I Hope You Dance

I Hope You Dance

I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack is an inspired song of hope and possibilities . . . and one of my favorites. The following are a few of the lyrics:

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
I hope you dance, I hope you dance

And not only is dancing fun and great exercise but there’s now mounting evidence that dancing has cognitive and other benefits. For those of us “of a certain age” this is really important information. Read the following research information (from What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life by Bruce Frankl) and then get our your dancing shoes and have some fun . . . and get healthier too!

Mounting evidence from brain imaging studies and other neurological research supports that learning to dance has cognitive and other benefits. In 2003, a twenty-one-year study of 469 seniors, seventy-five and older, that was led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that of the several activities it studied, frequent social dancing was the only physical activity associated with a significant decrease in the incidence of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. “Dance is not purely physical. In many ways, it also requires a lot of mental effort,” said the study’s lead researcher Joseph Verghese. Among the participants of the study, those who danced three or four times a week, showed a 76% less incidence of dementia that those how danced only once a week or not at all. Still other researchers have begun to find evidence that dance activates the pleasure centers of the brain, explaining in part why we like to dance.

With a dancing heart (and soon feet!),
Karen