Dear Fellow Dancers

Dear Fellow Dancers,

This Blog features, among other things, some narratives by those within our community who have taken action to transcend prior and current debilitating injuries and other physical challenges. We wanted to supplement these inspiring journeys you will read about with a brief preface on the rehabilitative nature of dance.

As we acquire and practice moves specific to our beloved dance form, our brain’s circuitry is being primed and reinforced for subsequent movement patterns, which we often describe as, “muscle memory.”

Dance affects not only our grace, coordination, fluidity, and those qualities we can observe and sense immediately while dancing, but the activity of dance also changes our brain’s circuitry in ways that leave neurologists in a conundrum with regard to truly understanding the complexity of dis-ease and the mechanism of action for any given course of therapy.

In the “Rhythm & Grace” dance series that we instruct for Parkinson’s patients at the Colorado Ballet studios, we are utterly astounded with the process by which certain physical symptoms indicative of this disease’s progression miraculously give way to the music and complex combinations of steps. Folks who struggle on a daily basis with walking, standing up from a seated position and initiating movement are granted a reprieve when such movements are rhythmically assigned and set to music. Somehow dancing temporarily suspends the intensity of many symptoms known to those with Parkinson’s and similar movement conditions.

Whether we dance for therapeutic reasons or simply because we enjoy the feeling of moving to music, we are positively impacting our brain’s mapping and neurochemistry.  Certain pathways within our brain’s circuitry are reinforced vis-à-vis the movements we execute

The next time you dance know that you are beneficially affecting your brain’s neurochemistry with the surge of dopamine and other chemical messengers that make voluntary movement possible.

Thank you for reading!

Happy & Healthy Dancing,

Lori and Staff