Wellness Journaslim: Boogie on the Brain

There is a West African saying: “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.” Personally, I would debate this. I suspect that a person who can’t talk might still be able to sing, and a person who can’t walk might still be able to dance, because singing and dancing engage different pathways in the brain. The point is, however, that every person has a unique song and dance.



Walking might get you from point A to point B, but dancing takes you into another dimension. I’m not talking about the dancing you do (or don’t do) when you are trying to impress somebody across the room. I am talking about the dancing you do when you are being yourself, attention focused solely on music and movement and your own precious mind-body connection. Hopping, skipping, sliding, wiggling, leaping, swinging, shaking, kicking. The creative nature of dance is profound; it is a body language, a basic form of authentic communication. It puts you in touch with yourself.

As such, dance is an especially effective medium for therapy. Based in the belief that body, mind and spirit are interconnected, dance therapy is defined as "the psychotherapeutic use of movement as a process that furthers the emotional, cognitive, social and physical integration of the individual" by the American Dance Therapy Association. Dancing goes back to primitive times, and magical powers have been attributed to it. The shaman dances to exorcise evil spirits from a sick person. During the Middle Ages people even danced to avoid the plague. The Tarantella of Italy is believed to have originated after a poisonous spider’s bite caused tarantism, and the cure for it was a jumping dance.

I recently “invented” a dance called Happy Fingers. It works well if you are in the car, at work or school, or anyplace that isn’t condusive to jigging feet. The idea is that you allow your hands and fingers to move to the music, as little representatives of your entire body. Your hands and fingers have incredible powers of expression!

So you think you can’t dance? It’s a travesty that a person would voluntarily carry a belief that blocks booty bumping. Neither judge nor jury has real power over your groove; it’s completely up to you. Make your move.