Any form of dance can be used as a method of therapy. It reduces mental stress as it creates a way for all the negativity to pass through physical exhaustion. According to experts, any type of physical exercise helps in creating a happy ambience and makes one feel at ease.
Shaw Bronner, an associate professor of Physical Therapy at Northeastern University examines how dance and other activities can develop healthier habits among people. Being a dancer herself, she could understand and analyse the skills and demands of this art and was able to construct an in-house program for dancers. Further, she was successful in reducing the total number of injuries in dance and was able to save the company member’s time.
Her work also includes examining biomechanics of break dancers and the effects of video games on motor learning. There is a scope of training patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease with the help of her continuing research in dance.
The method of dance medicine also tends to show an area of research in the correlation between dance and memory. A dancer can perform an act even if it is not practised for a long time. This proves that the steps remain in memory for a long time. Therefore, dancing is said to improve cognitive domains and it reduces the risk of dementia. Even after all the benefits that dance medicine promises to offer, the field of sports medicine is far more developed.
It is not just an amalgamation of talent and performance, but also fitness and treatment that dance medicine offers. Health benefits like the improved condition of heart, lungs, muscle tone, and strength are guaranteed by this fun and full-body workout. This turns out to be the most amazing factor of dance medicine where it involves treating dancers as artists and not just athletes.
Akshara Palshetkar
