Let’s beat the stress with the classical beats.
How DMT helps find your balance between the mind and body.
Jyotsna Pradeep is a busy doctor who also has to manage her three children single-handedly as her husband lives and works in Dubai. She travels a lot and has also been teaching Kuchipudi for the past twelve years. As pressure at home and work built up, the ayurvedic doctor began to have frequent bouts of sadness, mood swings, and emotional ups and downs.
A couple of years ago, Pradeep turned to her passion to fight these episodes of stress. She discovered that dance was therapeutic, helping lift her spirits and energizing her physically. Soon she was breezing through her days with a song on her lips.
The changing nature of work and lifestyles of urban Indians affects their physical and mental well-being. Keeping minds and bodies in prime shape has never been more important than these pandemic-hit months. Lockdowns and travel disruptions have added to sedentary lifestyles. Long working hours on makeshift workstations at home have affected body postures, causing backaches and spinal problems. This has had a direct impact on wellness and leads to various illnesses of neurological, endocrinological, and muscular-skeletal systems which play a vital role in maintaining our immune system, doctors say. The need to create harmony and maintain good health is now more urgent than ever before.
Here’s where dance can help.
Journalist Marian Chace, the founder of dance therapy, believes that body and mind are interrelated. Relatively unknown, Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) is the “psychotherapeutic use of movement to promote emotional, social, cognitive and physical integration of the individual, for the purpose of improving health and well-being.” DMT helps us express emotions, it is developmental and gives us good physical coordination.
The ancient Indian treatise on dance and drama, the Natyashastra was written by Bharata, talks about the benefits of dance and its impact on the nervous system. Indian classical dances are rooted in Yoga — the science of body and mind.
In yoga as in dance, you are aware of the body, breath, and mind being united, says yoga guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, highlighting the deep connection between yoga and dance. DMT adds feeling and emotions to the mix of structured breathing and flowing movement in yoga. It is also a form of meditation that can increase confidence and bring mental tranquility.
BODY, MIND, AND DANCE
Dance is therapy for both the performer and the spectator, says Pradeep. It has helped her express emotions such as hurt and love apart and kept her physically fit. “The impact of classical dance on our nervous system is really huge”, according to the doctor who is also teaching her own children the Kuchipudi dance form.
The expression of emotions, combined with movement affects a dancer’s body and mind. The ability of dance to help the dancer immerse herself in performing is known to have a positive neurological impact through secreting helpful hormones and helps enhance brain functions. Dedicated dancers are also known to understand and better appreciate ethical and moral values as a result of the balance created in their physical, emotional, and spiritual selves. So dance has a well-defined therapeutical effect on body and mind.
Dance movement therapy could bring succor to those who have suffered loneliness and depression during the pandemic, no matter what age. Be it 16 or 62 it doesn’t matter but make sure you try it wholeheartedly.