Dance as a vehicle for healing...

The Dance Health Alliance needs your help. We have started a Chuffed campaign to train more teachers in Australia to meet current demand.

https://chuffed.org/project/dance-health-alliance

1 in every 5 Australians is diagnosed with major brain or mind disorders that impacts and deteriorates the control they have over their bodies. There is currently no cure for diseases like MS, Parkinson’s and Dementia.

So what can help? Dance…

Research now positions dance ahead of all other physical activity in terms of impact, and long term participation in dance has been proven to reduce the chance of dementia by 76%.

Dance is a language of physical exercise that sparks new brain cells (neurogenesis) and their connections. These connections are responsible for acquiring knowledge and thinking. Dancing stimulates the release of the brain-derived protein neurotrophic factor that promotes the growth, maintenance, and plasticity of neurons necessary for learning and memory. Plus, dancing makes some neurons nimble so that they readily wire into the neural network. Neural plasticity is the brain’s remarkable ability to change throughout life.

Benefits of taking a long term dance program includes

• Increased strength
• Better balance
• Greater self-confidence and self-esteem
• Reduced fall rates
• Reduced tremors

Recently we had a dancer, John, who came to a class and was worried he couldn’t do it due to his tremor. At the start of class his tremor was pretty severe, and by the end it was gone.

Dance programs can also provide benefits to health services including reducing the number of GP attendances, improving levels of recovery from mental illness and helping people with long-term conditions to manage their own care.

The Dance Health Alliance Australia is endorsed by the Dance and Creative Wellness Foundation in Holland and we are currently developing a partnership with the Sydney Dance Company. The Dance Health Alliance provides open classes, programs in care homes, allied health and dance teacher training. Our aim is to validate dance, create ambassadors, foster artistic and scientific collaborations and establish working models for healthcare throughout Australia.

We currently only have 3 teachers in Sydney and have demand for classes in Wollongong, Central Coast, Melbourne, Brisbane and WA. In order to meet current demand for our programs we urgently need to train more teachers and get some admin support. We are are asking you to donate this Christmas so we can train our first team of dance teachers, create and execute a targeted marketing campaign and develop a national training program for allied health and dance professionals.

We need to raise enough money to send Gwen and 2 other teachers to Berlin at the end of Jan to take part in the 5 day intensive training with Andrew Greenwood (founder Dance and Creative Wellness Foundation, Holland), implement a strategic marketing campaign to target teachers in the areas we already have demand and then get them trained up too.

We need to raise is at least $10,000.

Your donations will go towards:

• $25 donate the cost of a class to one dancer
• $60 donate to cover our cost for one teacher, for a one hour class
• $110 donation for one dancer to attend five classes
• $200 pays for ten classes for one person
• $250 pays for one class in a care home for their residents
• $2000 covers a 10 week course for ten dancers
• $2500 covers a 10 week course in a care home for their residents
• $3000 will train one teacher to become a Certified Dance Health Alliance Teacher and extend our reach

Why Dance?

More than 400 studies related to interdisciplinary neuroscience reveal the hidden value of dance. For instance, we acquire knowledge and develop cognitively because dance bulks up the brain. Consequently, the brain that “dances” is changed by it. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio points out, “Learning and creating memory are simply the process of chiseling, modeling, shaping, doing, and redoing our individual brain wiring diagrams.”

Scientists are turning to dance because it is a multifaceted activity that can help them—and ultimately patients, care homes, allied health professionals and even doctors – demystify how the brain coordinates the body to perform complex, precise movements that express emotion and convey meaning. Dancers possess an extraordinary skill set— coordination of limbs, posture, balance, gesture, facial expression, perception, and action in sequences that create meaning in time and space. Dancers deal with the relationship between experience and observation.

The brain hides from our sight the wondrously complex operations that underlie this feat. Although there are many secrets to unravel about the power of the brain and dance, advances in technology– such as brain scanning techniques and the experiments of dancers, dance makers, and dance viewers– reveal to us the unexpected. Research shows that dance activity registers in regions of the brain responsible for cognition.

If you want to donate to charity for Christmas, please donate to ours!

https://chuffed.org/project/dance-health-alliance