Dancing for Health
Content Courtesy of the Forever Young Podcast with Christiana Egi and Cherrie-Marie Chiu.
On our most recent Forever Young podcast we discussed how dancing for the health of our body and mind is so beneficial for us, and how we can all incorporate dance in our lives regardless of our age. Dancing is a great activity for exercise. Not only is it fun, but it also strengthens our social engagements, and impacts our physical, mental, psychological, and cultural well-being. Listen to the full episode “Dancing for Health” below:
Dance is definitely a great form of exercise. It can be incorporated into a cardio workout, which gets your blood pumping and muscles moving. The coordination needed to dance is also good for your brain! Dance also encourages concentration as it is usually repetitive, or according to a rhythm. This helps stimulate the mind and help the brain get stronger.
Dance can also help eradicate social stigma. Canada’s National Ballet School has a program called Dancer Not Dementia. It is aimed at challenging dementia-related stigma, as well as just dancing for fun! Alexis lodge is very fortunate to have access to this awesome program. Our residents love this program so much that they invited them to come back. You can check out their website dancernotdementia.ca to learn more about this wonderful program and support people that are living with dementia.
Dance can create a platform for people to express their feelings by moving their bodies. This can also foster a sense of community and eradicate isolation in the elderly. However, everyone old and young can benefit immensely from dancing. Dancing can be a good icebreaker and can help people feel more comfortable. It can sometimes be hard to socialize at a party, however, dancing can bring everyone together and makes it a very sociable kind of activity!
As we mentioned before, dance is not just a fun activity but also has many health benefits. Dancing is essentially a type of aerobic exercise. It helps us strengthen our heart muscle and improve circulation, which in turn, boosts cellular function because when your blood is flowing you are carrying good oxygen throughout your body. Your cells work better and every organ gets the boost from using dance as a form of exercise!
Dancing can improve our flexibility and also improve strength and mobility. Dancing also builds your core strength. Ballet, for example, improves balance and strengthens not just the legs but also keeps your core engaged. While dance helps us lose weight, it also helps strengthen our bones, and improve and maintain bone mass. As we age, we tend to start to lose bone mass as we tend to lose calcium every day. Strengthening your bones as you age is very important as that is what helps us stay forever young!
Dancing can also help prevent memory loss because as we improve our cardiac health, we send more nourishment to our brain cells. As we learn and participate in repetitious activities it helps improve our memory in the long term. Dancing is great for our mental health. It increases the production of serotonin, the happy hormone, which reduces stress! As we know, stress is the number one killer, and therefore it is important to take the time to destress and breathe.
The great thing about dancing is it is easy to participate in. You can do it at home and dancing does not limit to only one, so there are many forms to choose from and many ways to participate in dance. There are many workout/fitness apps that provide different types of exercise, including dance workouts! These are typically very easy to participate in and are taught by an instructor.
We are glad we got to share our love for dance with our readers and listeners. If you want to listen to the full podcast on Dancing for Health, check out the Forever Young podcast on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcasts. Don’t forget to incorporate dance into your everyday life, it will help reduce stress and remind you there is always a reason to be happy!
The Forever Young podcast was created and produced by Christiana Egi and Cherrie Marie Chiu. Produced and engineered by Elisse Hill. The podcast represents our opinions and those of our guests. The content should not be taken as medical advice. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. If you like our show, please tell your friends and leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. New episodes are available every other Wednesday. Have questions? Email us at ourforeveryoungpodcast@gmail.com.
