Meditation To be a good dancer it makes sense that you have to 'listen' to your body: not only must you be able to move body parts and muscles to create fluid and graceful movements, but you also need to recognise when you’re pushing your body too hard. This is particularly true for ballet dancers. But, say researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, although dancers may be more aware of their posture, muscles and body alignment, they are no more 'in touch' with their bodies on an emotional level than people who don’t dance. However, practising meditation does make you better able to correctly identify your body’s responses to different emotional states and improve your mind-body connection.
To test this link, the researchers recruited three groups of people: professional dancers, people who practised mindful meditation (Vipassana), and a control group of people who did moderate exercise but had no dance training, did no meditation or professional sports.
They asked study participants to watch scenes from films that were intended to produce emotional responses. The participants were wired with electrodes to check their heart beats, and used a rating dial to report how they were responding to what they were watching.
The results showed that those who practised regular meditation were more accurate and quicker at recognising their emotional and physical response to the scenes.
Vipassana meditation is also known as 'insight meditation' as it involves introspection and self-awareness. Meditation has also recently been found to help increase attention span, reduce the emotional impact of pain and even to change the structure of the brain itself.
First published March 3, 2011