How Dance Helps with Mental Health

Dance helps mental health, as well as keeping you active and moving. Dance saved my life. That probably sounds like exaggeration but it is true. I have struggled with insecurities my entire life. I had body image issues. I was overweight. I had a medical condition called Hyperhidrosis that caused my hands to sweat excessively. I struggled with loneliness since I was 13 years old and dance rescued me. So from personal experience, here are 3 things dance can do for your mental health.

Dance Helps You Find a Family

I believe the world’s greatest problem is loneliness. But once I started taking dance classes, I felt a little less lonely. Suddenly, I had these classmates who just were there to have fun, and we connected and cheered each other’s wins and helped each other learn. I had two left feet and none of the other classmates made me feel bad about myself. The volunteers at the school were supportive as well, always cheering me on. Every time I’d go to the social, people would be smiling and they would want to dance with me, even though I wasn’t a great dancer. At one point I was social dancing six times a week. The thing that kept me coming back was the connections that I was making with my dance family.

Confidence from Competence

When you practice and work at getting good at something, that confidence splashes into every other part of your life. I was not a good dancer. I was awkward. Slowly, as I started to improve through lots of hard work, I started to find confidence in myself. Working hard, weekly, consistently, and seeing improvements started to affect me off the dance floor. I just started to walk with my head a little bit higher, I started to feel a little bit better about myself even if other parts of my life weren’t going great.

Stress Relief

Whatever gets you moving and out of your head is good for you. Dance is an escape. Whenever something wasn’t going well – my mom had cancer, I had a crisis at school, relationship issues – whatever it was, dance let me escape and relieve some of that stress.. Dancing is a form of meditation but it is way more fun to do because you actually have someone in front of you (at least in Latin dancing) that is ebbing and flowing with you.  As you dance your heart rate goes up, you’re physically more active you HAVE to be present in the moment. Most pain is caused by either our past or the anxiety of something in the future.By focussing on the present, your pain dissipates.

There are so many more benefits I can share with you why dancing is AMAZING for mental health but I will leave you with this. Dance saved my life. It can definitely help your mental health. So don’t wait and book your first dance class, because your only regret will be

“Why didn’t I do this sooner”

Find out more about the health benefits of dance by clicking here.

I can’t wait to welcome you to our big family, have you come in week to week, have fun, connect with new friends, and let loose to amazing Latin songs. Click here to check our current schedule.

If you have any questions you would like me to answer here are some ways you can contact me: message me on Instagram (torontodanceSalsa), on Twitter (#torontodanceSalsa), on Facebook (Toronto Dance Salsa) or email me at [email protected].