5 benefits of line dancing

5 benefits of line dancing

Dancing has many health and wellbeing benefits for people of all ages and abilities. Dance is a particulary good activity to encourage us all to achieve healthy ageing. A popular style of dance where people can attend on their own with no partner required is line dancing. Line dancing is still a popular dance form and many people attend line dancing classes weekly across the world. This blog will highlight the 5 benefits of line dancing.

Line dancing ha roots in European formation dances such as the cotillion and country dance . Line dancing as we know it was primarily danced to country music, but now embraces many music genres.

Line dancing first started in the United States of America (U.S.A) sometime in the late 1970’s to early 1980’s. On the disco floors in the 1970’s, the form of dance that we know today as “line dancing” was most likely born. It was not until latter in the 1980’s that the term “line dancing” was coined and used.

Popular line dance include the Electric Slide, Elvira, Tush Push and Cotton Eye Joe to name a few.

Here are Xpress-Yourself Dance’s highlighted 5 benefits of line dancing.

Improves memory

Traditionally line dances are danced turning to face different walls. This means that your memory recall is worked particularly hard as you have to remember the sequence as you turn the walls.

In recent studies, line dancing has been proven to be effective in improving neurological functions.

Line dancing requires body movements accompanied by complex brain functions. This increase of brain activity helps the participant to to develop new synapses and improve connections between neurons. This increased connection allows for better memory recall and problem-solving capabilities.

Improves balance and coordination

All of those kick ball changes, sailor steps, pivot turns and weaves encourage you to transfer weight from one foot to another quickly. All of these line dance steps will encourage you to challenge both your balance and your coordination. Moving your feet quickly will also build your confidence and allow you to be able to move your feet quickly in a situation where you may fall. If you line dance regulary you will improve your gait and increase your walking speed.

Improves bone health

Line dancing encourages you to make lots of impact with your feet on your floor. All of those stomps, brushes, heel fans and grapevines all create impact when you make contact with the floor thus helping to build your bone density.  To keep your bones strong, you need to combine: weight-bearing exercise with impact muscle strengthening exercise  and line dance achieves both.

Improves heart health

Line dancing will give you an a aerobic workout which will help you to maintain a healthy heart and you can choose how much you exert yourself. Line dances can be different speeds so the faster the routines the harder your heart works. Research has suggested that that regular dancing can help lower your risk of heart disease, improving your heart strength reducing blood pressure, stress, and high cholesterol levels.

Improves mental wellbeing

Line dancing can certainly be a mood booster. Whilst you are dancing on your own when line dancing, line dancing can encourage good comrade and sense of unity amongst other dancers. It is probably due to all the stomps and claps that require good timing. This could be because line dance can encourage you to be expressive and allow you to escape or let loose in a way that’s usually out-of-bounds in adulthood. Yeehaw!

If you found this blog the 5 benefits of line dancing interesting you might want to read the 5 benefits of Salsa.

Xpress-Yourself Dance run Keep Dancing dance classes run across the West Midlands and online teaching many styles of dance including line dancing. Find out more information about Keep Dancing here.