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Health benefits of dancing | Dance: a complete exercise
There are numerous health benefits of dancing, which we are going to discuss here. It is more than just a recreational or refreshing activity to relax your mind and body.
Dancing at your rhythm creates a sensational flow throughout the body. It is a great option to be fit, especially when you are bored with a regular workout or gym practice.
Being similar to exercise, it improves cholesterol levels and reduces blood sugar spikes. It can be a great alternative for those who consider exercising as a strenuous load.
It also gets you out of monotonous workout routines and provides different physical, mental, and emotional benefits. Therefore, there are more health benefits of dancing – mental, emotional, and social.
Mental health benefits of dancing
1. Dancing is good for your brain
Studies show that exercise or dance practices encourage the part of the brain, which controls memory and helps us learn diverse skills.
Exercising could help a lot with coordination and balance but, performing a move beside appropriate balance and stability with resulting flexibility could be achieved through dancing.
Therefore it has more advantages over exercises and is the reason why we should be moving more than sitting if we need to bolster our memory power.
2. Challenges the brain functioning
If you ever have tried dancing before, you would know how challenging it could be to remember the steps and presenting them in a suitable rhythm.
It includes learning, recalling, performing that results challenge your mind to explore the moves and patterns.
At whatever stage you are, old or young, it serves as the best refreshing exercise.
Physical benefits of dancing
Dancing is the best cardio for you and young kids. It raises your heart rate and thus works as any other physical activity.
1. Dance serves as fabulous cardio activity
Dancing makes your heart pump faster. The movements involved in the practice are no less than a perfect cardio exercise.
According to Health and Human Services, adults should practice easy to moderate intensity dancing every 20-30 minutes a day. However, you may also switch to 15-25 minutes of vigorous intensity in a day.
It doesn’t mean you need to practice dancing every day, preferably you should choose your day and time and be regular for a fit cardiovascular system.
And feel free to choose any dance form of dancing form. Several professional dancers believe that mild dancing challenges you for different movements, which improve heart rate and different health benefits.
2. Dance provides strength and balancing
While performing a particular exercise, you are bound to execute the movements in a sagittal plane. Whereas when you dance, you work on lateral and rotational planes and condition all joints and muscles.
Through challenging moves in dancing, you can learn balancing. Dancing with a great range of joints and muscle moves makes them strong.
It also helps focus the movements that inflate body consciousness and provide you the idea of the way you move within space.
3. Healthy dancing practice remove excess calories
Dancing, even in the most casual type, is beneficial to get rid of excess calories. Dancing for just half-hour helps to burn hundreds of calories, around 200 to 400.
Regular practice of dance forms helps improve bone density as dance and exercise promote absorption of calcium in the body. It reduces bone problems like osteoporosis and increases bone density.
It also improves body posture that promotes burning fat and prohibits the deposition of extra calories. Thus, it serves as a fun way of strength training.
Emotional health benefits of dancing
1. Can be a social and interactive activity
Some people like to dance in an empty room or hall to express themselves effectively.
However, it is also beneficial when you join a dance class or a group because it would help you introduce and meet new people, which boosts your social and emotional health.
These interactions are a great way to improve motor skills, teamwork, leadership, and also communication skills.
You could also find different age groups out there, which provides a lovely chance to reduce the generation gap.
2. Happy dancing elevates your mood
Movements like exercise or dance help us release emotions and energy out in the form of body movements. Dance helps improve self-esteem, reduces stress, anxiety, and depression.
Moreover, dancing is also used as a therapy to treat mental illness, stress, and other disorders to some extent.
A study shows that exercising or dancing helps release several brain chemicals like endorphins that develop a feeling of satisfaction and happiness, leading to a happy mood.
Dancing for kids and adults
Children are quite active as the sun, and thus dance classes provide a pathway to control the flow of energy in the best and expressive manner.
Kids learn a lot while playing. Also, interactions play an influential role in their overall development.
When they work with each other, they learn from their own experiences as well as from other people they meet.
Dance is a creative way to express ourselves. It also helps children to improve their body movements to create a substantial impression.
Dancing also sets a great example of how practice makes a man perfect and many such happy and healthy life lessons that a child can learn apart from books.
Since learning a dance form or dance movements requires patience and consistency, it develops discipline in kids.
Dance promotes positive and practical thinking skills in kids because you need to be adept and diligent at the same time.
Different forms of dancing and their benefits
Dancing is one of the best ways to be fit has several forms from classical to modern.
It has transformed in several years, but the classics are still alive and are quite vital in the description of discipline, coordination, balancing, and many more.
Let’s know about how such different classical forms are better and beneficial for health and fitness:
1. Kathak
Kathak is an Indian classical form of dancing derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Katha’ that implies a story. As the name suggests, this classical dance form originated as storytelling through dance.
This dance form depicts a narrative or plays portrayed on beats and recitals. Every participant introduces their characters before the recital.
The dance form is delivered almost straight-legged wearing ankle bells. Despite being straight-legged, it could be quite intense as the beat become faster.
Benefits of Kathak
Since it includes storytelling, dancers practice and learn to coordinate between different movements, expressions, and obviously among each other to justify their role.
It also works as a weight-bearing exercise as it involves ankle bells. It covers crucial practices for balancing, coordination, and fitness called Kathak yoga, which is usually doing rounds.
2. Garba
Garba is one of the best ways to hit the dance floor, which concurrently keeps you fit or even sheds some weight. It is the most practiced dance form at the time of the Navaratri festival, where several people participate with their partners.
Also, it includes the sharing of the dance stage with many people that requires teamwork and coordination. Garba is one of the most energetic dance forms and is a novel alternative to cardiovascular workouts.
Garba is a very charming and astonishing way of weight loss and is introduced in several fitness studios, which presents a spontaneous type of exercise, popular at the festival.
Benefits of Garba
Garba is a dancing exercise that utilizes muscles from head to toe. Moreover, it is a happy and free dance form that serves as a great cardiovascular exercise.
The moves and practices to reduce belly fat has become more natural with such dance performance. Therefore it is also considered a great stress buster that involves some vigorous forms like workouts and helps release endorphins that relax and refreshes the brain.
It also involves finding new friends, meeting people, and best social interaction than any other dance form providing a healthy way to get rid of frustration, stress, and tension.
3. Bharatnatyam
Bharatnatyam originated in Tamil Nadu’s temples and has become the most widely practiced dance form in India.
Lord Shiva or Natraj, the origin of Bharatnatyam, is worshiped before the performance. Natya Shastra, the Indian chronicle on dance forms, depicts Bharatnatyam and the styles performed by devadasis of the time.
Benefits of Bharatnatyam
Bharatnatyam is a combination of rigorous exercise and the most graceful form of dancing.
The dance form develops the balancing of different postures and accomplishes the transition from one pose to others with immense grace.
Even 2 hours of practice of Bharatnatyam serve as an inclusive cardio session, especially for the lower half session of the body.
4. Odissi
Odissi is known to be the oldest form of India, originated in Orissa, traditionally known as the dance practice performed in tri-bent posture or tribhanga, which means bent from the neck, waist, and knees.
The dance form is a little tough to practice as you have to manage the appropriate movements with grace in this challenging position.
Benefits of Odissi
The most challenging part of this dance form is to coordinate between different body parts with rhythm. Moreover, the three-body portions have a distinct and significant contribution to the dance form.
Odissi also includes diverse forms of facial expression called Nava Rasas that contain almost all kinds of facial yoga.
Therefore, it also reduces the aging process and wrinkles from the skin providing beautiful and healthy skin.
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