How does dance help with confidence

How Dance Classes Boost Confidence & Self-Esteem in Children

Learning to dance offers many valuable life lessons for children. One main benefit of dance lessons is the noticeable increase in a child’s confidence and self-esteem in just a few months.

When our students master a new dance or skill well, it raises their self-esteem exponentially. Dancing can be challenging, so if your child becomes proficient at dancing, they will be able to handle other life challenges with confidence.

Nan’s Dance offers a safe space for children to try new things and build up their confidence.

“No one’s afraid to ask a question or ask for extra help,” explained Dance Director Hillary White. “We’re always very open to our students, and parents as well, and let anyone feel like they can talk to us.”

Dance Lessons Promote a Positive Body Image

During dance lessons, your child will discover how their body moves. The increased coordination, flexibility and body-awareness that comes with regular dance definitely raises self-esteem and improved self-esteem leads to improved overall wellness.

Dance classes also encourage a positive body image by teaching children to love their bodies and develop a healthy, active lifestyle from a young age. It takes positive self-image and great confidence to dance on stage in front of an audience, and dance helps encourage both of these valuable qualities.

“We’ve been so amazed at the improved confidence of our students year after year at Nan’s Dance,” she said. “They grow exponentially in here and the difference from August to May is a world of difference!”
“We see a lot of students who start the year shy and timid and even closed off, and then throughout the year we start to see their personality come out more,” Hillary explained. “The friendships children form in our studio with other dancers can also be a major source of confidence.”

Kids discover how to be brave as they learn to perform in front of others. Dancing on stage over and over boosts confidence in an enormous way. Although it’s normal to be a little nervous, the more your child performs on stage, the more confident they will feel every time they do it again. As they become more confident in themselves, the better they will perform. When they hear the cheering and applause from the audience, it gives them even more confidence in their abilities.

Each Step Learned Is A Building Block To Success

“Dance also gives you a big sense of accomplishment as different goals are achieved,” Hillary added. “Our classes provide children with a specific goal to reach each week, whether it’s the small goal of learning a new step, or a bigger goal of learning an entire dance to perform on stage—we are always very positive and encouraging with helping them meet those goals.”
Whether a student is learning a new step, a turn or leaps, they are encouraged at every level. “Whatever level a dancer is, we never want anyone to feel left behind,” she said. “If they are having trouble with a step or if something is not clicking, we break things down into smaller steps, so they’re able to get it and succeed. Stumbling along the way is normal and everyone goes through it. ”

When a teacher is helpful and provides positive feedback, a student then feels comfortable to do something harder. As students see themselves succeed at the first step they learn, they’ll be more confident to work hard towards the next step.

“It’s like building blocks, we start with the bottom layer and build and build,” she added. “Dancers can’t do the next step until they get the first one right. That’s the journey of dance— you keep moving forward.”
The more the students learn, the more they feel confident. “We had a girl in an elementary class who had never danced before and her mother said she didn’t have a real passion for anything,” said Hillary. “But then she fell in love with dance! For her final project at school, she did it all on dance.”

For the project, the girl showed a video to her class of her doing her recital dances to show what she learned.

“She was so confident and proud of them,” she added. “She finally discovered what her thing was, and her mother was so happy that she finally found a passion!”

The confidence and focus children learn and practice at Nan’s Dance are important life skills that will transfer over to school and all other aspects of their lives. We’ve been sharing the love of dance with our students since 1975. Nan’s School of Dance is a place for your dancer to grow and establish self-discipline and self-confidence while also having fun! Register for fall classes today!

How Dance Can Improve Your Self-Confidence

Dancing is a fun hobby that brings a host of benefits to your physical and mental well-being. Aside from its obvious health benefits, dancing can also be a useful tool for building self-confidence.

Whether you see yourself as a confident person or believe there is some room for improvement in that department, taking dancing classes is a great way to overcome any issues and insecurities you may have and gradually shape yourself into a charismatic, self-assured individual. Here’s how dancing can help you do just that.

Learning new choreography makes you feel good

Once you start attending dance classes, there will be a lot of new steps to learn. Now, it won’t be easy in the beginning, especially if you’ve never danced before and you’re just starting out. However, as time goes on, you’ll notice how your dancing skills improve as you learn more and more new steps.

After a while, you’ll know a bunch of steps, and as we all know, learning and remembering the whole choreography is no easy task. So, once you get a hold of the new things you learn, you’ll feel much more capable, and this new sense of achievement will only increase your motivation for learning new steps so you can dance even better.

Photo by Drew Colins on Unsplash

Performing in front of others helps overcome shyness

Taking dance lessons means you’ll have to get used to the idea of dancing around other people, be it your dance instructor, your dance partner, or the other students attending the classes. This will help push you out of your comfort zone and teach you how to be more comfortable with your body.

As you boost your dancing skills, your confidence grows, and at some point when you’re feeling ready for it, you may start performing in front of the audience. Whether you have stage fright or feel shy and awkward in front of others, once you start performing in front of others, it will all go away and as time passes, you’ll be able to shake off your shyness and shine.

It’s a great way to improve your overall health and fitness

Dancing is a physical activity that involves sharp movement and a variety of techniques. As such, it activates a wide range of muscles in your body, increasing its flexibility and building your endurance. Depending on the dance style you select, you can increase the strength of your upper and lower body as well as improve your bone density as dancing exercises promote the bones’ absorption of calcium, thus reducing your chances of developing osteoporosis.

Dancing is also a great way to melt away those extra pounds, making it a fun workout you’ll actually enjoy. That also means you can finally slip into that gorgeous midi bodycon dress you’ve been eyeing for a while and amaze everyone with your sleek figure and even sleeker dance moves.

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash

You get to socialize and improve your communication skills

Taking dancing classes isn’t only great for your physical and mental health, but it can do wonders for your social skills as well, even more so if you’re attending group classes. Dancing with different partners and interacting with them will help you get more comfortable around other people instead of worrying whenever you have to dance with someone you’ve never danced before.

You will be meeting a lot of new people and probably make some new friends along the way. You can also further your communication skills outside the dance classes by attending social dancing events and conversing with people there.

You get to express yourself through dance

Remember that dancing is also a form of art, just like music and theater. As such, it can be used as an effective tool for self-expression. This is especially useful if you happen to be introverted or otherwise have a hard time expressing and conveying your thoughts and emotions in written and spoken form.

Similar to other artists, you may begin to discover your own personal dance style as time goes on and you attend your dance classes regularly. As you start to dance more authentically and in line with who you are, you will set yourself aside from other dancers which will, in turn, boost your confidence. Therefore, feel free to explore, trust the process, and see where your curiosity and dedication take you.

Other than cultivating self-discipline, confidence, and positive body image, dancing gives you a sense of accomplishment while also boosting your concentration, memory, and focus. Moreover, it is quite beneficial for your mental wellness and physical fitness, making it one of those hobbies that are great for your body, mind, and soul. Maybe it’s time you stop doubting yourself and your abilities and give dancing a shot… We promise it will be a huge step forward.

Dance, dance for yourself: 5 types of dance and their benefits for the body and mind

Health

March 22, 2019

If you are looking for a way to tone your body and mind, then dancing is the best solution. Pink talks about the benefits of dance classes through the lens of mental and physical health.

Dancing is a comfortable form of physical activity that requires work with your own weight and balance. Regular classes in any kind of dance help to normalize weight and strengthen the muscular frame. nine0003

Before each class, regardless of the chosen style, it is always necessary to warm up the body - a stage of easy and effective cardio. Only then can you begin to study dance movements and elements. At the end of any class, a moderate stretch is always performed. On average, one dance class burns from 200 to 1000 kilocalories, depending on the chosen style and individual training. Within a month after regular training, you can notice lightness and smoothness in movements, body tone, improvement in body endurance and posture. nine0003

In addition, dancing is an opportunity to relieve stress and stock up on resources to resist depression. During classes, a strong connection with your own body is established. Due to self-expression through movements to music, energy is unlocked, liberated from physical and psychological clamps. At the same time, dances always take place in rooms with mirrors, which also helps to build contact with our body, because during the day we rarely see ourselves from the outside. All this allows you to truly feel your body, accept it and be with it in one moment. And of course, any dance is an additional self-confidence. nine0003

Advertising on RBC www.adv.rbc.ru

A direction that combines modern and postmodern dance techniques, as well as yoga, oriental body practices and martial arts. Contempo allows you to reassemble and feel your body - a mixture of Western and Eastern traditions requires balance, proper breathing, feeling all the muscles. During training, emphasis is placed on the work of the joints, building posture, establishing connections between the center of the body and the limbs. All this is called the process of body awareness, which allows you to coordinate both body and mind. nine0003

This direction requires the involvement of all muscle groups and coordination. Therefore, the effectiveness of tango can be compared with aerobics or fitness. Also, this dance is considered one of the most social - tango cannot be danced alone. During classes, you need to feel a partner and trust him. This helps to solve problems with increased control and inability to relax. By the way, scientists from the Montreal Neurological Institute found that tango helps with Parkinson's disease. nine0003

View this post on Instagram

One of the most popular dances of recent years, which most of the famous trainers learned on their own from the clips of their favorite performers. Smooth and rhythmic movements of the pelvis allow you to pump up not only the buttocks and lower back, but also all muscle groups of the legs. Also, twerking is a great direction for pumping intimate muscles, which are responsible for the colorful orgasms that help us feel better. nine0003

View this post on Instagram

This dance style was very popular during the heyday of nightlife in the 2000s. Now pole dance is a dance that allows you to literally replace the gym and stretching. During classes, all muscle groups work - from the arms, which need to hold your body on the pole, to the legs, the smoothness and strength of which is required for easy sliding along the pole. Yes, this dance requires serious physical training and success can be expected for several months, but each new skill builds self-confidence. nine0003

This dance is again becoming one of the most relevant. A huge number of men and women around the world dream of learning how to dance like Madonna in a Vogue video - hence so many video tutorials on YouTube and Instagram. The main emphasis of this dance style is active work with hands. Therefore, it is required to develop the flexibility of the arms and hands on a daily basis, which, by the way, has a positive effect on the functioning of the lymphatic system. Also, vogue is the type of dance that is more built on self-expression and a personal sense of music. All this develops a strong contact with the body and a phenomenal fluidity of movement. nine0003

How dance affects a person

It's simple: with the first steps in dancing, you begin the path to yourself, or rather to your improved version. As a rule, this is not an easy path and not at all short, but it is worth going through. Let's discuss this.

Dance is able to influence not only the body. It can change your thoughts, attitude towards yourself and others. Your plasticity and the way you move directly affect your self-esteem and emotional reactions. Have you ever noticed that all emotions are immediately reflected in the body, and the position of the body affects how you feel? This is because our body language and movement patterns directly affect not only how others perceive us, but also our sense of self. nine0003

How the body changes consciousness

Moreover, the behavior of the body is directly related to thinking, feeling and sensations. The body is able to remember the positions in which it spends most of the time. If you often experience negative emotions, they freeze in the body and turn into movement patterns. If you constantly experience fear, insecurity, embarrassment, then shrink, pull your head into your shoulders, slouch. The muscles responsible for these positions get used to being constantly in tension. To relax them, you will have to make a conscious effort. It turns out a vicious circle: emotions form muscle clamps, constant tension feeds emotions, and you can no longer get rid of this situation so easily. nine0003

Thus, you can not only get a negative habit, but, on the contrary, get rid of it. Good news, isn't it? In addition to high spirits, a person switches to sensations in his body, focuses on movements, forgetting about business and problems for a while. In addition, the first confidence in the movements appears, and, therefore, self-confidence.

“Dance is the most sublime, the most touching and beautiful of the arts, because it is not just an expression or a distraction from life, it is life itself,” the English psychologist and physician Havelock Ellis once said. And it's hard to disagree with that. nine0003

Dance is a complete cardio activity

An hour of active dancing can be compared to an hour of running on a treadmill or an hour of swimming. The load during dancing gives optimal training to both the heart and blood vessels, as well as the muscles and joints of the body. After a few weeks, you will notice that the body has become more elastic and toned, and the numbers on the scale will pleasantly surprise you.

Dancing, we not only get a lot of pleasure, a more elastic and flexible body, cultivate stress resistance, but also effectively train the cardiovascular system, increase the overall tone of the body and immunity, and become more resilient. Dancing is the perfect way to learn how to control your body. It's hard to imagine a dancer with bad posture. By mastering new dance steps, you will correct your posture, strengthen your back muscles and begin to move more gracefully and confidently. nine0003

Regular dance classes will teach you to really hear and feel the music. A dancing person develops a sense of rhythm, an artistic taste appears. Moreover, the sense of rhythm tightly enters your life, making you more collected, attentive, organized.

Dancing will make you smarter

Dancing has been proven to improve human cognition as it prepares the brain to learn something new.