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When I dance, I feel good! Haven’t you seen me smiling? Asks Mary Jingo. It is the best exercise ever, she says. “I am always dancing in church.”

Jingo a born again Christian will dance anywhere even at home but church provides an assured opportunity for her to dance, something she very much loves.

“Every Sunday I dance to the maximum, even when I go to pray. During the week I dance, you know there is a lot of music in church how can I sit around and mop?” she asks, amused.

“When we start praising what do we do? We dance. You shake your body, raise your hand and praise the lord, then how can you feel bad, can you? No!  you can’t.”

“Dancing is a good exercise—the best. When you are refreshed and you feel good, you come home hungry, enjoy food because you have been dancing,” she says.

Why dance is good for your mental and physical wellbein

It is an easy thing to do that has so many benefits, says Susan Akori Ekemu a Senior physiotherapist at Mulago Specialised Women and Neonatal Hospital.

She is also the National Physical Impairment Classifier of Paralympics Games in Uganda.

“First of all dancing is fun, and then you are healthy, being healthy in a fun way is so easy,” says Akori. She loves to dance.

“It removes stress both mentally and physically,” she says. “Every time I dance I feel light, I feel happy, and I think it’s the same for everyone.”

“Every time I dance I make sure I dance until I sweat. Even when I go to hangout, when dancing, I tell my friends you know what I am doing aerobics, because you feel good, you feel light,” she says.

“I look at dance as a physical activity (an exercise). First of all, it improves your heart and lungs. Every time you dance, it exercises your heart muscle, it gains strength and it has improved ability to pump blood to the lungs and to the whole body.”

“When someone is having a sedentary lifestyle, the heart and lungs are not that active but when someone starts dancing and the heart gets pumping, it has this demand from the muscle that we need oxygen, so that heart and muscle have to come into play.’

“The heart has to pump the blood to supply all the muscles because of the demand for oxygen. So dancing, exercises the heart muscle improving your cardiac systems, improves blood circulation, of course when the heart muscle improves and also the lungs improves, there is also improved circulation of blood throughout the body,” says Akori.

She says as someone dances the muscles also gain strength. They improve in mass and size. This is because dancing starts improved protein synthesis (the muscle protein) hence the muscle size and the mass improve. It gets bigger.

But you can also get a different result. “When you are dancing and feeding the body (eating) you get bigger when you are dancing and dieting it will lead to weight loss. Dancing burns calories, you feel hungry, so when you eat you gain weight when you diet you lose weight,’ she explains.

In addition, dancing also improves the muscle tone.

‘Those with flabby muscles every time they dance (exercise) it firms. So dancing generally improves your muscle tone for people who want to be in shape, they can get it through muscle strengthening dance exercises (those aerobics),” says Akori.

Getting maximum benefits

For health and wellbeing, WHO recommends at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week (or the equivalent vigorous activity) for all adults.

WHO also recommends an average of 60 minutes of moderate aerobic physical activity per day for children and adolescents.

At whatever age you are in you can maximize your dancing, says Akori.

“If you dance for 150 minutes for us adults, that is the lowest you should do, 150 minutes of dancing makes you physically active.

“The most minutes you can take to dance as a physical exercise I believe is you listen to your body, you can only take in what your body can take in, if you go overboard you can burnout.

“But at every age you can maximize the benefit of dancing its good. The children have high energy they can really dance and when you grow older you can only dance a little but still you get the benefits of the heart, lung and muscle strength,” she says.

Research indicates that dance not only improves your mental health, memory, it also reduces pain and it is good for your brain and fitness.

Avoiding injury

For starters you take it slow, serious dancing is a skill, says Akori.  ‘There are people who know how to dance generally and there are those who do not know.

‘I have done salsa and I have to go through classes, I have to learn when you do not know to dance, take it slow as you learn but when you just twist suddenly you could hurt your knees, your joints, you just have to be careful and take it slow.

“For starters as you are dancing, start at low impact, low pace, do not use quick music,” she advises.

Low impact is jumping high, dances like running man; if you are dancing start at low impact, lower steps as you get better- because dancing finally improves flexibility.

But when you are just starting, you probably don’t have flexibility and coordination but as you keep dancing flexibility comes in play and the coordination is also there.

Also, as you keep dancing your bones gets stronger, says Akori.

“Dancing is good especially for the elderly but the low impact dances, because you are not going to tell an adult 60 years and above to start running, or go to the gym. There are those who do but the majority will just dance.

“Even when they have a small party at home you will see them dancing,” she says.

“There is something about dancing and strong bones, every time you dance there is this increased deposition of bone onto bone.

The bone adapts to that load so it makes you stronger and reduces the risk of osteoporosis. But, Akori advises against diving deep into dance exercise for first timers more so the elderly.

‘For them most of their bones are osteoporotic, they are light, weak, so you have to be careful when you are making elders dance. But as they continue dancing their bones get stronger, the bones get denser,” she says.

Every 29 April is International Dance Day, a day set aside by the International Dance Council to promote public awareness of the art of dance, which comes with health benefits.

Can you dance alone, what are the alternatives?

Yes, you can dance alone, dance in your room in front of the mirror, if you are shy and don’t want to be in public, says Akori

“Everyone should dance it’s a good thing, a good feeling. If alone in the house dance.”

“If a person is shy, I don’t even think they can come for dance exercises because they will find other people.

“So depending on what benefits a person wants from physical exercises, the same benefits can be derived from alternatives such as jogging, swimming, or brisk walking.

“Someone can also use a stationary bicycle or the treadmill for physical exercises, which they can do in their personal space. Even jogging, swimming, or brisk walking, can be done in your personal space if you are shy,” she says. However, you miss the social aspect, but perhaps they socialize elsewhere.

Akori says through dancing you meet new people, when you are in a dance exercise group you learn new styles which can help you socialize.

But importantly dancing releases stress and it increases energy levels.

“Every I do dance exercises or when doing it regularly, there is that energy I have especially in the morning when I am waking up to go for work.

“But, when I am sedentary I am not exercising much even to walk from home to pick my car where I leave it parked is hard.  I feel lazy.

“However, when I dance because it’s an exercise, I feel light, there is this high energy, I am fast when doing things, light, lively,” she says.

“There is even a skin glow you get. when you dance and sweat it improves your skin, you glow, you are happy,” says Akori.

Injuries from dancing

They are simple twists and sprains, if you get a broken bone it wasn’t dance it was something else, says Johnson Mathew Oburu a registered Dance Coach and Instructor.

“Dancing since it’s a physically activity requires being in a good state mentally and physically to be able to do it,” he says.

Doing it Monday to Sunday (daily) is possible but it is not so good it calls for a lot energy, feeding, being in a fit mental state.

“I can tell myself I am going to do 30 minutes every day of dancing, but My recommendation is based on someone’s ability, age, mental state, body state.

“If someone is very okay that is mentally and physically they can do dancing at least three times a week and that is for 45-60 minutes, if you can’t do an hour at least do 45 minutes three times a week,” says Oburu.

‘If you are stronger you can do four five times a week but because you need to give your body rest that’s why you should not do it daily.

“The body needs to rest, the muscles, bones and brain you are using need to rest,” he says.

Worst to happen if you overstretch

Over using the body, the muscles, the bones will bring a tear down and wearing off of those muscles, and bones.

By having rest, you are helping the body to recover because it has the ability to recover itself, says Oburu.

“Every time you over use it, you re exceeding what we call the elasticity point either you will tear your muscles, injure your tissues or you will go into unnecessary fatigue and that’s not healthy.”

Recovery

If you dance and tear muscles or injure your body, you will for the start need to reduce the intensity of the injury by stretching, how you work out matters, says Oburu.

“If you can dance to the extent of getting an injury, it means it was intense. It comes down to I have to cool the body through stretching, then body rest; sleep or nap.

“Then get into the habit of proper nutrition composing of mainly vitamins that can help the tissue recover. A good meal will help you recover the proteins for body building and muscle growth, take in more carbohydrates that will help you boost in more energy.

“Another way to recover is having time to relax like taking deep breath and do some simply workouts like yoga.

“Take time to meditate to help the mental part of it that is the brain to recover from the tear down and also that will help you to recover your respiration and also for your cardiovascular system recover.

“When you rush to hospital they give you pain killers which have the tendency of making the body weak and making the muscle sleep, but physiotherapy does not agree with making the body totally dead, you have to keep it active through massage.

“When you rush to hospital and it’s a physical activity injury, the hospital will refer you to a physiotherapist and sometimes they have a connection with dance instructors, you might end up coming back to where you got the injury from.

“Let the instructor give you a go ahead if you are to go to hospital where you start explaining from but most times you have to understand how to recover or whoever is assisting you must understand.

Getting the most out of dance

I call mine the dance workout or dance fitness workout, it combines the dance and workout or fitness element.

The main purpose is to get fit, and all the results of working out such as losing weight, conditioning the body or calming down the body, says Oburu

Oburu doesn’t major in a one type of dance.

“There are people who focus on salsa, contemporary dance, hip hop, rhumba, hard tempo or dancehall, electro dance and others but if I’m in a combination of different people everything goes, I try to combine all these styles of dance, put them together with the purpose of working out.

“We are either dancing with a purpose of losing weight, conditioning the body, having fun or calming the body down,”

“I feel my brain is 100% functional when I dance. Dance exercises have a positive impact on my brain and mental ability such as thinking, focusing and coordination.

“I feel my brain at its best when I am dancing than when am not dancing because I have to think, and follow up things.

“I also find my respiration, breathing system is very okay I don’t know when I last got a funny cough or flu.

“Another thing is the heart, the cardiovascular system; the rate at which my heart is pumping beating is now trained for any level of intensity whether I’m at high intensity workout or daily walking pace my heart is functioning well and that’s because of dancing.

“Dancing subjects, me to different rhythmic flow including high tempo, low and intermediate,” says Oburu.

“There is coordination, for instance how the brain pushes my other body parts to move, how does my hand move together with my leg, coordination comes with alertness. 

“When we go to the fitness part, dancing comes with the benefit of metabolism, the body breaks down food faster, converts food into energy and eliminates waste that’s how then we lose on weigh.

“Another thing is quality sleep anyone who does dance works out on a good interval or regularly three or four times a week you are assured of quality sleep.

“There people who sleep four hours but its quality sleep not the scientific 6 to 8 hours and those are people who work out,” Oburu says.

“When dancing we do a lot of movement and rotations and giving the body tasks and challenges these all exert weight on muscles and bones it makes the bones and muscles stronger and heavier.”

Benefit of dance for children

They are same as for the adults, says Akori

There is improved functioning of the lungs, it provides increased muscle strength and fitness, the muscles and bones are dense (heavier, strong) not weak, the children even grow faster, are healthy, and less stressed or grumpy. They are happier.

So for both the young and adults put your dancing shoes on and get ready to step out and dance to a healthy life.