If living in isolation from my usual tribe has taught me nothing else, it is how essential dance is for making my brain feel good and healthy. But being the person I am, it wasn’t enough to just have it feel good, I wanted to know why it was good too.

Dancing helps you make split-second decisions

When you dance, even just a session of lounge room disco, you are enhancing your ability to make decisions on the fly. You hear the music, and within a moment of hearing it, you are making decisions on what part of your body to move. It doesn’t matter if you’re following a choreography or doing your best in the moment, every finger twitch and footstep is a decision your brain is working on.

It improves your memory

Brains, like bodies, love repetition. They both love repeating movements and link into their own individual memories. Muscle memory comes from the body repeating movements and likewise, all the practise saving things into muscle memory helps improve your day to day memory.

This improvement in memory also looks like it may help stave off some of the degenerative illnesses related to the brain like dementia.

Stress management

Imagine a beautifully relaxing lake with water lapping at your feet. Now imagine the amazing brain awakening moment when the song comes to an end and you’re left standing feeling completely empty and happy.

There are many ways to reduce stress and dance is one of the best and least invasive ones! The joy of moving freely and without any worry helps calm frayed nerves and can calm anxious feelings. There’s a good reason they say music soothes the savage beast and there’s a lot of music involved in dancing.

Plus it helps us connect to fun and happy memories, which can also help promote feeling good.

Just a few small insights into the reasons why dancing makes us feel fantastic. But there’s one which isn’t here, which is my favourite. When I dance, I feel free.

Free to be me.

Free from every day things. From having to live up to expectations, or having to do what is required of me. I get to lift myself beyond this, to being above, around and beyond everything.

Plus, it feels good.

Want to experience the fun of belly dancing? Why not check out a class with APB Dance. It’s all about working out how our bodies work and having a good time while we do it.