Benefits That Are Comprehensive
Dancing is good for you for multiple reasons, regardless of whether you’re raising little boys or little girls. Firstly, dance need not necessarily require you to wear a tutu and learn how to do ballet moves.Did you know martial arts technically dance? It’s true. Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jet Li—all these men are very well-versed in martial arts. But it’s choreography.
Now, granted, little boys can join a dance troupe that’s primarily made up of girls, and their spike in strength and lack of competitors will make them core members of any choreographed number. The problem is, young boys aren’t as apt to be interested in running around with a bunch of girls listening to pop music. Also, little girls mature faster than little boys.
Meanwhile, with karate and other martial arts, young ones can learn the same sort of things dance teaches. They can learn how to memorize movements and practice them to perfection, and then apply those movements before an audience—just like at a recital. Additionally, the physical aspect is there as well.
Dance Advantages
With dance, children are able to get a comprehensive workout that not only helps tone the body but hone the mind. Artistic pursuits have an intelligence-fostering aspect to them. Consider music, as a prime example. Music is so profound that people who have had physical issues emanating from strokes or other conditions regain brain function from engaging with it.
Why is this? Well, there are a few reasons. Something that’s considerable is that music emotionally engages people while simultaneously influencing them in an intellectual fashion. When you couple that with physicality, in dance there exists the potential for threefold benefit. In addition, discipline, keeping schedules, and teamwork are added to the mix with the right troupe.
With a group of dancers at a studio or a karate group at a dojo, young ones will have to learn choreography that is performed as a group before an audience. Dance does have more creative choreography, so it does slightly transcend karate in this respect. Meanwhile, karate does have a silver-lining of self-defense which dance doesn’t have—the two aren’t exactly equal.
Transcending Seasons
Dance also transcends specific seasons. For example, sports usually have a season that starts in September and ends by May. No such thing exists in dance. Certainly, some studios may open or close based on the school year, but there will additionally be studios in operation through the summer—just like with music lessons. Weekly piano lessons don’t end with summer.
Something else dance can do for your children is helping them to think in new ways. The body occupies three dimensions. Well, it technically occupies the dimension of “time”, and there are likely some imperceptible dimensions involved as well; but the point is, we don’t often think of the space our bodies take up when we move. We don’t think about where our arms and legs are.
This is one reason children clumsily bump into things when they excitedly tear around the house after eating something with a dash of sugar in it. Their brains and their hands just aren’t operating on the same level! With dance and martial arts (which is just aggressive dance that can be used for self-defense), brains and limbs get on the same page.
Getting Involved
The only downside will be twofold: any dance you get your children in will have a monthly cost associated with it; or maybe a session cost, depending. Secondly, you’ll need to buy proper clothing, like sweats, shorts, shirts, tutus, body-suits, ballet shoes, or whatever’s necessary. You can find dancewear options for practically any sort of dance at Just For Kix.
Whether you’ve got girls or boys, there’s much they can learn from directly and indirectly through dance. If you haven’t looked into this sort of physical activity for your young ones, you may want to search around and see what’s available in your are
martial arts helped me when i was a kid