From physical fitness to a better mood: The health benefits of dancing

'When people engage in different types of social dance, there’s a measurable change in their mood'

DANCING is becoming a lost art but as Ruby Millington explains, it’s good for both your health and wellbeing.

 

You should be dancing, sang the Bee Gees. And according to Dr Peter Lovatt – aka Dr Dance, – who runs the Dance Psychology Lab at the University of Hertfordshire, that’s sound advice.

“The health benefits of dancing are well-established,” he explains. “When people engage in different types of social dance, there’s a measurable change in their mood.

They become less fatigued, less depressed, their levels of vigour go up and there are positive changes in their cognitive processing. Even five minutes of dancing makes people think more sharply and laterally.”

Dancing also promotes physical fitness – it contributes to heart and lung health, is a great workout for toning and strengthening muscles, helps maintain a healthy weight and strengthens the bones.  

 



Dancing is healthy, fun and back in the day was the way many of us met our partners



Dancing is healthy, fun and back in the day was the way many of us met our partners. It’s unfortunate then that, as a nation, we seem to be hanging up our dancing shoes. Almost half the nightclubs in Britain have closed over the last decade, including the legendary Hammersmith Palais, which was recently rebuilt as halls of residence with dancing restricted to Zumba classes in the gym.

Industry experts blame a range of factors – the smoking ban, people pre-loading with cheap drinks before they go out, the recession – but whatever the reason, and our addiction to Strictly Come Dancing notwithstanding, our dancehall days are in decline.

According to Dr Lovatt, another part of the problem is cultural. “Years ago a lot of social dancing happened cross-generationally. At a Butlins, there would be one entertainment hub where everybody would dance and enjoy themselves together.

Now we segregate dancing into age groups – for children, for teenagers or the elderly. In France and Italy, where on summer’s evenings there might be bands playing in squares or parks and people dancing in the open, it’s wonderfully inclusive. But here we only get glimpses of it at things like family weddings. We’ve made dance a little too exclusive and consequently people have stopped doing it.”

 



Dancing is a great workout for toning and strengthening muscles



It’s a sad state of affairs that Dr Lovatt is determined to rectify. “We’ve done surveys about why people don’t dance and the reasons people give for not dancing socially are to do with self-confidence,” he explains. “They don’t know what to do and feel they’ll be judged, so dancing has become something they do secretly at home.

“In fact,” he maintains, “nobody has two left feet. What they do have is a kind of layer of anxiety wrapped around their body and, when you’re anxious about moving, you tense your muscles which makes it very difficult to feel a rhythm.

I don’t teach people how to dance – I work with them to shake off their psychological anxiety and, once you get rid of that, they can move beautifully.”

Interestingly, he adds, people are less inhibited when they have set steps and moves to follow – whether it’s a tango or Gangnam Style. “I do a lot of dance events and if I get people doing something they already know then everyone gets up and starts moving. But if you try freestyle dancing – here’s some music, get on and dance – people don’t dance for very long, if at all,” he says.

 

Five minutes of dancing makes people think more sharply and laterally

At least not in public. In the comfort of our kitchen with the radio on, it can be a different story. That’s because, despite our performance anxiety, we are, points out Dr Lovatt, born to dance. “There’s something called sensory-motor coupling and we know that all humans engage in this and feel an urge to move in response to rhythmic stimuli,” he explains. 

“We’ve surveyed many thousands of people looking at dance confidence across their life spans and we know people use dance in different ways at different stages of their lives. Two-day-old babies can perceive rhythm, five-month-old babies will shake their bodies in response to it and, by the age of four, we can move our bodies in time with music.”

Dancing is also primal and biologically driven so it’s no surprise that, until very recently, it served as part of the courtship ritual.

 

“You can really tell through dancing whether you are compatible with someone rhythmically,” points out Dr Lovatt. “I’m sure we all remember slow-dancing with someone we found attractive visually but at the end thinking, ‘No, that’s not going to work.’ Whereas other people we’re not attracted to visually, but when we dance there’s a huge connection.

We’ve lost that now, which is a real shame. If I mention the end-of-the-evening slow dance to students, they look at me like they don’t know what the hell I’m talking about!” 

So maybe it’s time to get those dancing shoes back on. 

Visit peterlovatt.com.