Ballroom dancing is a wonderful way for people from all walks of life to get in shape while also releasing their creative juices. This goes past merely benefiting your body; dance can also benefit your state of mind and social connections. Dancing is a great social activity, and it has been proving that socializing regularly can have vast health benefits on self-esteem, stress, and even your BMI.

Uplifting and Fun
Not many activities are as joyful as artistic dance moves. Concentrating on moving your body to the beat of the music instantaneously puts you in a positive head space. After you get the moves down, it’s pure fun and laughs.

Muscle Toning
Ballroom dancing contributes to muscle toning by forcing dancers to resist their partner’s body strength. Fast turns, spinning and two-stepping all contribute to muscle building.

Bones and Joints
Since dancing is a weight-resisting activity, it can help protect bone density and prevent osteoporosis. It can also help speed up knee recovery after surgery since it’s a lower impact exercise than jogging or biking. If you have weak knees or are gradually introducing your body to exercise, ballroom dancing is a great low-impact activity that can promote a fit lifestyle while also decreasing your chances of exercise-related injury.

Flexibility
Flexibility is a major benefit of ballroom dancing. Ballroom dancing itself contains plenty of stretching and bending. Therefore the more you dance, the more flexible you will become.

Brain Food
In a 2016 study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, it was concluded that ballroom dancing, as well as other forms of social dancing, can help prevent the onset of dementia in elderly patients. It was revealed that “dance improved one of the cognitive domains (spatial memory),” which is vital for learning dance (Dafna Merom, et al., 2016).

Burns Fat
Dancing is a low-impact aerobic activity that can boost your metabolism. In just thirty minutes of dancing, you can burn anywhere between 200-400 calories. That’s roughly the same amount burned by running or cycling.

Creative Outlet
Ballroom dancing is an amazing creative outlet! Not only does it allow you to move your hips at ease to the beat of the music, it also allows you to release your emotions and thoughts through artistic movements.

Conditioning
Engaging in just about any cardiovascular or aerobic activity can help improve your heart health, lower obesity and type 2 diabetes risk, and also promote lung capacity.

Endurance
Dancing an effective way to improve general endurance. As the dance sessions get longer and longer, your muscles will be working harder and for a longer period of time. In turn, you will find yourself being able to go on with little to no fatigue.

This content was originally published here.

Author: dancesteps