The body does the talking
Dance enhances social/emotional growth no matter what your age.
As the famous mother of modern dance Martha Graham said “Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it, dance is the hidden language of the soul.”
In a world that is dominated with screens contributing to sedentary lifestyles, we need time to dance and move.
· To dance our story for self-awareness and self-expression,
· To dance for sharing and understanding our history and culture,
· To dance for fun and fitness, and
· To dance to release stress.
When children explore their movement capabilities and learn to connect movements with “states of being” they can start to express feelings (when words may not be sufficient). Just think of moving sustained in a light flowing manner and think of the color blue; a sense of calm begins to take hold. Next, think of moving sharp and angular with a sense of staccato movements and think of the color red; perhaps anger or frustration will arise. To complete the primary color palette; we have yellow. Yellow creates a happy feeling of swinging, turning, and twirling and often elicits feelings of joy, freedom, and inhibition. Color and movement qualities connect to emotions and when children are allowed to explore these emotions, they feel more complete and content. I have many decades of anecdotal evidence to support this theory. When we dance our brain releases feel good hormones such as serotonin and dopamine while also reducing the level of the stress hormone cortisol. https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/dancing-brain#:~:text=Other%20studies%20show%20that%20dance,term%20memory%2C%20and%20spatial%20recognition.
Studies show that dancing and moving 3 times/week for 20 minutes (raising your heart rate to 65-75% MaxHR) will get you on the road to feeling “alive”. Four to five days/week for 30-40 minutes can move you into the high-performance zone. https://www.mindtools.com/ax20nkm/the-inverted-u-theory