Dance history is difficult to trace, with the earliest evidence suggesting that dance has existed for at least 10,000 years. However, many anthropologists believe dance has existed for hundreds of thousands of years, long before written language, cave paintings, and many others forms of creative or communicative expression. It’s hypothesised that humans, and potentially our evolutionary ancestors, were using rhythmic movement as a primary form of communication, emotional expression, storytelling and social bonding. Evolutionary biologists note that complex rhythmic movement is visible in other primates too, hinting that the impulse to dance may be older than humanity itself.
This article is an introduction. It describes how we, at ioēs, use dance in our embodied movement practice. I will explain methods and mechanisms, grounding the various psychophysiological and psychosocial benefits of dance in the relevant scientific literature, which I will link in footnotes.
The way I dance and relate to dance has drastically evolved over the years, yet dancing itself has remained constant. Whether it be teaching, dancing in groups on stage, at home alone, or with friends on the dance floor, I feel very fortunate that this has been something I passionately connected with from a very young age. And thankfully, it's something I’ve been able to sustain throughout my life.
As I briefly alluded to in a previous article, dancing helped me through my toughest years. To this day, dancing is my preferred way of reconnecting, grounding, attuning and expressing. It helps me become aware of all that is me in a given moment. Through this I experience myself more intimately and playfully, from the inside out.
This embodied way of moving I’ve just described isn’t something I got taught. I learned it intuitively, over time, through plenty of trial and error, ultimately out of necessity. Like most of us I grew up learning how to dance “aesthetically” and “acceptably,” within a society that tends to label and (often negatively) judge expressions that seem outside the norm. When a young person experiences such judgement, it can make intuitive movement seem close to impossible. These judgements are common and systemic, relating to many areas of human life.
In dance, we refer to the sequence of planned, structured movements as choreographies, and they certainly have their place. A good chunk of my life was basically creating choreographies and teaching them. Learning specific dance moves is fun and comes with a wide range of physical and mental health benefits, especially when done in group settings. But it’s also missing what is perhaps the most human aspect of dance (at least in the context of dance’s therapeutic potential), which therefore forecloses many of the opportunities. Opportunities for self-discovery through learning how to consciously and authentically inhabit and creatively express our minded bodily experiences, and then, eventually learning how to positively evolve them. Opportunities to be real and vulnerable, gain more nuanced understanding, and ultimately create deeper, more meaningful connections to oneself and others.
ioēs dance classes (part of our Embodied Movement practice) inspire fluidity, agility, flexibility and adaptability. Our classes are done without mirrors, which requires us to listen and focus on internal sensations, balance, coordination and spatial awareness. This alone makes it a great exercise for your brain. Not being able to rely on your reflection and observe your movements in the mirror requires you to build somatic (bodily) trust by using all of your sensory systems (for example, your proprioception which tells your brain where your limbs are in space without looking at them, or your vestibular system that orients you and tracks your balance and head movements), training sensorimotor integration. Sensorimotor integration, or SMI, is the process by which the nervous system gathers sensory data from the environment (visual, touch, balance, proprioception) and translates it into physical movement. When you combine sensory input with physical action, you force multiple regions of the brain to communicate simultaneously, triggering structural changes in your neural pathways. In short, a whole brain-body workout that supports nervous system repatterning or ‘rewiring’.
This may seem a little out of place at first, but confusing the brain is key in our dance practice. And there are many creative ways to do that. No movement is the same. When we observe ourselves repeating a rhythm or movement, we switch it up, because that’s when the brain basically goes on autopilot and stops making new connections. And because we want to increase brain plasticity (perhaps replacing old, conditioned, potentially unhelpful or untrue associations with new, more accurate and helpful associations), we keep the brain guessing.
We do this because that’s when the brain learns most effectively. We often treat confusion like a stop sign but it’s actually a sign of deep learning and brain plasticity. That’s why we at ioēs embrace and create productive confusion in our movement classes. (In cognitive psychology and the learning sciences, productive confusion is officially defined as an epistemic emotion and cognitive state that occurs when a learner confronts a "cognitive impasse"—a direct mismatch between incoming information and their prior knowledge—and possesses the necessary support or strategies to successfully resolve the discrepancy).
I combine different methods inspired by my personal dance journey, various somatic practices and movement techniques, and the movement language, gaga. This combination of influences and approaches has created a powerful framework that allows you to fully reclaim space and time, consciously connect to your mindbody experience, explore limitations, internal sensations and express impulses and emotions, in a rhythmic and playful way (which feels very different to many other therapeutic modalities). ioēs Embodied Movement (EM) is a framework that holds the potential to creatively explore and help you evolve your mindbody connection in ways that enable you to move beyond old patterns and limitations. In our practice I’ve observed that this can help foster greater resilience, teach a sense of safety through interoceptive body awareness and nervous system regulation, and allow new physical and emotional experiences to emerge.
The evidence that dance helps with mood and emotional regulation is more than clear. It releases neurotransmitters like endorphins, dopamine and serotonin. This elevates mood, helps reduce anxiety, enhances motivation, and creates a sense of euphoria. Oxytocin is released in group dance, resulting from the sense of connection and safety, which further reinforces the sense of connection and safety (it’s a positive cycle).
Emotional expression is also a core element of dance. Some researchers define dance as “consciously organised energy that gives form to feeling” (Dale et al. 2007). fMRI studies have shown that dance activates the brain areas associated with reward, such as the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, related to mood regulation, as well as the amygdala and insula which are responsible for processing emotional stimuli and feelings. This is why dance movement therapy has been applied to populations with various mental health conditions, including post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety.
Not only is dance a great vessel for emotional expression, it offers many other therapeutic effects due to its inherently complex, multi-modal nature that involves psychological, musculoskeletal, and neurological processes, which can impact multiple domains, such as procedural learning, attention, memory, coordination, rhythm, balance, posture and gait.
Dancing is associated with positive structural and functional changes in the brain, increased hippocampal gray matter (controls movement, memory and emotion), and parahippocampal gyrus volume, as well as white matter integrity (the brains “highway system”, which enables neural messages to travel faster, helping with learning, attention and motor control), supporting brain and cognitive functioning, and delays the deleterious effects of aging and neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Dance integrates brain areas, which, as I’ve already described, improves neuroplasticity, making it particularly powerful for nervous system rewiring.
The bottom line? Dancing is inherently joyous and playful. That alone offers healing potential. Especially as we age when so much of our inherent playfulness feels lost to the past. But we should dance. As often as practical. And we should allow ourselves to feel good while dancing. We should approach movement with playful creativity. Thankfully the balance of scientific evidence supports this assertion. Dance improves our brain-body health in unique ways. These improvements are likely to transfer to other aspects of life. Maybe it helps us navigate work stress a little more easily. Maybe it helps us stay more present and show up more creatively in life or with our kids. Maybe it helps us feel emotions that we’ve never had the opportunity to really feel. Maybe it helps us feel seen, heard and valued for the first time. For you it could be all of this and more, or something entirely different. And it all starts with a step.
If you’re an individual, curious about 1:1 embodied movement sessions book, a free consultation. If you’re curious about attending an online group session, sign up to our embodied movement waiting list.
If you’re an organisation, we offer genuinely unique workshops and events that bring together somatic practices, embodied movement, and philosophical exercises. The combination of approaches supports stress resilience, adaptive learning, and critical thinking, skills crucial to a rapidly changing, AI intermediated world. Please contact us for a quote.
With love, Esther
Helpful resources:
Hackney ME, Burzynska AZ, Ting LH. The cognitive neuroscience and neurocognitive rehabilitation of dance. BMC Neurosci. 2024 Nov 6;25(1):58. doi: 10.1186/s12868-024-00906-8. PMID: 39506634; PMCID: PMC11539675. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11539675/
Sidney D’Mello, Blair Lehman, Reinhard Pekrun, Art Graesser, Confusion can be beneficial for learning. Learning and Instruction, Volume 29, 2014, Pages 153-170, ISSN 0959-4752 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959475212000357
Sandra Klaperski-van der Wal, Jonathan Skinner, Jolanta Opacka-Juffry, Kristina Pfeffer, Dance and stress regulation: A multidisciplinary narrative review. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, Volume 78, 2025, 102823, ISSN 1469-0292 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1469029225000226?via%3Dihub
Prates RACS, Kaczmarska M, Senger D, Piña-Escudero SD, Light SW, Pintado-Caipa M, Battista P, Tahir P, Pitsch E, Allen IE, Possin KL, Haas AN. Effects of dance interventions on brain health for older adults with cognitive impairment: an umbrella review. BMC Geriatr. 2025 Nov 5;25(1):846. doi: 10.1186/s12877-025-06483-7. PMID: 41194042; PMCID: PMC12587612.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12587612/#Sec16
Fong Yan A, Nicholson LL, Ward RE, Hiller CE, Dovey K, Parker HM, Low LF, Moyle G, Chan C. The Effectiveness of Dance Interventions on Psychological and Cognitive Health Outcomes Compared with Other Forms of Physical Activity: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2024 May;54(5):1179-1205. doi: 10.1007/s40279-023-01990-2. Epub 2024 Jan 25. PMID: 38270792; PMCID: PMC11127814.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38270792/