It’s National Dance Day and we are thrilled! The research on the health benefits is extensive. We are grateful to Nigel Lythgoe and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton for starting this awareness day in 2010. You need no studio and no routine to take part. A song in the kitchen counts. Let’s dive into why we should all incorporate some dance moves into our wellness routine!
Your body reads dancing as safety
Your nervous system looks after your safety all day, faster than your thinking can follow. It takes cues from your breathing and how much you are moving, then sets your stress response from there. A hard week keeps you braced. Dancing changes the cues in about the length of one song.
Put on music and your breathing deepens while your heart rate climbs and settles. Your muscles burn through the stress chemicals that collect when you sit with worry. Your attention moves to where your foot lands next, which buys you a few minutes away from the conversation you keep replaying. You have felt this if you ever left a dance floor lighter than you arrived.
The Research:
Dancing and the aging brain
Joe Verghese and his team at Albert Einstein College of Medicine followed 469 adults over the age of 75 for a median of five years, tracking their leisure activities. Among the physical activities in the study, the researchers found lower dementia rates only among the dancers. People who danced more than once a week carried a 76% lower risk than people who danced once in a while. Swimmers and cyclists showed no significant difference.
The team observed people rather than assigning them to activities, so the finding gives us an association and not a cause. Their explanation for the difference holds up: dancing asks you to hold a rhythm and recall a sequence at the same time, and your brain builds capacity doing both.
Moving in time with other people
Bronwyn Tarr and Robin Dunbar at Oxford ran a series of experiments on groups of strangers dancing together. Participants who moved in sync had higher pain thresholds afterward and reported feeling closer to their group. Participants who danced out of sync showed neither effect. In a later trial, the team blocked endorphin uptake with naltrexone, the rise in pain threshold vanished, and they read that as evidence for endorphins.
Loneliness carries real health risks for older adults and teenagers alike. You can walk into a Zumba class or onto a wedding dance floor and belong there without saying a word.
Dance at Flawless
Our team has built dance into wellness programming for years.
Bernadette Pleasant, a grief educator and somatic healer in our Flawless family, created Femme!, a practice pairing movement and sound so people can release grief that words cannot reach. Trained in African, Tribal, and Free Dance, she teaches that your body holds what you have not yet put into words, and that moving is how you let it go. Her Flawless Talk, Shake It Out: Movement, Grief, and Somatic Healing, walks you through where to begin.
Jennifer Baez, our wellness facilitator, brings somatic movement and chair yoga to workshops with NAMI Palm Beach County, where participants follow every movement from a seat. “As they begin to move, breathe, and reconnect with their bodies, there’s a visible softening,” she told us. “Their posture lifts, their expressions brighten, and they become more present and at ease.” Alongside our partners at Digital Vibez and the Let’s Move 365 initiative, those sessions end in a dance party.
Ways to celebrate National Dance Day
Pick a song you loved at seventeen and play it loud while you cook. Hand a playlist to your kids and let them run it. American Dance Movement posts a free routine each year that you can learn at home, and studios across the country open their doors for the day.
If standing is hard, dance seated. Roll your shoulders and let your feet keep time. Chair dancing reaches your nervous system the same way, and three minutes of it is enough to feel something change. There are lots of dance classes online including chair tap dancing and ballet.
For someone living with mental health challenges, dance belongs on the prescription pad alongside therapy and medication. National Dance Day is an invitation to give yourself one song and notice where you are at the end of it. Happy Dancing, Flawless Family!
