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Daniela Zaragoza Reyna

ENGL 1302-217

Professor Oscar E. Martinez II

30 March 2024

Health Benefits of Dance

Dancing has been a part of human history throughout the centuries. During this time

dance was used for several things, first as a form of entertainment to a way to pass the time. But

nowadays with recent studies research has shown that dance has therapeutic potential. Dancing

has been proven to have hidden therapeutic potential to enhance one's mental and physical

condition, improving their life quality and well-being. Because of this doctors should advocate

dancing as a form of physical and emotional therapy to patients more often because dancing is

shown to positively influence one's quality of life, when used as a form of therapy, by decreasing

anxiety, and stress including improving medical diseases and social aspects.

Relieving State of Mind

Around the world mental health issues have been a problem for many individuals.

Suffering from stress and anxiety without having a way to relieve those issues or feelings.

Studies from Zhang, et al, showed that dancing can offer therapeutic values to decrease stress

and anxiety in one's well-being to improve their quality of life. Zhang highlights in his studies

that fitness dance and funny running dance can alleviate stress and anxiety. “[F]itness dance and

funny running are healthy behaviors, which can help Chinese female […] dissociate from anxiety

and stress situations and develop a healthy lifestyle” (Zhang et al 9). This offers a path for

individuals to emotional well-being and a higher quality of life. On the other hand, studies by

Desai Karina, highlight that the mental health of dancers has a lot of issues with self-perception,
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perfectionism, and body dissatisfaction, which can result in the dancers developing eating

disorders from the stress and anxiety from dancing. Desai states that “It is assumed that anxiety

and perfectionism in dancers is related to various negative factors of well-being such as lower

body satisfaction, lower self-esteem, poorer mood, excessive self-criticism, and higher levels of

stress” (5). This can be avoided if the idea of dance is changed from something that needs to be

perfected to perform to also being a form of reliever if done without the stress of being unable to

make mistakes which can become an outside force to push dancers to become unwell. This idea

of therapeutic dance needs to be advocated more as a form of physical therapy doctors can

empower individuals to let the rhythm in dance lead the way to a brighter and more satisfying

quality of life.

Physical Enhancer

Body 2

Improvements in Social Aspects

Body 3

CONCLUSION

Works Cited

Desai Karina, “ Psychology of Dance Medicine: Self-Perspective of Dance”

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1460&context=senior_theses#:~:text

=perception%20of%20dancers.-,DANCE%20ENVIRONMENT,and%20higher%20levels%20of

%20stress
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Zhang, Nannan, et al. “Effects of Fitness Dance and Funny Running on Anxiety of Female Ph.D.

Candidates.” Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), vol. 15, no. 2, 2023, pp. 1-11,

https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021118