Dance by Tanya Zilberter Probably the most readily understood example of connection between body-movement and Body-mind could be a dance.

Dance

Probably the most readily understood example of connection betweenbody-movement and Bodymind could be a dance. There is possibly no singleculture that doesn't contain dance as one of the most important parts ofits social and spiritual life.

We know healing dances of medicine people and shamans, as well as religious, social, ritual, meditative dance. We know refined dances using sophisticated languages of strictly determined postures and movements, which are considered classical in cultures, which have given birth to them. We know rebellious art of Isidora Duncan who striven to liberate dance from formal restrictions of European classical dance and who trusted natural body language and intuitive means of self-expression.

Dance can be seen as external interpretation of internal processes. As in the principle "Smile!" which states that a happy facial expression gives a feedback eliciting a true feeling of happiness, dance postures and movement naturally corresponding to positive emotional experience, help to improve mood and state of the mind.

There is, however, something mysterious in a power of dance. As we mentioned above, a whole is something more than a sum of its components. So dance is more than whatever we would try to divide it into. This is a non-verbal language, which gives a rest to cognitively overwhelmed people. This is an ancientinstrumentality for sincerest communication possible. Dance makes you exerciseemotional intensity (as well as muscles groups) that we rarely use in oureveryday living. It seems like when we dance, our souls themselves emergeto touch the physical realm we live in.

Dance can endure anything and has been never destroyed by combinationwith any healing movement program. The Bodymind Workout is an option forthose who consider contemporary aerobics too noisy, Yoga - too static, TaiChi - too far from Western tradition, and pure dance not enough for-fitness.Among my students, there were professional tennis players with joint problemsand dancers with back problems, because neither tennis nor dance are notdesigned to be orthopaedically optimal (e.g., Sports Medicine, 19(5): 341-357, 1995). They give you a lot of fun, cardiovascular fitness,wonderful body, but not healthy spine, knees and hip joints.

In our class, we had ladies in their 70's with severe arthritis, Yogaand Tai-Chi teachers, girls taking ballet classes or modern, people who lovedclassical music or people who just disliked anything else. I am proud tosay that a number of intuitive and energy healers who tried or participated in the class, ranked this program positively from the point of view of energy they felt there.

I am going to post two pieces concerning dance: this one and the chapter on dance therapy. I decided against uniting them into one part because of their quite principal difference including the difference in impact theyput upon the Bodymind Workout.