Third listen, were you able to discover anything new?

Yeah, I was more attentive to the birds, so I was sort of tracking them. I realized they disappear. The whole piece, then, on the third, the thing I noticed was it feels like you’re clear cutting a forest, right? That felt to me like what that piece of music was, right? You were going through the forest. It’s initially fairly untouched. And then with each rising, I mean, the birds eventually falling silent, that tick, tick, tick, tick. When you talk about the fatalism of it, I mean, this felt like a piece of music that was about the clear cutting of an ecosystem.

Yeah, and I love — discovery for me involved a loop into how this piece came to be. I heard a twang that felt guitar-like, but I’m almost certain that the music was composed electronically. So I had a little moment of your engineer or your creatives, whoever’s back there making this, and were they at a machine? What kind of machine? What kinds of clips or samples were they drawing on?

So my kind of discovery, in a sense, was the sources and being recalled to the question of the sources of these sounds, these acoustic experiences. Final phase, four, you tried not to listen, Ezra. What happened?

It was more comfortable.

That body response to that kind of mounting dread, that anxiety, just was muted. So it was more like the way I listen to music when I work, where my attention is not on the music, and the music is providing a mood and an energy. Right? The music is a kind of stimulant.

What did you —

I’m not deeply immersed in it.

What did you do with the rest of you to not listen? Because, of course, our ears are funny. You can’t close your ears. So the stuff’s going to keep coming in. It’s not like our eyes. We’re —

Well, I moved to the eyes.

More of my attention was on what I was seeing.

Yeah, I did exactly the same thing. Did you close your eyes in the first three phases? Did you keep them open as you were listening? You did?

Kept them open on all.

That’s interesting. I closed them, but I opened my eyes on the final phase and had a little taste. It was quick, but a little taste of that foretaste of the ecstasy of trying to awaken my visual field, and brighten it such that it would displace my acoustic experience.

So I kind of had hyper vision for a second in an effort to blast out of my ears the acoustic experience by overwhelming it with the other sensory modality. And that was a little tremor of the good stuff where you can sort of feel an activation of what you can do with your attention as an aspect of being. I must say I enjoyed that.

So what’s the point of all that for you? If that is a successful lesson when you do it, what are you hoping people will have experienced? What is the meta lesson of that lesson, right? It’s not just what you heard in the music. What did we just do?

Yeah. I want to just admit that I’m not super sure, and that kind of uncertainty is part of it. And what I can assure you is that when seven or eight people get together in Brooklyn and do something like this for half hour or 45 minutes, we all come out of it feeling so good.

It just feels so right to be with ourselves and what our minds and senses can do and with other people in relation to what’s in the world this way. And I think that at this moment, we need to carve out more spaces for these kinds of activated experiences within our teaching and learning environments.

Let me end on this. If you’re somebody who’s not near the Brooklyn Strother School of Radical Attention, but are somebody who kind of senses something is wrong with your attention, wrong the intentional world that you inhabit, and you want it to be better for you, you want to find a space of what will feel like attentional health, where do you start?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And for my answer, I’m going to read one of the “12 Theses on Attention” written by The Friends. Thesis 9 of the 12 theses reads, “Sanctuaries for true attention already exist. They are among us now, but they’re endangered. And many are in hiding, operating in self-sustaining, inclusive, generous, and fugitive forms. These sanctuaries can be found, but it takes an effort of attention to find them. And this seeking is also attention’s effort to heal itself.”

So my answer is, find a sanctuary. It’s there. And your listeners out there, they all have their different sweet spots where they are able to protect themselves from the frackers. It might be gardening. It might be that they actually can weld. And when they’ve got their visor down and they’re in the puddle of the hot metal, that’s when everything is zoned out. They may be knitting, and they may be doing a Zumba class.

I don’t know what it is they’re doing that’s near you and what you would find and make possible, but find your people. And out of finding your people and with a measure of intentionality, insisting upon the sanctuary where you are resistant to being fracked, attention can begin to heal. And that seeking out of the sanctuary space is itself already part of the healing.

So then always our final question, what are three books you would recommend to the audience?

Oh, there are so many great books. And all we need to do is protect the ability to read them, and we’ll be good. Well, let’s start with one that I think is a deep and challenging and important book in this kind of attention space. And it’s by my esteemed colleague Natasha Dow Schüll down at N.Y.U. It’s called “Addiction by Design.”

Natasha Dow Schüll is a science and technology studies scholar, an anthropologist by training, and she did an extraordinary book on video poker machines, gambling machines in Vegas. It’s a kind of a pre-smartphone book about the engineering of addiction by the folks who designed those gambling machines and the environments in which they sit.

And if you want to have a kind of harrowing inwardness with the sophisticated, dark pattern technologies that can be achieved, even in the most primitive technologies, those machines are not fancy in important ways, right? They are a kind of 19th century printing press to a modern, full-color laser printer in relation to what we have now in our pockets. But already to see how sophisticated the design of those systems were to suck people in and hold them, it’s amazing. Natasha Dow Schüll, “Addiction by Design.”

A second book that I love and that also comes out of my field and that I think is a deep and hard but beautiful and important book for thinking about the history of science would be the book “Objectivity” by Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston, both of whom are really great historians of science. That book is a history of something that seems impossible to historicize. I mean, objectivity doesn’t have a history. Objectivity is just being objective. That’s like transhistorical.

And they do an extraordinary and counterintuitive job of showing how radically historical our conceptualization of objectivity itself is, how entangled it is with shifting ideas of subjectivity, for instance, or the way that it plays off of the emergence of mechanical technologies for making inscriptions. So “Objectivity” by Peter Galison and Lorraine Daston.

And then I guess my wild card book would just be a book I love and a book about the imagination, belief, dreams, and about America. It’s by Herman Melville, of course, the author of “Moby Dick,” a book I also love.

But I’m going to invoke his much stranger book, “The Confidence-Man,” which is a book about how belief happens and who the people are who can make us believe and about the sort of entanglement of hope and belief. It’s very much a book about this strange country that I love and believe in, and that has to make us all also very uncomfortable a lot of the time. Herman Melville’s “The Confidence-Man.”

D. Graham Burnett, thank you very much.

Total pleasure. Thanks.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Elias Isquith. Original music by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

The steady dings of notifications. The 40 tabs that greet you when you open your computer in the morning. The hundreds of unread emails, most of them spam, with subject lines pleading or screaming for you to click. Our attention is under assault these days, and most of us are familiar with the feeling that gives us — fractured, irritated, overwhelmed.

D. Graham Burnett calls the attention economy an example of “human fracking”: With our attention in shorter and shorter supply, companies are going to even greater lengths to extract this precious resource from us. And he argues that it’s now reached a point that calls for a kind of revolution. “This is creating conditions that are at odds with human flourishing. We know this,” he tells me. “And we need to mount new forms of resistance.”

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app , Apple , Spotify , Amazon Music , YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts .]

Burnett is a professor of the history of science at Princeton University and is working on a book about the laboratory study of attention. He’s also a co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention , which is a kind of grass roots, artistic effort to create a curriculum for studying attention.

In this conversation, we talk about how the 20th-century study of attention laid the groundwork for today’s attention economy, the connection between changing ideas of attention and changing ideas of the self, how we even define attention (this episode is worth listening to for Burnett’s collection of beautiful metaphors alone), whether the concern over our shrinking attention spans is simply a moral panic, what it means to teach attention and more.

You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app , Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts . View a list of book recommendations from our guests here .

(A full transcript of this episode is available here .)

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Elias Isquith. Original music by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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