October 2, 2024 – In 2012, Tara Rynders' sister was diagnosed acute disseminated encephalomyelitisa rare disease that affects the spinal cord and brain. For Rynders, a registered nurse in Denver, the news was devastating.
“She was a beautiful 26-year-old woman, strong and healthy, and within 12 hours she fell into a coma and couldn't move or speak,” Rynders said. She flew to her sister in Reno, Nevada, and checked into her room within the intensive care unit. The helplessness she felt affected not only her role as a sister, but additionally her role as a health care provider.
“As nurses, we love fixing things,” Rynders said. “But when my sister was sick, there was nothing I could do to heal her. The doctors didn’t even know what was going on.”
When Rynders' sister woke up from her coma, she couldn't speak. The only comfort Rynders could offer was her presence and the flexibility to bring a smile to her sister's face. So Rynders did what got here naturally to him. …
She danced.
In that tiny hospital room she sang her sister's favorite song – “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus – and danced around the room doing everything she could to make her sister laugh.
And this patient, who couldn't form words, found her voice.
“She screamed so loudly it almost sounded like she was crying,” Rynders recalled. “The depth of her grief and the depth of her joy emerged at the same time. It was truly amazing and so healing for both of us.”
Do you know how powerful dancing really is?
Rynders is far from the only one who has discovered the healing power of dance. Significantly, the trend also appears to be spreading among healthcare professionals. In recent years, doctors and nurses across the country – from Los Angeles, California, that is Atlanta Georgia; from TikTok's “Dancing nurse,” Cindy Jones, to Max Chiu, Nebraska Breakdancing oncologist – have shown that finding new ways to move your body can be just what the doctor ordered for mental and physical health.
It comes at a time when many Americans are fighting their mental health. According to the CDC, greater than One in five adults in the US living with a mental illness. A 2022 Opinion poll found that 90% of the population believes there is a mental health crisis in the United States.
The solution? It could just be dancing.
There is enough evidence. A Study 2024 from the University of Sydney in Australia found that dancing offers more psychological and cognitive benefits – helping with everything from depression to motivation to emotional well-being – than any other type of exercise.
Another study, published in February from The BMJ The medical journal compared the mental health benefits of everything from aerobic exercise to cognitive behavioral therapy to antidepressants and found that dance consistently produced the greatest reduction in depression.
Structured dance, where you learn specific movements, can provide an enormous boost to your mental health University of Sydney 2024 study. But this also applies to unchoreographed dancing, where you principally just let your limbs go their very own way. A Study 2021published in Complementary therapies in clinical practicefound that 95% of dancers who just moved their bodies, regardless of what it looked like on the outside, still had major benefits for people with depression, anxiety and trauma.
How to turn a mastectomy into a dance party
Deborah Cohan, 55, an obstetrician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, discovered the power of dance firsthand in 2013. After discovering a lump in her breast during a self-exam, she feared the worst. Days later, her radiologist confirmed that she had invasive ductal carcinoma.
“It was a complete shock,” Cohan recalled. “I took care of myself. I ate right. I had no obvious risk factors. I worked the night shift and there is actually one increased risk of breast cancer among gynecologists and gynecologists who work night shift. Nevertheless, it completely surprised me. My children were 5 and 8 years old at the time and I was afraid that they would grow up without a mother.
So Cohan turned to the one thing that gave her comfort—dance lessons. Dancing has been an escape for Cohan since she took her first ballet class at age three. So she skipped work and went to her weekly soul motion dance class, where she did the precise opposite of escaping. She hugged their fears.
“I imagined death as a dance partner,” Cohan said. “I felt a freedom come over my body. It didn't make sense to me at the time, but it was almost a joy. Not that I accepted death or expected it, just that I acknowledged its presence. There is so much pressure to be positive with people with cancer. [But] This has to come from inside a person, not from outside. Nobody can dictate how someone should feel. And as I danced, I felt real joy, even as I recognized my own fears and didn't turn away from them. I experienced all emotions at the same time. It was a huge relief to realize that this wasn't the case all It will be about sadness.
The experience was so healing for Cohan that she decided to see if she could bring those same feelings into her bilateral mastectomy. When meeting with her surgical team, Cohan made an unorthodox request: Could her prep prep include a dance party?
“I asked the anesthesiologist at the check-up appointment if I could dance and he said yes,” she remembers with amusing. “And then I asked the surgeon and he said yes. And then I asked the perioperative nurse and he said yes, 'but only if you don't let me dance too.' So somehow everything fell into place.
Cohan chose the Beyoncé song “Get me in shapewhich she says resonated with her because “it's about being in your body and being your full self.” I thought it was Exactly “I want to show up in the operating room.” The moment the music began and Cohan began dancing, all her stress melted away.
“Even though I was given permission to dance, I never expected anyone else to join in,” Cohan said. But that's exactly what they did. A friend made a videowhich shows Cohan in a hospital gown and puffy cap dancing alongside her surgical and anesthesia teams, all wearing scrubs, at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.
“It's strange to say this, especially a couple of mastectomy,” Cohan said, “however it was probably the most joyful moments of my life.”
The video has been viewed 8.4 million times and is so inspiring – we challenge you to watch it and not jump out of your chair to dance – that others soon followed Cohan's example.
- Sixteen years old Amari Hall danced to have fun his successful heart transplant.
- Ana Alecia Ayalaa 32-year-old uterine cancer survivor, danced to “Juju on That Beat” to make chemotherapy more bearable.
- Doreta Norrisa breast cancer patient, chose “Gangnam Style” to serenade her during surgery.
Good medicine
Rynders recognized the true power of dance years before her sister's illness, when her mother died of cancer. “I always considered myself to be very resilient as a person, but after my mother died I couldn't recover,” she said. “I was sad all the time. And then one day I realized: Do you know what brings me joy? It’s always been dance.”
She went back to school to get her Masters of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Colorado at Boulder and founded The clinic in 2017, a company that offers dance workshops for healthcare professionals struggling with burnout and secondary traumatic stress.
Cohan, who is now cancer-free, says her experience made her completely rethink her relationships with patients. She has danced with quite a few of them, but is careful never to force it on them. “I never want to project my idea of joy onto others,” she said. “Most importantly, it changed my thinking about what it means to take responsibility as a patient.”
The one thing Cohan never wanted as a patient, and what she never wanted for her own patients, is the loss of choice. “When I danced, I didn't feel like I used to be just surrendering my body and grudgingly accepting what was going to occur to me,” she said. “I took responsibility for my decision and felt connected, Really connected, with my surgical team.
As a patient, she experienced what she calls the “regulated” atmosphere of medicine. “You're told where to go, what to do, and you have no control over it,” recalls Cohan, now semi-retired and leading retreats for women with breast cancer. “But introducing dance felt really radical to my healthcare team.” My thing, not the other way around.
Patients living with illness need these moments of escape. It's not always just about feelings, said Cohan, but about physical relaxation. “Sometimes it’s just a matter of remembering how to move consciously. When I had surgery, I didn't just dance to relax. I wanted my entire surgical team to be relaxed.”
Every time Rynders dances with her patients, she is reminded of her sister and the comfort she was able to provide when medication could no longer help.
“We don’t always have to be fixed through things,” she said. “Sometimes we just have to be.” currently with each other and being with each other. And sometimes the best way to do that is to dance until tears roll down your cheeks.