Why feeling taller tricks your brain into making you feel more confident and why your smartphone addiction might be making you depressed?

The next time you’re feeling sad and depressed, pay close attention to your posture. According to cognitive scientists, you’ll likely be slumped over with your neck and shoulders curved forward and head looking down.

While it’s true that you’re sitting this way because you’re sad, it’s also true that you’re sad because you’re sitting this way. This philosophy, known as embodied cognition, is the idea that the relationship between our mind and body runs both ways, meaning our mind influences the way our body reacts, but the form of our body also triggers our mind.

This isn’t just about displaying confidence to others around; this is about actually changing your hormones–increased levels of testosterone and decreased levels of cortisol, or the stress hormone, in the brain.

Nowadays anyone can see dancers perform thanks to television, where movies like Center Stage and shows like So You Think You Can Dance are accessible to the masses.
Nevertheless, ballet still remains off-limits for a large percentage of the population—particularly young people and, especially, young men.

If you or those around you are reluctant to go see a ballet, probably one of many misconceptions is skewing the perception of what is actually an exciting and dynamic art. So here we debunk the most common myths about ballet:

It’s a Girl Thing

Most men find it very emasculating to sit down to watch sparkly tutus and men in tights. However, ballet goes far deeper into the complexity of human beings than just the tutus they wear and the slippers they dance on.

Ballet dancers are incredibly athletic and you can see it in superhuman jumps to breakneck turns across the stage. The men and women train from a young age to perform physical feats that few athletes from other sports could even attempt. So if you like athletic sports like Basketball, you may also enjoy the mind-blowing amount of muscular strength and power ballet dancers display.

In a recent study, ballet dancers and people with no dance experience were compared by measuring their emotional sensitivity when viewing others.

The participants were monitored by putting electrodes on the tips of their fingers and measuring the sweat response triggered by an emotional reaction.

The dancers were able to read emotions better and their body reacted in a stronger way than the ones in the control group.

Here is an explanation why ballet helps you develop more empathetical understanding of others.

Ballet and dance in general is a very popular and highly enjoyable activity, either recreationally or professionally. But how many of you who ever did some ballet or dancing realise the positive effects it is making not just for your body but also for the brain?

Dance, in fact, has such beneficial effects on the brain that it is now being used to treat people with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological movement disorder.

To join our regular classes : www.balletbodysculpture.com

Source : Harvard Medical School : Neurobiology