Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, act, and feel. It also has an impact on how we handle stress, make choices, or even relate to others. Some warning signs of mental illness can be
1. Long-lasting sadness or irritability
2. Extreme high and low moods
3. Excessive fear, worry or anxiety
4. Social withdrawals
5. Dramatic changes in eating or sleeping habits
Mental and emotional health is important because it is vital at every stage of our life from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Over the course of your life, if you experience a problem with your mental health it is vital to find an outlet of expression or leisure such as dance.
Have you ever just felt alive on the dance floor? From weddings and holiday parties to aerobic classes or dance lessons, the movement of the body often just has such a positive impact on our mood. Dance can improve your physical health, muscle strength, balance and coordination and can help reduce depression. It is just such a universal language; with dance you can tell a story or simply express exactly how you feel without saying a single word. Emotions are sometimes very difficult to express verbally, which is why most people lead to the suppression of their emotions, which can also have a very negative affect on you mental health.
I can sit here and type statistics or I can tell you my story on how dance saved my life. I am personally a dancer myself and struggle with the expression of my emotions verbally. During a time in my life I was going through a tremendous amount of emotions and kept it bottled in for months. No one knew what was going on until it started to eat me alive and show in my everyday life. I became unmotivated, had social withdrawals, extreme mood changes and just very irritable. All my loved ones were very concerned but for some reason I just could not get it out in words, so I danced! I choreographed my own story and told them through movement. I felt every single emotion leave my soul, the anger, the sadness, the months of confusion slowly drifted away and when the piece was done, I was rushed with affection form my loved ones. The feeling of finally expressing how I felt to them is indescribable. As I do understand dance cannot always be a way of communication, it can still just be an outlet whether for your emotions or just for fun. Letting your body be free and move is what dance is really about! Who says you have to be good? It just has to make you feel good!
Aside from the movement, other benefits are the music or becoming more connected and social with others. Dancing is not only for the young generation we can all get up and groove. Whether it be Zumba, sit down chair dancing or just playing the cha-cha slide in your room. I guarantee it will put a smile on your face. While dancing should never replace seeking out for professional help, it can be one tool to stay healthy.
I challenge you to play a song a day and just dance either by yourself or with friends and see how you start to feel daily.
Thanks for reading guys!
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