Time out of mind I took every class offered by The Arthur Murray Dance Studios. I competed in ballroom dance. My favorites were the cha-cha, Samba and the waltz. I had a pair of silvery regulation dance shoes with the kidskin soles that were carried in a bag and used only on the dance floor.
As the story goes, my mother named me after her college roommate, Diane Blue, a woman who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer. Instead, like many women of her time, she married; and gave up dancing. I should have paid attention. I married a fellow with no sense of rhythm and two left feet - and then my used-to-be-husband danced away.
Still, I'm a dancer at heart. I shake what my mama gave me at Zumba classes. I love watching dance movies. And Fred Astaire.
Imagine my delight to learn that 9 years ago The New England Journal of Medicine proclaimed dancing as the exercise associated with reducing your risk of dementia and making you smarter.
In a nutshell, here's how Dancing Makes You Smarter:
"We immediately ask two questions:
Why is dancing better than other activities for improving mental capabilities? Does this mean all kinds of dancing, or is one kind of dancing better than another?
That's where this particular study falls short. It doesn't answer these questions as a stand-alone study. Fortunately, it isn't a stand-alone study. It's one of many studies, over decades, which have shown that we increase our mental capacity by exercising our cognitive processes. Intelligence: Use it or lose it. And it's the other studies which fill in the gaps in this one. Looking at all of these studies together lets us understand the bigger picture.
Some of this is discussed here (the page you may have just came from) which looks at intelligence in dancing. The essence of intelligence is making decisions. And the concluding advice, when it comes to improving your mental acuity, is to involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as opposed to rote memory (retracing the same well-worn paths), or just working on your physical style.
One way to do that is to learn something new. Not just dancing, but anything new. Don't worry about the probability that you'll never use it in the future. Take a class to challenge your mind. It will stimulate the connectivity of your brain by generating the need for new pathways. Difficult and even frustrating classes are better for you, as they will create a greater need for new neural pathways.
Then take a dance class, which can be even better. Dancing integrates several brain functions at once, increasing your connectivity. Dancing simultaneously involves kinesthetic, rational, musical and emotional processes."
TIP: No matter how or when or with whom, your style or your size, dance!
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