Yoga offers benefits to all dancers, including ballet, modern, tap, hip hop or any type of dance. In fact, a growing number of teachers, dance professionals, and choreographers are learning about these benefits and adding yoga to the routine of their dancers each week.
Dancers need to be strong, flexible, balanced and graceful and yoga can help with all of these goals. The combination of stretching the muscles and strengthening the body make yoga a well rounded practice for anyone interested in improving strength, flexibility, balance and stability.
Flexibility is essential for all dancers and yoga can help to increase flexibility. Although most dancers are naturally flexible, everyone has certain areas of the body that tend to be tight. A regular yoga practice will stretch the entire body, so you can improve flexibility in the hips, back, hamstrings or any tight area of the body.
Through yoga, dancers learn to listen to their bodies and move slowly and deliberately to avoid injury. Yoga is a low impact way to strengthen and protect the joints. In addition, you will learn how to align and position the body to avoid injury.
Despite training and proper care of the joints, injuries can, and do, happen. Yoga offers an effective way to gently stretch injured areas to help promote healing. Yoga therapists use yoga asanas for a wide range of injuries and health conditions.
The life of a dancer is busy and stressful. Classes, performances, rehearsals, auditions and other responsibilities can leave you overwhelmed, stressed and exhausted. Yoga has been shown to offer significant benefits for relieving stress, anxiety, depression and other emotional symptoms.
There are many types of yoga and selecting the right one depends on several factors. All forms of yoga increase flexibility, balance, stability and strength. A hatha yoga class or Ashtanga will give a good overall stretch to the entire body. If you want to build strength, try power yoga.