Personality and psychophysical health in relation to dance training A therapeutic intervention of dance movement therapy

INTRODUCTION "There are short-cuts to Happiness and Dancing is one of them" Vicki Baum "The Job of feet is walking but their hobby is dancing" Amit Kalantri Dance has been a part of the human lives since ages. We perform dance for various purposes. We dance to celebrate, we dance to perform rituals, we dance to involve in recreational activities, we dance for fun, we dance for pursuing our hobby, we dance for artistic expression, we dance for getting physically fit, we dance to expression emotions, we dance to communicate and we dance to keep ourselves physical and mentally healthy. The sense of rhythm beats and dance is so effective that even babies respond to the tempo more than they do to the speech. It means human beings are born with the ability to move our body in response to the music When we study the positive effects of dance on our health, some of the obvious and much discussed benefits include body flexibility, muscular strength, physical fitness, body balance and posture etc. Dance has also found to be effective in improving cognitions and memory, decreasing the risk of dementia. It also helps in overcoming depressive symptoms, dizziness, fatigue and procrastination. Dance has been found to be effective in creating new neural pathways due to which the information stored in the brain can be accessed with ease. It also results in more secretions of feel good neurotransmitters in our body. Dance is also an intensive activity for our brain through which various activities related to different senses are combined. The individual involves auditory, visual and tactile sensations along with the body balance, rhythm, coordination and movement. Human beings have adopted a very fast and modern life style which has not only adversely affected their personality but has also resulted in occurrence of various psychosomatic disorders amongst them. According to an analysis by WHO, 60 % of the factors related with health and quality of life are related to the lifestyle,