OF DANCE & FITNESS
Physical activity is an absolute must for people of all ages! But it doesn’t have to be so boring or gruelling that you quit within a week. Dancing is an activity that has been around for thousands of years and is inclusive of everyone - you don’t need to be fit or flexible to join. Bollywood dancing is an expressive fusion of many different dance forms like bhangra, jazz, hip-hop and kathak, which is often seen in popular Bollywood movies. Below are a few physical and mental health benefits of joining a Bollywood dancing class:
1. Boosts your mood
Any kind of exercise helps release serotonin in the human body. As many of you may know already, serotonin is the “feel-good” hormone that stabilizes our moods. While low levels of it have been known to cause anxiety, depression and sleep problems, having the right levels could help with digestion, fix sleep cycles and promote overall well-being. Apart from just the chemical reaction, dance also distracts you from your negative thoughts and helps you focus on the present. Bollywood dance in particular is a form that is full of joy, cheer and laughter so you could never go wrong with it when looking for a pick-me-up!
2. Improves heart and lung health
Dancing is one of the funnest ways to get your cardio on! But why exactly is it important to do cardio? The term comes from the Greek word Kardia, which means heart. In the fitness world, cardio refers to any exercise that can get raise your heart rate and keep it up for a while. Such workouts help prevent a host of heart and lung diseases like stroke, hypertension, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and more. Simply put, during a Bollywood dance class, your heart and lungs are pushed harder to keep up with your body and become stronger as a result.
3. Promotes balance and strength
BollyDazz Fitness is a full-body workout, meaning that activates all your muscles when you get into the rhythm of it. This helps tone and strengthen all of your muscles at the same time. You’ll start to notice the changes in your regular life after a while, like being able to pick up heavier items more easily. Research has also shown that dancing can actually result in changes in the brain that are associated with improved balance, which generally tends to deteriorate with age. Essentially then, regular dancing could keep you feeling much younger!
4. Helps you socialize more
Even before COVID-19, we were living in a world that was facing an increasing occurrence of loneliness, which has a major impact on mental and physical health in the long term. It has been building for years, and efforts were even being made to combat it, like the bar called Hitori that opened in Tokyo, open only to people who came alone. But then the pandemic came and we had to step away from all kinds of outings and gathering for our own safety. Spending months alone at a time has now made it even harder for some to enter social situations. BollyDancing Choreo classes are a celebration of movement and music but they’re also famous for bringing people of all ages and backgrounds together in their common love for dance!
5. Builds stamina
The elevator breaks down and you’re having to climb up to the seventh floor with your friend but you don’t want to be the first one to show that you're out of breath - trust us, we’ve all been there! Most of us are often embarrassed to admit how much stamina we really have. But nothing changes if you don’t do anything about it. Building up your stamina is not only about your pride - increased stamina can keep you energized on long days and focused on stressful ones. Dancing helps train your muscles into enduring more and heart to beat faster, resulting in improved stamina over time. A few months of regular classes will actually have you choosing to take the staircase instead.
6. Keeps your mind sharp
We’ve established that dancing can help you focus better in everyday life but do the cognitive benefits go deeper than that? Absolutely. A new study published in Brain Sciences has shown that dance training can slow down the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease over time. Another one published in 2018 suggests that dance improves “global cognition, cognitive flexibility, working memory, verbal fluency, and learning”. The evidence will keep on piling if you go looking and the broader lesson here remains that dancing is not just a workout for your body but also one for your brain.
7. Strengthens the bones
Bollywood dancing is a high-impact exercise, meaning that it involves moves like jumps that take both your feet off the ground. Research studies have shown that such kind of exercise can keep your joints healthy and increase bone mass density, especially in older women. This could reduce the risk of injuries such as fractures and developing bone diseases with increasing age. While the loss of bone density is a natural part of growing older, preventative measures like Bollywood dancing classes could help delay its effects.
Conclusion
Given our unhealthy lifestyles (sitting for a major part of the day, eating out daily and sleeping for far fewer hours than we’re supposed to), it’s important to do as much damage control as possible to lead long and healthy lives. Given all the benefits mentioned above, we assure you that Bollywood dancing can bring that balance into your life. You can even take a virtual class, to begin with. So what are you waiting for? Book your first session today!
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