Friday, February 28, 2014

"What dance says about you!"

When we first start learning how to dance, we all start in the same boat. Not knowing much about it at all. But through the course of time as we continue to expand our knowledge & immerse ourselves in the world of dance, we begin to capture the freedom of self expression. We find what makes us comfortable & what we enjoy. We begin to find our inner performer & make dancing our own! But, have you ever wondered what dance says about you? Believe it or not, but how you dance reveals a lot about who you are! Certain type of people or personalities dance a certain way. Read the article below & see what your dance personality says about you. Is it right? Is it wrong? Or are you unsure? Find out now!!!
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

It is where many couples first set eyes on one another – and now research suggests that the dance floor is the perfect place to gauge a prospective partner’s personality.
Scientists have claimed that the way a person gyrates in time to music can betray secrets of their character.
Using personality tests, the researchers assessed volunteers into one of five “types”. They then observed how each members of each group danced to different kinds of music. They found that:
  • Extroverts moved their bodies around most on the dance floor, often with energetic and exaggerated movements of their head and arms.
  • Neurotic individuals danced with sharp, jerky movements of their hands and feet – a style that might be recognized by clubbers and wedding guests as the “shuffle”.
  • Agreeable personalities tended to have smoother dancing styles, making use of the dance floor by moving side to side while swinging their hands.
  • Open-minded people tended to make rhythmic up-and-down movements, and did not move around as much as most of the others
  • People who were conscientious or dutiful moved around the dance floor a lot, and also moved their hands over larger distances than other dancers.
Dr Geoff Luck of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland, who led the research, said: “Music is known to evoke strong emotions in people and emotions can be expressed through bodily movement.
”People use body motions as reliable indicators of others’ personality types, and even the movements of robots have been shown to elicit attributes of ‘personality’ by observers.”
The researchers studied the dance moves of 60 volunteers who had been selected from 900 people who conducted personality tests. The dancers were picked due to having strong scores in one of the five main personality traits being studied.
 Each of the volunteers were asked to dance spontaneously to 30 different tracks from six different genres of music – Rock, Techno, Latin, Jazz, Funk and Pop. Using motion capture technology, the researchers recorded the dance styles of all the volunteers as they were played each musical clip before analyzing the movements using computer software.
The researchers found strong correlations between certain dancing styles and each of the personalities. They also discovered that different personalities danced in different ways depending on the music.
Rock music tended to bring out stereotypical headbanging moves, particularly among those with an extrovert personality.
Those with open-minded personalities seemed to make more rhythmical limb movements than anyone else during techno music.
Agreeable individuals seemed to move around more confidently than the others during Latin music, while the conscientious participants changed from moving around the dance floor to making smaller jerkier movements while listening to techno music.
 Rock music appeared to be the only genre that brought neurotics out of their shells; otherwise they tended to make small, nervous movements.
Dr Luck, a researcher in “music-related movement” – also known as dancing – added: “Certain movements may be more representative of particular genres, such as the way listeners tend to nod their head or tap their foot when listening to jazz music.
”
Future work might examine how other genres of music, such as classical or world music, influence listeners’ spontaneous movements. Such music may not elicit the same kind of rhythmical dancing movements, but would help us better understand the effects of music on body movement.”
Michelle Groves, associate dean at the faculty of education at the Royal Academy of Dance, said professional dancers were trained to express their emotions when they danced and tended to hide their personalities, but this would be less obvious in untrained people. 
She said: “There has been work in the past that has shown you can guess at a person’s personality from the way they move, but it hasn't looked at dance.
”Professional dancers tend to have introverted personalities, but they are are highly emotional which they draw on when they are performing. It is a nice contrast to this research with people who have not been through a period of training, as their personality comes through more clearly and it hasn't been self-selected.”
Dr Peter Lovatt, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a former professional dancer, said dancing and movement could convey subtle messages about the way people are feeling and thinking, which has its routes deep in our evolutionary history.
 He said: “There is a common train of thought that dancing is related to sexual selection and is part of the mate selection process.
 We have done some work asking 14,000 people to describe their dancing styles and we saw that dancing changes with age as their confidence in dancing changes. Confidence plays an important role in the way people dance. Self esteem also plays an important role and this can influence a person’s personality.”

Friday, February 14, 2014

A little bit of “Marriage Insurance”




Dancing with one another on regular basis requires a lot of trust. It could be the male or female putting themselves on the line. It’s risky business to be uncomfortable, not confident, or risk looking foolish in front of your spouse.

What could the payoff to suck risks be?? The answer has caused wars, dethroned kings, and overthrown empires… It’s all for … love

Men out there ask yourselves one questions. How often do you take your wife and hold her in your arms for forty minutes??

With a grim looking divorce rate of 50% percent in first marriages, 67% of second, and 74% of third marriages [Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri] the answer is NOT ENOUGH! In Tampa Florida divorce lawyer Arnie Levine offers one of his secrets to a long-lasting marriage: ballroom dancing. Levine is “a divorce court terror in a tasteful charcoal suit,” the Tampa Bay Times reports, but he has been married 55 years to his wife, Gail. The couple goes ballroom dancing on Wednesday nights.
"You have an opportunity to hold your wife in your hands, talk sweet nothings, and go out to dinner," Arnie Levine tells the newspaper.

[http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/divorce_lawyer_says_ballroom_dancing_is_important_to_his_55-year_marriage/]


Dancing is one of the few activities that can release Oxycontin that magical chemical elixir produced and released in the body. It’s also known as the “trust molecule”. This chemical is incredibly potent between loved ones, especially as they begin to rely on one another.
“This neuropeptide which acts in the body and brain, is the biochemical representation of emotional and sexual intimacy…Until a few years ago, oxytocin was believed to only be generated during sex and during childbirth, since at these moments the discharge of the hormone is extremely powerful. We now know that the hormone can be produced in more subtle ways during activities that promote social bonds. The happiest moments in life are usually flooded with oxytocin and in their repetition they consolidate a healthy life.”
[http://faena.com/en/tags/oxytocin#!/]

The more you interact and take risks together, the more and better the payoff will be.

Today being Valentine’s Day, We pose another question for the married couples out there… Why wait? Beat the odds and take a chance on each other