DANCE TIPS

When dancing - just remember that your dancing style is your own! You are unique to everyone around you & you should dance from your heart & soul!

Dancing is one of the best forms of exercising!

Warm Up
Leave a few minutes early for your dance lessons and give yourself some time to warm up your body before class if its cold outside. Dance injuries happen usually due to the muscles not being warm before using them. It happens more easily then you think! Wear a sweater or light jacket to start the class off and take it off after you have warmed up.

Be careful with your body, it only takes leaving a few minutes earlier for class to give yourself enough time to stretch and warm up.

Ideas for stretching include: rolling your head around to loosen up neck joints, rolling shoulders in a backward and forward rotation as well as pushing them down and back for a feeling of proper dance posture, moving arms up above your head and behind you, circling ankles in and outwards so you don't twist them, moving legs from the hip joint forward and back to loosen those joints up as well.

Keep Your Brain Alive! Go Dancing!
Dance was the only physical activity that benefited the brain. This was attributed to the cerebral rather than the physical aspect of dance.

Researchers found that the relationship between the mind-stimulating effects of dancing, as well as in the above six types of hobbies, and the lowered risk of dementia remained strong even after they allowed for variables such as age, sex and education.

Frequency of activity also was important! 63% lower than that among subjects in the lowest third. We believe this emphasizes the importance of engaging in a regular program of dancing.

The need to learn and remember numerous dance movements produces a constant and very beneficial challenge to the brain.

The social aspects of dancing, the relaxation it produces and the joy of dancing also is involved. The sense of accomplishment and confidence acquired by successfully completing a dance with a partner are beneficial, as well.

Fitness, both mental and physical, often begins with one's state of mind.

Mental acuity comes from mental exercise and if you're dancing, you're not sitting at home watching TV or felling sorry for yourself. This applies to everyone of all ages. Among mind-stimulating activities, dancing is unique in that it also provides beneficial physical exercise.

Many people have gotten the message. That's why we see increasing numbers of people of all ages having the time of their lives on dance floors all over the county. They are receiving a double payoff, mental and physical.

The study, by scientists at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, USA, appeared in the February 13, 2002 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.