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‘‘If you believe in miracles, I am one,” he said. ‘‘Line dancing is so good for you mentally and physically.”

Barbara Brown, who co-teaches the class at the Greenbelt Community Center, and at least one of the five students agreed.

Brown, who lives in Takoma Park, said she dropped from a size 14 to a size 8 when she started line dancing four years ago. She enjoyed it so much she became a teacher a year and a half ago.

‘‘You see people come in with two left feet and watch them improve,” Brown said. ‘‘We teach them steps so when they go to clubs or weddings they can do the dances by the end of the song even if they didn’t know it at the beginning.”

Mental workout

Line dancing is not just good physical exercise, but it stimulates the mind, said Greenbelt resident Bea McCarthy, who took it up after her husband died six years ago. She said she and her husband had danced other forms, but he didn’t like line dancing because he thought the dancers hogged the floor.

At one point, McCarthy stopped dancing because she, too, had bad knees, but returned to the activity because it has less impact than other forms of exercise like running. When she first started again, she frequently had to take breaks, but now can go without one for the full two hours of class, a sign her knees are becoming stronger, she said.

Besides dancing at the community center, McCarthy also dances at the College Park Moose Lodge and the Good Luck Community Center. She found the Greenbelt class through a program at Prince George’s Community College that lets seniors take as many classes as they want for $50.

‘‘It’s a wonderful way to meet people,” McCarthy said.

The social aspect of line dancing has another appeal for seniors, particularly women because they don’t have to be concerned about being alone on the floor, Meadows said. With women outliving men, women also are outnumbered in many classes. In his line dancing class, all five students were women.

‘‘The reason it’s so popular is women don’t have to worry about their partner or doing something wrong,” he said. ‘‘Men don’t have the courage to get up here without a lady. They make excuses, but the bottom line is they don’t have the courage to get up and dance.”

In Sharon Rose McConnell’s ballroom dancing class at the Bowie Senior Center, there were twice as many women as men. Since ballroom dancing requires participants to have partners, some women had to wait to dance during a recent class, while the men got to dance twice.

Among the men was Bowie resident Hank Wong, who came with his wife, Connie. He also frequently participates in Meadows’ line dancing class because it’s near the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he works.

Like the other seniors, Wong also took up dancing to relieve the pressure on his knees after running for nearly 34 years.

‘‘My blood circulates, my pain subsides” by the end of a class, Wong said. ‘‘Dancing really relaxes you.”

Too busy for TV

In fact, although many of the seniors interviewed have heard of the popular reality shows ‘‘Dancing With the Stars” and ‘‘So You Think You Can Dance,” they haven’t watched either show. Many say they’re just too busy.

Others, like McCarthy, said the athleticism the dancers on the shows have isn’t their cup of tea.

‘‘I’m not into acrobatic things like trampolines. Those guys are athletes. I wouldn’t have any knees left,” she said.

Bowie’s Ruth Miller, who was in McConnell’s class, was the exception, but started only after McConnell told the class to tune in and see a couple steps they were learning.

While the seniors have similar reasons for dancing and the teaching methods appear to be similar, the steps and styles couldn’t be more different.

Wearing a portable headset microphone, Meadows told the class they would do the Peabody Strut, then dance to ‘‘Sexy Old Man,” which he choreographed, and then ‘‘El Coco.” He went over to his laptop computer, scrolled through a list of thousands of songs and picked the piece that accompanies the Peabody Strut.

‘‘You make my pants want to get up and dance,” the refrain intoned.

‘‘One, two, three, four and walk,” Brown instructed as the class followed her steps forward, then side to side. ‘‘Shuffle, one, two, three, four and walk.”

The other dances were similar with the steps, which makes line dancing easy to learn, said Meadows, who has been teaching for about 10 to 15 years. The students seemed to pick up the steps easily.

‘‘If you can count, you can line dance,” he said.

And that holds true no matter the style of music, Meadows said. Line dances have been set from Chuck Brown to country waltzes, and at least one Web site has 40,000 choreographed pieces, he said.

‘‘I never did so many waltzes in my life,” McCarthy said with a laugh after the class did its fifth or sixth waltz.

In McConnell’s class, she starts the music accompanying the tango and walks the students through the steps: ‘‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow. Walk, walk, side, walk, side.”

She also advised the students to bend their knees and imagine themselves to be a panther stalking prey in the jungle.

In having to remember the sequence she said, ‘‘Now you know why dancing helps your memory.”

Watch the toes

Ballroom dancing is different from line dancing in that more of the onus is placed on the women, McConnell said. They have to keep their arms taut and upright.

‘‘No spaghetti arms. Push forward toward your partner so you can feel forward movement. If you can’t feel his movement, you’re going to bump into him. Keep it low — no butts sticking out in the air.”

It’s also up to the women to protect their feet, she said. Even some of the students recognized that.

‘‘If a lady gets her foot stepped on, what happens,” she asked the class.

‘‘It’s her fault,” replied Berta Rohm, 71, of Hyattsville.

And a woman who knows how to dance helps her partner, McConnell said.

‘‘He’ll say, ‘Oh, she knows how to dance. I don’t have to baby her,’” she said. ‘‘Beginners walk through their steps, but that’s not really dancing.”

Despite McConnell’s firm instruction, there was plenty of time for jokes too. Students said they appreciate how positive she is and how she gives each of them individualized instruction and attention, particularly on complicated dances like the cha cha.

When McConnell asked Roy Rohm, Berta Rohm’s husband if he remembered all the parts of the cha cha, he said he remembered the first sequence but not the second.

‘‘You did the first step. You did it so well. You’ve got to get your muscles to remember it,” she said.

‘‘It’s not my muscles. It’s my mind,” the 80-year-old replied as the class laughed.