Module 014 – Role of Dance in Managing Stress

Articles stressing the role of Dance in Managing Stress

Engaging in regular physical activity can make a big difference in the amount of stress you
feel and how you deal with anxiety.
This is why exercising is widely considered to work to reduce stress. Many health
specialists recommend exercise as a way to relieve stress and anxiety (as well as mild
depression).
Regular exercise, besides being helpful for reducing stress, can also boost your self-
confidence.
One highly effective form of exercise is dance. Dancing can reduce stress and alleviate some
of the physical tension that comes with it.
Because many forms of dance allow for freedom of expression and creativity, dance can
also be beneficial to kids and adolescents who have anxiety problems.
Dance therapy can be less rigid and structured than traditional therapy. This makes it more
accessible to some children and teens, who may rebel against the more formal therapeutic
approaches.
An article from China describes how young women in the cities are using dance therapy to
ease their stress. The article mentions how many of them go to dance therapy studios after
work to get some exercise and forget their anxiety for a while.
Dancing can be challenging as well as fun, so it is ideal for people who want to take their
mind off troubling things and focus their energies on something positive.
Dance is an outlet for emotional expression, stress reduction and creativity that benefits
youth during stressful situations by channeling their energy positively and helping them
bond with peers. Dance was also found to increase life satisfaction, according to a 2008
study in the American Journal of Health Education.
Jacqueline Bonsee, a senior modern and classical languages major, said she dances for fun
and exercise at least once a week, preferably more.
"Everything about dancing is amazing. It releases endorphins, which makes me happy,
keeps me active, and it's the best stress reliever because it makes me feel so free," she said.
"Everybody dances in the car and in their rooms, but there is something so great about the
experience of going out and dancing in public. I'm naturally a shy person, so it forces me to
get out of my shell and is a great way to meet people."
Dancing may be a more viable alternative for those who view traditional exercise
negatively.
"There should be a variety of physical activities available to people and not just what our
culture currently thinks is important, such as football or jogging," said Brenda Goodwin,

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instructor in the health, physical education and recreation department. "Practically
everyone listens to music, so dance is a great alternative to more traditional exercise."
Goodwin, who teaches many dance classes, said dance has been shown to stimulate brain
function.
"Study after study has shown that children who are exposed to rhythm learn better; plus,
we know movement increases the capacity to learn," she said. "Choreographed dance aids
memory function since you have to remember the steps. Even social dance, when you don't
have to remember combinations, works your brain because it wants to make your body
move and change with the rhythm. There have also been studies showing tha t dancing can
stall dementia in elderly people."
Goodwin said dancing raises your heart rate if you move for long enough and with at least a
little effort.
"You also work muscles you might not normally use," she said. "I recently saw a video
about why there were no fitness centers in the 1950s, and it shows a huge crowd of people
swinging all over a dance floor and having a great time doing it. We need more of that now."
There are all sorts of other benefits that people don't think about in dance classe s, said
Ruth Barnes, associate professor of dance and dance program coordinator.
"You're working on yourself in a group, so you begin understanding spatial relationships
between yourself and other people," she said. "You learn how much space you occupy and
need without running into other people, which brings awareness of negotiating space and
time that you might not have had before."
Barnes said dance is a language in a way.
"If it's not in your family, dance is often an alien language," she said. "That's a cultural
reason people may not dance. Otherwise, people who don't dance might be insecure or not
in touch with their bodies. Dancing helps with both of those (issues)."
Barnes suggested putting music on in your room, closing your eyes and dancing by yours elf
to loosen up if you aren't a dancer.
Goodwin said she has noticed people in her dance classes who are very hesitant about
dance at first because they aren't used to it.
"Once we get going on it, you can see students take to it and really start enjoying it," she
said. "Dance can be very freeing. I tell students to leave all their baggage outside the
dancing and, for as long as they can spare, do something for them. Dance with wild
abandonment because, really, who cares what you look like? Nobody, because they're
worried about what they're doing."

Stress is an inevitable part of life. Seven out of ten adults in the United States say they
experience stress or anxiety daily, and most say it interferes at least moderately with their
lives, according to the most recent ADAA survey on stress and anxiety disorders. When
the American Psychological Association surveyed people in 2008, more people reported
physical and emotional symptoms due to stress than they did in 2007, and nearly half
reported that their stress has increased in the past year.
 It’s impossible to eliminate, but you can learn to manage stress, and most people usually
do. According to a recent ADAA online poll, some 14 percent of people make use of regular
exercise to cope with stress. Others reported talking to friends or family (18 percent);
sleeping (17 percent); watching movies or TV (14 percent), as well as eating (14 percent)
and listening to music (13 percent).
While all of these are well-known coping techniques, exercise may be the one most
recommended by health care professionals. And among ADAA poll takers who exercise, a
healthy percentage is already on the right track: Walking (29 percent), running (20
percent), and yoga (11 percent) are their preferred strategies.
Exercising Body and Mind
The physical benefits of exercise—improving physical condition and fighting disease—
have long been established, and physicians always encourage staying physically active.
Exercise is also considered vital for maintaining mental fitness, and it can red uce stress.
Studies show that it is very effective at reducing fatigue, improving alertness and
concentration, and at enhancing overall cognitive function. This can be especially helpful
when stress has depleted your energy or ability to concentrate.
When stress affects the brain, with its many nerve connections, the rest of the body feels
the impact as well. So it stands to reason that if your body feels better, so does your mind.
Exercise and other physical activity produce endorphins—chemicals in the brain that act as
natural painkillers—and also improve the ability to sleep, which in turn reduces stress.
Meditation, acupuncture, massage therapy, even breathing deeply can cause your body to
produce endorphins. And conventional wisdom holds that a workout of low to moderate
intensity makes you feel energized and healthy.
Scientists have found that regular participation in aerobic exercise has been shown to
decrease overall levels of tension, elevate and stabilize mood, improve sleep, and improve
self-esteem. Even five minutes of aerobic exercise can stimulate anti-anxiety effects.
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In the Oscar-winning movie Silver Linings Playbook, Pat, a monomaniac who refuses to face
the breakup with his ex-wife, and Tiffany, a widow whose life is a mess after her husband's
death, heal their wounds by preparing for a dancing competition together.
They forget their troubles when they focus on practicing the jumps and lifts. They build up
trust and love for each other with silent touches rather than flashy words.
Dancing turns out to be a miracle drug for the two mentally ill people.
And it also has become a trendy antidote to stress among young Chinese, especially urban
female white-collar workers, in the past three years.
After a day of exhausting work, they go to "dance therapy" studios, which are usually in or
near their cities' central business districts and thus not far from their offices; take off their
high heels; and put on sportswear to learn about their own bodies so as to release the
emotions locked in the shells.
Wang Yuchi is the first dance therapist in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, and
has been offering the service at the Sun Flower Counseling Center since 2010.

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She has given dance therapy courses to about 50 people, each 10-week course carried out
among a group of only five or six people.
A weekly class begins with participants relaxing their bodies by doing whatever
movements they want to do. They are asked to put aside rational thinking and to just follow
what they feel.
Then Wang will guide participants to observe and imitate each other's movements and
share what they guess their teammates are feeling. "Remarks from others can help a self -
restrained person to crack open the body to feel the emotions inside," Wang said.
Only when trust is built within a group will Wang start individual case studies. During a
case study, the therapist designs movements for a particular participant to follow based on
previous in-depth personal interviews in order to put the person in a situation similar to
the one where he or she got the emotional scar.
The other members in the group surround their teammate to offer a sense of security,
holding the person's hand when he or she gets too emotional and thus shakes and tumbles.
They also listen to the person baring the old wound.
"The team's support is vital for dance therapy's effect," Wang said. "I shut down
newcomers outside a group. Otherwise it will harm the trust within the group. And I will
suspend the class if any member is absent."
Effective therapy
Wang said dance therapy is more than stress relief. It can help bridge people's physical
movement and mental activity to root out the source of emotional problems. It is also an
effective adjunctive therapy for mental illnesses.
Tony Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Inspirees Institute of Creative Arts Therapy which offers
training programs to professionals in China to help them become dance therapists, points
out some common misunderstandings about dance therapy.
"Some people think that only professional dancers are able to do the course. But dance
therapy is not dancing performance. It doesn't require participants to strike a ballet pose.
How you move your body is up to you. Self-expression is what matters," Zhou said.
On the contrary, some people take dance therapy superficially for the purpose of physical
relaxation similar to yoga.
"What makes dance therapy special is its combination of art and science. Besides modern
dance, it also involves psychotherapy and Laban Movement Analysis," said Zhou, a member
of an international advisory board for the UK journal Body, Movement and Dance in
Psychotherapy. LMA is a method and language for describing, visualizing, interpreting and
documenting all varieties of human movement.
"Dance therapy cures people's emotional problems by bridging their physical movement
and mental activity. The inconsistency of the two is the cause of emotional problems."
Dance therapist Wang further explains this kind of creative arts therapy with a metaphor: If
a person is a tree, then his brain is the crown, reaching out all the time for sunlight and
raindrops that can nurture the tree's growth. The roots are the person's emotions closely
 related to his inner self. What is between the crown and the root is the trunk — the
person's body.
"A tree won't survive if the trunk, the passageway through which the crown and the roots
exchange the nutrition they've got, is blocked. Dance therapy aims at relaxing the excessive
restrictions on a person's body to connect his rational thinking and emotional feeling,"
Wang said.
She added that dance therapy also aims at clearing the "rotted roots", referring to the old
wounds that the person ignores.
A health challenge
Chinese people's keen interest in dance therapy is also shown in the upsurge of workshops
across the country where experts from the US and Europe are invited to teach local dance-
therapists-to-be the theories and skills. For example, IICAT scheduled four such workshops
and training courses in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong from April 25 to June 16.
Faced with fast economic growth and social transitions, many Chinese are exhausted
keeping up with hectic urban life or feel lost in handling the social changes. Therefore,
mental problems are becoming a common health challenge in the country nowadays.
"China lacks a well-developed psychotherapy system, so people don't have many options
for therapy. They will try on various ways to reduce their pressure, such as yoga and
medication. When dance therapy appeared as a new option, they were quickly attracted,"
Zhou said.
Those pioneers who are promoting dance therapy in China are optimistic about its
prospects in the country.
Hu Shenzhi, founder of Sun Flower Counseling Center, offered Wang the opportunity to
carry out dance therapy at his center in 2010 because Hu believed it is a tradition in
Chinese culture for people to achieve physical and mental health through moving their
body.
"The tradition can be seen in tai chi and wuqinxi, a physical exercise that imitates the
movements of five animals and is said to be created by noted physician Hua Tuo nearly
2,000 years ago. But at that time, people didn't realize the connection between body
movement and mental activity yet," Hu said.
Zhou from IICAT points out that dance therapy, if carried out in groups, fits in with Chine se
people's need to blend into society.
"Chinese society is suffering a credibility crisis, with people mentally isolating themselves
and lacking a sense of belonging," Zhou said.
"Divided into groups to undergo dance therapy, patients can learn how to ble nd into
society through learning to blend into the small groups first."
The advocate of dance therapy hopes people can see its potential of being applied in a
wider range of social groups besides stressed urban white-collars.
"For those who have difficulty in verbal communication, for example, autistic children and
senile old people, dancing is a better way of self-expression than struggling for words and
sentences," Zhou said.

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References and Supplementary Materials
Online Supplementary Reading Materials
1. Dance can help you manage stress; http://anxietyfreechild.com/dance-can-help-you-
manage-stress/; September 28, 2017
2. Dancing boosts health, relieves stress; http://www.the-standard.org/life/dancing-
boosts-health-relieves-stress/article_63b27627-c2cc-59cd-832c-14c8a2319487.html;
September 28, 2017
3. Physical Activity Reduces Stress; https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-
illnesses/other-related-conditions/stress/physical-activity-reduces-st; September 28,
2017
4. Dance becomes popular stress relief; http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-
06/28/content_16676453.htm; September 28, 2017