A lot of people like to dance whenever they feel good, even when they’re in the car and can’t get up they still move their upper bodies around like they’re in the club and on the dance floor. Now why do people do this? While some people will say that they can’t control the way their body moves when music comes on or that they have the music in them and they have to let it out, the short answer is that they feel good when they do it. Now you might be asking, why is that? Well there are two reasons behind this, one is the scientific reason and the other is the psychological or emotional reason.
The scientific reason is similar to the exercise post I put up a while back;
when you dance and move around your body releases endorphins, nature’s feel good hormone, so when you dance you get endorphins and you feel nice. Might explain why people in clubs and concerts are smiling so much (of course that might be because of the booze and/or the drugs instead!).
The psychological or emotional reason for it would be because a lot of people use dancing as a way to express themselves just like art (well dancing is its own kind of art). When they dance they are able to release all their emotions, their frustrations, their joys and everything in between. Depending upon the person and their reason for dancing, they are able to reach either a euphoric state or a zen like state of a blank mind.
There are of course articles on the subject as well, take this one from psychcentral.com titled, “Dance away stress and depression,” written by Christy Matta. It’s a short article which talks about how dancing can help relieve stress and takes Tango as an example. The article talks about how tango dancers need to stay focused and aware of their surroundings and their partner, and compares this to meditation.
Here’s another article from the-standard.org titled, “Dancing boosts health, relieves stress,” by Lauren Healey. In this one they interview a few people and go a bit more in depth on the subject of dancing and stress relief.
I can’t add much to this myself since I don’t dance that much, not because I don’t like dancing but because I’m not that good at it. I sometimes dance with friends at parties but I’d rather dance in the middle of the group so that people don’t really notice my terrible dancing; besides I don’t think that bobbing your head to the music and shuffling from side to side can be considered dancing. I guess I could take up classes to get better at it, but I don’t really want to pay money to learn. I’d rather just watch some online videos!
Now if you’re afraid of embarrassing yourself like I am, there’s no need to dance in front of people, you can always dance by yourself in your room. Just make sure you have enough space to move properly, you don’t want to knock into something and break it.
So I’m going to try dancing to relieve stress, you should try it out as well. Let me know if it worked for you in the comments. So, until the next post, put on your dancing shoes and become the next Michael Jackson.
Alternative Yoga 