Dance fulfils many roles and acts at different levels of depth.
Dance therapy allows you to improve your own body awareness, rediscover your body, bring up and express a host of sensations, feelings and thoughts, and regain balance on a psychological and/or physical level. It's a creative approach to healing. The music stimulates the person and, with it, thoughts are lighter, tensions are eased, the body unwinds and becomes the instrument with which we learn to feel good about ourselves.
Bodily expression and state of mind are intimately linked, and the movements we feel the need to make can be as varied as the range of our emotions.
The physical benefits of dance...
From a more superficial, bodily approach, dance can be considered a physical activity, and its practice promotes cardiorespiratory conditioning, muscular strengthening, aesthetic enhancement and the auxiliary and preventive treatment of certain illnesses such as respiratory problems, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, stress and osteoporosis, among others.
Still on a physical level, but in the physiological and biochemical field, dancing activates the nervous, immunological and glandular systems, promoting immunity, good humour and well-being through the stimulation of pleasure substances such as endorphin, anandamide, etc. According to recent scientific studies, dancing stimulates different areas of the brain, helping to awaken/expand creativity and stimulate neuronal rejuvenation (see more about these studies in this other post) and this makes dancing more than just a sporting/physical activity.
The psychological benefits of dance...
Dance can be therapeutic and medicinal, because dance also affects our personality, the way we perceive and communicate with the outside and inside world, our thoughts/judgements/beliefs, our emotions and our cellular memories. When we are consciously moving, we are dancing our whole history, our whole life.
There are also many psychological benefits: it improves and increases self-awareness and personal autonomy, increases connection to personal memory, improves communication resources, stimulates creativity and free expression, promotes physical and emotional self-awareness, improves self-esteem and self-confidence, makes it easier to express feelings that are often difficult to express verbally, helps you to recognise your own limitations, encourages you to pay attention, to be present and to listen to yourself, facilitates and stimulates social integration, helps you to accept and value differences and your own body, and activates the perception between your internal and external spaces.
The benefits of dance therapy on a subtle level...
When we look even deeper, we realise that dance has the power to guide us into a world that is subjective, hidden and, for many, unknown or little exploited/understood. It reveals our inner space and its mysteries, allows us to discover the different dimensions of the body (muscular, postural, psychomotor, proprioceptive, sensory, polarities, heights, etc.) and to recover its unity, it introduces us to the infinite universe of music through non-audible stimuli and our own intrinsic perceptions.
It gives us information about 'our own internal river', how we interact with external rhythms and makes it easier for us to understand visible and invisible dimensions through movement.
And when we dive even deeper into the dance to the point of discovering all its layers, we perceive its spiritual dimension, we discover the more sacred spaces that dance allows us to reach within ourselves. When we are fully surrendered to the present moment, to sensory perceptions and to the empty space inside and outside us, we experience unity with all, we have witnessed the miracle of being a particle of the dancing universe and the Mystical experience of life is shared in these moments.
Dance at its deepest level is also a path to meditation, self-knowledge and connection with the divine/universe/nature. In this state of consciousness, dance becomes the pure, simple and ecstatic expression of oneself.
At this stage, dance is more than therapy, it's a way of life!
As Osho says:
"When movement becomes ecstatic, then it is a dance. When movement is so absolute that it no longer has an ego, then it's a dance.
Dance came into the world as a meditation technique. In the beginning, dance wasn't just about dancing but about reaching an ecstasy where the dancer dissolves and all that's left is the dance - no ego.
No technique, no manipulation, the body expresses itself spontaneously.
Dancing is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to a person. Just dance like a child... like a prayer. Dance as if you were in deep love with the universe, as if you were dancing with your loved one. Let God be your loved one. May you be your own loved one."
Our proposal with TransDance and Cacao Ceremony is to offer dance in its different aspects, from the material to the immaterial, from the individual to the collective, connecting body, heart, and mind, masculine and feminine, inner and outer, in a deep immersion in the present moment surrounded by music and silence, as a personal and collective prayer. Regardless of the depth you choose to navigate, the result is guaranteed: a delicious state of well-being!
To learn more about dance therapy and TransDance & Cacao Ceremony, visit our website at https://www.transdancecacaoceremony.com.
Sources:
https://www.dancaterapia.org/
Osho. Le livre Orange, méditation de Osho – avec adaptations
https://www.transdancecacaoceremony.com/post/danser