Health Benefits of Belly Dance
Health Benefits of Belly Dance
This is a rather technical paper about the Health Benefits of Belly Dance. This is because already a lot has been written about this topic so this is quite a detailed discussion.
This discussion starts by attempting to work on some definitions. By Health Benefits we can loosly put these into 2 areas, 1) Physiological Benefits and 2) Psychological Benefits. In practice these intertwine and set each other off but for the purposes of this discussion we will keep these separate for the time being.
We will define these 2 benefits more closely and then see how Belly Dance can help these areas.
Physiological Benefits
To define this in purely clinical terms is not that hard, where things get harder is the subjective aspects.
Let us start off with some of these defenitions.
- Cardiovascular Fitness
This is definately the main component and the one easiest to define and measure. This is basically a measure of how strong or efficient is the heart and lung system. The heart is the basic powerhouse of the whole body. A fit and strong heart is able to return to resting point after a given bit of exertion lot more quickly than an unfit heart. The "tickover" rate at rest is a lot lower and the ability to sustain high workloads is better. But more important there are many "side benefits," these are lower blood pressure (though many other factors contribute to high blood pressure but certainly higher fitness levels will help to reduce it) a greater ability to resist infections and to heal more rapidly, a better sense of well being and feeling more energetic. Fit people tend to be far less prone to minor ailments and illnesses such as colds, headaches and so on. Another thing that happens during Aerobic work which is what improves fitness is the body releases its own endomorphins that give a sort of “high.” In fact this is why sometimes people get addicted to this form of exercise. But it is useful to know of something that can give a natural “high” without having to resort to drugs.
Good examples of people who are very fit are Marathon runners. They are not necessarily very strong in the way that a weightlifter is, or particularly fast such as a sprinter, in fact nearly all of us can run the same speed as a marathon runner for a short distance, but their ability lies in being able to do that for a long time.
What happens in for most of the rest of us is that we run out of breath, and we ache all over and soon have to give up. In this case the heart is simply not strong enough to keep up the supply of oxygen to the muscles that are being used, and to clear away the waste products, hence the aching (build up of toxins) and lack of breath (struggling to keep the oxygen supply up) . All medical authorities would agree that if there is only one component of Health that we can upkeep then Cardiovascular fitness is the one.
So how do we improve it. The answer is anything that makes the heart and lungs work harder. There are 2 extremes, one working the heart/lungs really hard for a short time (say 20 mins or so) or at a more lower rate for a longer time. The good news is that of all the physiological aspects of health, fitness is the least age dependant and the one that can develop the quickest. For example supplety tends to be much harder to develop when one gets older, to a lesser extent so is strength, but not so with fitness. This is why you will get many people of pensionable age on the Marathon runs.
Working the heart/lungs hard will quickly build up fitness. In fact the percentage increases in fitness are quite astonishing, something like a 10% improvement per session can be achieved, for example if on one session you can only do 10 flights of steps then the next session you may be able to feasibly do 11, then 12 and so on. But it is important to understand that in order to develop fitness we are talking about Aerobic workouts, that is doing something that puts a demand on the oxygen supply, hence forcing the lungs/heart to work harder. I think it is important to grasp some of these technical things because we can then objectively examine how Belly Dance can fit in.
In order to put a demand on the oxygen supply, technically “mechanical work” must be done, this means working muscles, isometrically, not isotonically. Before I lose you completely a few examples may help.
Any aerobic activity that is intense will cause the heart./lungs to work and the obvious signs are lack of breath, panting and the heart beating very fast. Also there will be a great deal of heat generated by the body and one will feel very hot and possibly very sweaty as well, if the heat cannot be dispelled easily.
Walking up a hill, climbing up stairs are activities that are very aerobic. Other activities where there is a lot of direction changes in the movement or if parts of the body are being lifted up and down are aerobic. But holding parts still may well develop certain types of stamina or isometric strength but will do nothing to increase fitness. For example Yoga develops many things but not cardiovascular fitness particularly.
With belly dancing this type of fitness can improve but not particularly. I think it is important to grasp this as many people want to join belly dance classes in order to lose weight and belly dancing can help but unless the teacher understands the limitations of this people may come with unrealistic expectations.
As a general activity Belly Dance or for that matter most forms of dance are not particularly Aerobic. African Dance can definately be very aerobic as can some styles of folk dance. In all forms of dance there is an aerobic element, it is significant and as such very valuable but it is not very dominant. Anything that gets you hot, breathless and sweaty will be aerobic. The nature and costuming of belly dance doesn’t help particularly. Many women do not feel good about themselves when they are hot and sweaty with makeup running all over the place. Some of the more heavily sequined bras and belt sets are terrible for keeping heat in as are the skirts. For aerobic work, very light cotton or lycra skin tight clothing that is very easy to put on and take off afterwards (as it will be wringing wet), is best.
What I have noticed over the years that very overweight people would come to the class and after coming for a few weeks happily report that they at last are beginning to lose a bit of weight. But then after coming for a while they report that they have stopped losing weight and if anything are gaining back again a bit, though I found that in most cases they say that they lose a bit and it just stays that way. This has happened so often that I decided to look into it.
I think that when these ladies come to the class they are also very unfit as well. As every belly dance teacher knows a beginner will shake just about everything when they try a hip or shoulder shimmy. A hip drop will mean not just one side of the hip going up and down but the entire body moving about quite a lot. Of course when they are doing a lot of movement in this way that is quite aerobic and in fact I will notice that at the beginning they will get hot, sweaty and even pant a bit. But as time goes on the moves become more skillful and coordinated. So then just the hip would move, or the shoulder with the rest of the body doing far less movement and the movement becomes more skillful and elegant. Also the ladies start getting into the costuming side of things and they get costumes that are very bad from the point of releasing heat. So the aerobic element that was quite significant at the beginning begins to diminish. In fact when the skill becomes quite high, the moves become more elegant and beautiful and the more complex sections may require slow taxims and so on to the point that the aerobic element is not much higher than in everyday movements.
The subject of weight loss is quite a complex and emotive issue that I will leave to another discussion. But I would like to add a couple points.
Being overweight itself is simply a layer of fat that overlays everything, it is perfectly possible to be very fit and healthy and be fat. Grossly overweight is a different matter, this can put a strain on the heart and lower joints but here we are not talking about a couple of stones or so, I mean clinically obese.
On losing weight t my advice would be a) why do you really want to lose weight? Look into this carefully and honestly.
b) If after having considered everything and you still wish to do so, then do it in a way that is realistic and kind to your body.
- Set realistic targets, give yourself years, not months to do it. Don’t aim to lose more than about 1 kg a month, preferably less.
- Don’t go on diets, your body will simply go into “hibernation mode” your metabolic rate will reduce only to go back up again when you come off the diet. Also you lose if you have not already done so the “hunger - need” drive. If you don’t have food when you are very hungry the body will simply turn off that drive. It then means that when you do eat your body does not respond either, ie you will overeat. Look at children, when they are hungry they will eat, but as soon as they are not, they will dash off and do things until they are hungry again.
- Instead just alter slightly what you already eat. Be sensible, but not self punishing. Treat yourself but in an Adult sensible way, ie have a small high quality ice cream rather than depriving yourself then gorging yourself with some cheap rubbish. Similarly with sweets, look forward to a small high quality sweet rather than to miss a proper meal and then stuff yourself full of biscuits. A bottle of high quality wine shared with a friend rather than several cans of cheap lager.
- Meanwhile do belly dance classes but augment them with some aerobic work. If you are very overweight then the classes themselves will be aerobic and that will be enough. But as you get more skillful find something else that would get you a bit hot and sweaty, swimming, this is really good if you are very overweight as in the water you will not get hot and sweaty, but do it in such a way that you get breathless, hill walking is excellent. Those machines in gyms that simulate hill walking or skiing are good as well. Anything to get your heart and lungs going.
- Get support, don’t isolate yourself, this is why weight loss clubs are so effective, team up with some friends who can support you in your work. They can help you in your disappointment when things don’t quite work out, can keep you motivated and help you celebrate as you achieve your targets that I hope will not be unrealistic and unkind to yourself.
So to sum up Cardiovascular fitness is central and vital to general health, belly dancing is not really the best activity on its own but excellent when augmented with another more aerobic activity.
OK then after having covered what Belly Dance is not really so good at in terms of physical health let me go onto areas where it stands head and shoulders above anything else at all!
The distinctive feature of Belly Dance is the way that it uses ALL the muscles in the body in a gentle and repetative way and also that it mobilises extensively so many joints in the body. Let me cover the first part.
The body is an incredible construction, now the part that we are dealing with is the muscle, bone, tendon and ligament arrangement. It is really the temple or the vehicle. Now the layout around the middle part of the body is of greatest interest. The hip bone is the largest bone in the body, its extensive zones will be criss crosses by the most complex labryth of muscle systems to give us human beings the largest degree of freedom of movement of any animal in the animal kingdom. In order to achieve this we have the hip bone joined to the rib cage at the back via the lower vertabrae which is a series of bones. In order to keep this arrangement structurally stable we have a complex system of support muscles. These act like the rigging of a mast. In order to keep a mast stable you would have ropes that are pulled tight going from various points on the mast to the boat. But the hip, lower vertabrae and rib cage arrangement is far more complex. The rigging systems here are very complex and very important.
Nature has given us this arrangement which allows an infinite complexity of movement of the hip and consequently everything else. This potential complexity of movement of the hip is well demonstrated by any good belly dancer.
The role of the lower back is vital. The rib cage is essentially a rigid cage. It can flex a bit but not a lot. Think of it as a rigid box. Now the arms are connected to the rib cage via the shoulder blades. These sit on the back on either side and are strutted to the rib cage via the collar bones. But in order for the arms to have maximum degree of movement the shoulder blades are fastened not rigidly to the rib cage but positioned loosely via a complex system of muscles. This allows them to have a fair degree of movement, to give the arm a greater range of movement, for example if you reach up and over, the shoulder blade will also twist around a little. Now to do any movement of the rib cage proper, this can only come from the lower back. The rib cage is capable of an infinite range of movements and these come purely from the lower back.
Try this as an experiment. Sit on a chair firmly, and make sure that your hips are fixed and still. Trace out the layout of your rib cage, it will be most evident on your upper chest in the middle. Then try all sorts of movements such as chest lifts, slides, the shimmy and you will find that essentially the rib cage is moving around or floating in some way in relation to the hip via the lower back. Again any good belly dancer will use these movements in their repertoire.
The use of the shoulder blades by way of shoulder lifts and moving the shoulder itself forward and back are also standard belly dance moves.
From these discussions I hope you can grasp the complexity and vastness of the muscle systems around the middle part of the body and what an important role they play.
The extensive use of all these muscles in Belly Dance means that all these muscles get well toned. Let us define this word. The word tone used in this context is a layman term for a muscle that physiologically is in tip top condition and this covers 4 areas
a) co ordination
b) strength
c) endurance
d) supplely
Where Belly Dance is really superior over other forms of exercise is the way that all the muscles including all the deeper underlying ones, are used in a gentle and repetitive way. Exercise regimes tend to focus on larger well defined muscle groups and thus neglect the smaller more complex systems in the middle part of the body. You thus tend to get people who inspite of having exercised dutifully will still get back and joint problems later in life. We will look at this more later.
Let us look at the above 4 areas. Co ordination is particularly important. If a muscle is not used, eventually the brain is unable to send a signal to that muscle and it ceases to be usable at all. This happens for example if a limb is immobilized for a long time after an accident. Extensive physiotherapy can get the use back It entails moving the limp manually and bit by bit the brain can send a signal to the muscle concerned.
You have the same thing happening at a beginners belly dance class. If a total beginner tries a hip shimmy they will try it by way of shaking just about everything. In one way or the other the hip is at least moving a bit. The smaller underlying muscles have never been used so the coordination is lost to them. But little by little it comes and the shimmy becomes less of an effort and eventually the rest of the body can remain still after the smaller muscles begin to get used.
Now the state of people in the West is such that substantially they have hardly any co ordination at all in any of the smaller underlying muscle groups in the middle part. Now this spells very bad news for later in life. Once the co ordination is lost then movement in the lower back and hip joints becomes more and more restricted. It is vital that joints are mobilized throughout their entire range of movement regularly. If they are not then they will eventually seize up. Moreover movement encourages circulation to the joint of sinovial fluid. Also movement will maintain the general blood and lymph circulation systems to that joint also. Arthritis is a degenerative bone disease and many factors contribute to it but it seems that the way the joint is used prior to the onset of Arthritis is vital. The more the joint is gently mobilized then it would appear that Arthritis is less likely to set in. This makes perfect sense as the circulation systems mentioned above are totally responsible for the natural rate of tissue replacement within the joint. For example pianists and other people who use their finger joints gently and extensively will very significantly reduce the onset of these diseases. But work that is too repetitive as some types of factory work, or stressful on the joint, as certain types of sports are (eg footballers and knees) can actually hasten on arthritis.
Very luckily Belly Dance by its very nature is brilliant in this respect. The gentle and repetitive mobilisation of the joints of the lower back and hips really is so marvelous! Similarly within the dance there is lots of scope for wrist and finger work.
In the West lower back problems and arthritis is rife amongst older people. The misery and incapacity that these things do as a whole are unbelievable. I consult with various Chronic Pain specialists, Osteopaths and so on and what they quote me by way of statistics I can’t even comprehend, something like most of the Nation will suffer from these things and the amount of money spent on attempting to address these problems is unbelievable, especially as people cannot move around any more and then require extensive care.
Now that is good enough reason to regularly do Belly Dancing, simply to prevent the above ghastly things happening to you!! Or how to lose a fortune, open a back clinic for belly dancers. (They will never need to use it!)
To add to the horrors of neglecting belly dance as a keep fit activity let me add one more point. Many people suffer from back injuries such as slipped discs. These happen unexpectedly often through doing quite a simple everyday move such as reaching foreword or upwards to close the curtains. The reason why this happens is simple if you think of the rigging of the mast. Think of the complex system of muscles that are responsible to maintain the integrity of the lower back and think of these muscles as support ropes. The reason obviously for such a large and complex support system is so that the elements within the back are properly supported throughout all possible combinations of positions.
Now you remember how I said that if these muscles don’t get used for a long time then they will simply become ineffective. It is similar to someone going round the mast and snipping those little used ropes. So when a gust of wind comes from an unexpected direction the mast, not having that vital support will simply snap.
In the case of doing a move that is unusual for the person the uncoordinated muscles simply are not going to do any support. Thus the vertebrae can shear crossways with disastrous consequences.
One further word of caution now that we are on the subject of backs. I mentioned that conventional exercise regimes tend to focus on the larger well defined muscle groups. One thing that women in particular seem to want to do is to get “flat tummies.” They do this by getting into regimes that involve various types of squats; sit ups; or crunches; and although nowadays they are done with bent leg positions so that the spine is pressed on the floor and is supported, they still put the spine into a state of compression and only focus on the larger external part of the Rectus Abdomens and only affect the all important Oblique group in a limited way. As the Rectus Abdomus muscle group gets stronger so the spine is put into a greater and greater state of compression as the crunch is being done. This last bit is rather alarming. Because the pace is set not by the back but by how quickly the muscle develops in strength and muscles can develop very quickly in strength, I feel that there may be dangers. Personally, and strictly I say this from my personal opinion, I would advise anybody not to bother in anything at all that puts their back into this state. Yoga done in a well conducted class, on the other hand, particularly the Cobra Posture puts the back into a very controlled and progressive state of stress, thus strengthening it, because Yoga draws on moves that have been worked out over the centuries, whereas the Crunch is a fairly modern invention chiefly to achieve flat tummies.
In Belly Dancing by contrast the spine is not put into a state of compression but is continuously flexed and actually through the action of Hip Drops which are the basic Belly Dance move and as such is used throughout the dance constantly, the spine is actually put into a state of traction, (ie elongation) down each side in turn. This is the only form of exercise where this actually happens and thus makes Belly Dance the ideal exercise to alleviate back problems
You may recollect that I mentioned
a) co ordination
b) strength
c) endurance
d) supplely
The 1st one I covered and the other 3 are worth mentioning. Strength and endurance are two different qualities. Endurance is probably far more useful than strength, this means muscles that can keep going for a long time without fatigue.
It is becoming more evident in research in exercise science is that there is a considerable overlap of strength and endurance, which previously have been considered very separately.
But it has been found that a large number of repetitions against a small resistance which will build up stamina will also build up strength. For example it has been shown that the fingers of an expert typist are very strong even though the strength needed to strike a key is minimal. In other words this strength has developed through large number of repetitions against very light resistance without the need to use progressively bigger resistance (using something like the equivalent of weights for the fingers.) This simply means that extensive use of muscles in Belly Dance where they are used extensively but against light to moderate resistance would build up slowly but significantly the actual strength of those muscles without having to do resistance training. Thus the strength of a belly dancer may be quite significant even though she may have never trained on weights or resistance machinery.
But I think we have to be realistic here, the strength and stamina components are significant but I would not say very great if compared to other sports or activities.
The final quality is supplety and this simply is the length of the muscle. As the length of a muscle shortens it tends to inhibit movement. Particularly troublesome muscles are the ham strings. The shortening of these inhibits being able to reach down to the ground. Stretching is seen as a way of improving supplety and of course Belly Dancing on its own does not involve this. But it is a fact that if a muscle is used throughout its range of movement, then it will retain its original length and not shorten. So the all important muscles in the middle part of the body will retain their supplety by way of being used throughout their range of movement through such moves as large hip drops, twists, camels (back waves) and so on. But it is true that their supplety probably would not improve much, it will simply remain.
This may sound a bit sad but remember that supplety is actually very hard indeed, particularly in later life to improve. Also when one is younger supplety tends to be very good anyway. So as you do your belly dancing you will maintain your supplety from earlier years, which if neglected will be very hard to regain. But if you take to belly dance later in life which a lot of people do, don’t worry too much, lack of supplety simply means that your range, not the quality or number of moves will be restricted, in other words you may not be able to twist quite are far round as a younger person, or reach right down from a standing position and put your palms flat on the ground as a younger person may be able to do with ease. If you like Yoga then great, this will slowly but very surely increase your supplety.
But do watch the old Quadriceps. Bent knee positions does mean that this muscle gets used extensively, and really if you are a belly dance teacher do at least try to incorporate a bit of quad and hamstring stretches into your class or tell people how these are done so that they can casually do these at home every now and then. I never wear high heels in my dancing but IMPORTANT, if you do then you MUST do a quick soleus and gastroc stretch after each session of dance, they won’t take more than some 20 secs and can be done whilst you are doing something else. Finally the Cat Stretch which is strictly a mobiliser rather than a stretch is really excellent, for practically all situations.
Let me try and sum all this up.
Cardio vascular fitness is vital, aerobic (hot sweaty activity) improves this, belly dancing not so much but if you are overweight then at the beginning the aerobic element is quite significant.
The ability for belly dance to offset back trouble and arthritis is superb, far superior to any other exercise I can think of.
Also the ability to improve the tone of all the muscles in the body is really so amazing!
If you want a really physically beneficial program then see Belly Dance as the bulk of it. Simply add in some Aerobic activity along the edge to get you breathless and your heart going, (an uphill walk, quick swim, brief but fast cycle ride, a jog on soft undulating ground, aerobic machine, some ideas). If you fancy it then Yoga will help the supplety side of things greatly.