Dance as Medicine

When people hear the word “dance,” there’s a preconceived idea they have in their mind. You might be bringing to mind different dance forms or techniques that you’ve seen – African dance, jazz, modern or contemporary. Maybe you’ve seen shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” or “Dancing with the Stars.” 

For thousands of years, humans have been dancing. Whether you consciously think you know how to dance or can dance from a traditional perspective, we’re all wired to move to music. It’s actually one of our most innate forms of medicine. In modern times, music and dance have been put into boxes and different genres, but when you travel to aboriginal tribes, you see that dancing is in our bones.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce you to my friend Jennifer Joy Jimenez, who is the creator of Transcendance™. Jennifer is also the visionary founder and director of the health and well-being division of the Brave Thinking Institute. I’m thrilled to have her join us today to talk about Transcendance, which I think is such a brilliant use of dance for healing. It’s so needed in the world.

Ever since Jennifer and I met, we started realizing that we both love dance. When she told me about Transcendance, I thought it was such an amazing concept. I’m excited for Jennifer tell us more about it.

Jennifer recently went to Africa, which was a bucket list dream come true. It was a philanthropy and family trip where she got to dance with African tribes. She noticed that drumming and dancing are just ingrained in us. Back in tribal times, people would dance to celebrate, to grieve, to bring in the rain for crops. When warriors would go out to war, they would bring massive drumming and shaking and dancing to actually digest and assimilate the trauma that the warriors had experienced so that it wouldn’t linger in their bodies and beings.

Transcendance™: A Modern Approach to Ancient Healing

Transcendance is a modern way of bringing ancient healing medicine back to modern times. 

One of the easiest descriptions is to imagine the mindfulness of yoga, which is a mind-body-spirit aligned holistic practice, but now add inspiring music and free-form conscious dance. This is simply allowing your higher self, the power that’s breathing you, to move you from the inside out.

Jennifer and I both believe that we’re spiritual beings having a human experience and that movement and exercise should be so much more than just moving the physiology. We’re so much more than that, and that’s what I love about Transcendance – it’s a mind-body-spirit practice that anybody can do.

Jennifer has had students and clients who are mobility challenged, maybe working with teams or in a wheelchair, even healing from surgery. The best part is everybody’s invited to the party. Her friends who say they have two left feet and absolutely no rhythm, some of them for the first time in their lives, feel accepted, received, celebrated, and told that they really can move freely.

For others who are highly trained, like professional dancers, when they begin conscious dance, they feel like a caged bird let out to fly around for the very first time. There’s so much freedom and joy that comes with this movement.

The Health Benefits of Dance

It’s so exciting to me because as someone who considers dance as medicine for myself, I see how Jennifer is making it accessible to people. You don’t have to go to a standard class – those are amazing and wonderful too, but some people feel like they’re not going to learn to salsa or waltz. Here’s a way that you can access it as medicine and get the healing benefits of it.

What Jennifer is doing is re-categorizing dance. She’s saying that it should really be in the list of healing modalities. And it’s not just Jennifer saying that – there’s a lot of research to show its healing properties too.

Jennifer shared one of the most staggering and impressive studies from the New England Journal of Medicine. It was a 21-year study on Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. They put patients through various tasks from chess to walking to weightlifting to tennis to brain games, and they also included dance. They wanted to see if they could increase mental acuity in these patients who were greatly declining in their memory and mental acuity.

After 21 years, they found that the mental acuity increased in people who were practicing social dancing by 76%. That’s staggering – there’s no drug on the market right now that can claim those kinds of improvements. In this way, we can think about dance as medicine, and as a way to increase longevity. 

And it doesn’t have to take hours and hours. Just a few minutes of this kind of movement, where you’re not necessarily even following somebody’s fancy footsteps, can have profound effects.

The Science Behind Dance and Brain Health

There’s something that happens in the brain when you dance. It rewires the neuronal pathways. It literally fires and wires new neurons. It also activates and releases the “happy hormones” – dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. It’s really an opportunity to feel joyful and happy without having to pop a pill.

So much of our Western medicine focuses on pharmaceutical solutions, and while there are many important things we’ve discovered as a human species, we often don’t hear doctors suggesting, “Why don’t you try dancing 5 minutes every day for the next 7 days as your prescription and see how you feel?” 

Along with getting some sunlight and fresh air, these simple practices can do wonders for our health.

Dance as Stress Recovery

Dance needs to be listed as a way that we can recover from stress and trauma. One of my specialties is helping people recognize that when we’re exposed to stress, whether it’s trauma or major stresses or even day-to-day stresses, it disrupts our nervous system, our stress hormones, and many other systems in our bodies. We can choose different activities to help us reset. In fact, in my book “Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health,” I list dance as a stress recovery activity.

When Jennifer works with people in Transcendance, they often report an improvement in their stress levels. She does a class on Zoom twice a month for people all over the world. She launched this during COVID to provide a way for people from all over to access it, which was so helpful, and she’s kept it ever since.

People come to these classes with all sorts of symptoms, often the kinds of symptoms that would keep them from going to the gym or doing their normal Zumba or fitness workout with their trainer. A lot of these fitness modalities feel taxing – they feel depleting, you feel more tired or tense or worked out at the end. But Transcendance is designed to actually be a reboot. It’s almost like plugging in your cell phone to recharge.

The Healing Power of Transcendance

Jennifer has seen amazing results with her clients. People come in with headaches, and by the end of class, the headache is gone without any drugs. Clients come in with locked body parts, literally with pain in their hip or shoulder or different parts of their body, and just following the 10 stages of Transcendance, which is a 60-minute full practice, their pain is gone. It’s almost miraculous.

Our tension in our minds and stress in our life impacts our bodies – there is a direct mind-body connection. When we’re not breathing properly, our blood isn’t oxygenated, we’re in fight or flight mode. But through Transcendance, people breathe, use guided visualization (which Olympic athletes use to calm the mind and put their bodies in the zone), decrease fight or flight response, increase parasympathetic nervous system response for rest and digest, and enter a flow state.

All of a sudden, muscles begin to soften and relax, but not in a sleepy mode. It’s where you want to be for peak productivity. A lot of people might feel stuck in their projects, and after moving and increasing their sense of joy, they have a reset on their motivation and are ready to tackle the day with more energy.

It’s like having a full stretching yoga session, a chiropractic adjustment, life coaching reboot, and full body massage all in one class. It’s crazy, and it’s fun. So much of our life is so serious, and we do so well at “adulting” – we’ve got a lot of responsibilities. One of the things I love so much about Transcendance is that it sprinkles in fun and play, which I think we all need a little bit more of as adults.

The Structure of a Transcendance Class

Jennifer explained what it’s like to be in a Transcendance class. You come dressed in comfortable clothing, nothing fancy – just what you would wear to stretch on the floor or walk your dog. The class begins with setting an intention, not just a physical intention like getting stronger or leaning down, but a mind-body-soul intention. You can bring all of your life’s troubles because it’s therapeutic in the sense that whatever is worrying you can create tension in your body.

After setting an intention, the class moves into mind-body centering. There’s a lot of research now with HeartMath that shows the heart’s electromagnetic frequency is 10,000 times more powerful than the brain’s. Heart coherence is about centering into the heart and connecting with a sense of gratitude and love, particularly self-love.

Jennifer finds that over 90% of women, and increasingly men too, struggle with body shame and disconnection from their bodies. In Transcendance, there’s a focus on healing this by sending a wave of love and gratitude, recognizing the body as a temple that does so much to keep us alive.

The class then moves into gentle yoga-inspired stretching. You don’t need to be flexible – you can even do this in a chair. These movements are rewiring the neuronal pathways to reconnect to the stages we went through as infants. When we developed as infants, there were certain ways we moved that created healthy neuronal pathways in the brain.

Next comes the body part dance. When was the last time you let your head guide and lead your body in how it wants to stretch and move? Often, our head is just stuck on our shoulders, leading to tension. In Transcendance, you let each part of your body – head, shoulders, arms, hands, torso, hips – lead the rest of the body. It’s a way of unwinding, as Jennifer likes to say, “Our issues live in our tissues, and you need to feel it to heal it.”

The class continues with the dance of shift, where you shake out your body, almost like shaking out a dusty rug. Then there’s the surrender, where you refill the chalice of the body with light, love, and joy. There’s a beautiful partner dance of mirror, tapping into our wired desire to move together and mirror each other.

The class ends with a cool-down, where you practice moving your body in a state of flow, connecting to an energy healing practice, and finally, stillness. It’s quite a comprehensive practice that addresses multiple aspects of health and well-being.

Personal Experience with Transcendance

I was so excited about Transcendance that I decided to do beyond just a single class – I went through Jennifer’s facilitator training program. This training teaches others how to guide Transcendance classes. It’s exciting because now Transcendance is something that people might find in their local community, as various people are coming through the facilitator training program and offering Transcendance to the world.

I feel so honored to have been trained in everything Jennifer described about how to lead a Transcendance class. I’m in the process now of getting the full certificate so that I can offer it more.

I can totally see this as a healing modality, and I want to be able to integrate it into the work I do with patients and program participants. I already teach meditation, biofeedback, guided imagery, and breathwork to my patients and program participants. We work with all of these things that Jennifer mentioned, but the dance was missing.

For me personally, dance has always been my medicine. I would help others and then when I needed to take time for myself, I would go dance. But it felt like two separate parts of my experience in life. With Transcendance, I’m really excited that now I can bring dance to my patients so they can also benefit from this healing modality.

Invitation to Experience Transcendance

Jennifer and I are excited to give you all a taste of Transcendance together. We’re going to create a beautiful special workshop just for our community where you get to have a taste of this and experience the magic for yourself. It really does feel magical – you come in feeling one way, and suddenly you feel so much calmer, with so much more energy. You feel reset, more flexible, with less tension. All of that in just one session – that’s what you can experience.

One of the most beautiful things that Jennifer does at the beginning of Transcendance is create a setting, a sacred space. She says this is a no-judgment zone – you get to show up as you are. Even when we’re on Zoom or in an in-person class, there’s no one looking at you to see if you’re doing it right. There’s no right or wrong way because you’re not following a set of choreographed steps.

This creates a deep connection with yourself that you may have never felt before. It opens up a connection to the beautiful power breathing you, animating your body in wonderful ways. When you harness and connect to that inner body wisdom, things begin to shift. Inner blocks, trauma, sadness – just start to fall away in the most natural way.

People often feel 10 years younger, 10 pounds lighter. They feel more aligned and connected to their intuition around their life direction and paths. They have crystal clarity on decision making, more ease in their relationships, and they just feel better about themselves, along with more freedom and energy to do the things they want to do in their lives.

Transcendance and Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness

It’s interesting to note that Transcendance can help us access what’s called a non-ordinary state of consciousness. As humans, we can really benefit from these states. Usually, we’re in this day-to-day grind, relying on our mind, being very logical, racing to the next appointment, racing through our day until we fall into bed and wake up the next day. We get into this very tight realm and sometimes lose track of the bigger picture of what we’re even doing here in this human existence.

Being able to have an experience where you can go into a different state is powerful. And the great thing about Transcendance is that we’re talking about gentle dance moves, so it’s safe. There are no withdrawal symptoms, no side effects. It’s a very safe way for us to access a different part of our nervous system, a different state of consciousness that we know how to do as humans but tend not to access.

I think dance, and Transcendance in particular, is an amazing tool for this. Especially for someone who wants to be able to change their brain, change their mood, change their health, but is afraid to try other methods, Transcendance is a very safe option. It can start to open that direction a little bit, which is why I think the name Transcendance is such a perfect name – it does help us transcend our experience through dance.

The Transcendental Experience of Transcendance

With Transcendance you do create and step into that theta brainwave state. Jennifer has had multiple transcendental experiences, multiple out-of-body experiences where you just feel so expansive, you feel one with everything around you. You feel a sense of ecstatic joy and love. These are the kinds of experiences that people talk about that you can tap into through various means, but dance offers a particularly accessible and safe way to do so.

What really heightens that experience for Jennifer is retreats. Going on retreat can help you get out of that hamster wheel life and really decide to do this work for yourself. Some of Jennifer’s greatest levels of awakening came on a retreat, having an out-of-body transcendental experience through movement and then hearing a very specific message from her higher power around her purpose work.

Conclusion and Call to Action

I’m so grateful to Jennifer for joining us today, for creating Transcendance, and for offering to do the taste of Transcendance with me. As we wrap up, I want to emphasize how important dance can be as a healing modality. We often think of healing in terms of medicine, therapy, or even alternative practices like meditation or yoga. But dance is a powerful tool that we sometimes overlook.

If you are interested in learning more about Transcendance, you can check out Jennifer’s website here. You can also find him her on Instagram @jenniferjoyjimenez33 and Facebook @Jennifer Joy Jiménez.

If you would like to sign up for our FREE “Taste of Transcendance” special event to experience firsthand the healing power of this mind-body-spirit modality and let the movement set you free you can save your spot here. 

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Dance combines physical movement, which is great for our bodies, with emotional expression and mental focus. It’s a holistic practice that can address many aspects of our health at once. And as Jennifer pointed out, it’s something our bodies are naturally wired to do.

I’m particularly excited about Transcendance because it makes dance accessible to everyone. You don’t need to have any dance experience or even consider yourself a “good” dancer to benefit from it. It’s about moving your body in whatever way feels right to you, connecting with your inner wisdom, and allowing yourself to experience joy and freedom through movement.

In my practice, I often see patients who are dealing with chronic stress, anxiety, or other health issues. I believe that incorporating something like Transcendance into their healing journey could be incredibly beneficial. It’s a way to release tension, boost mood, improve cognitive function, and even process emotions or traumas that might be stored in the body.

Remember, healing doesn’t always have to be serious or difficult. Sometimes, the most powerful healing can come through joy, through play, through allowing ourselves to move freely and express ourselves without judgment. That’s what Transcendance offers, and that’s why I’m so excited to bring it to my community.

So, whether you join us for our upcoming Taste of Transcendance, seek out a Transcendance class in your area, or simply put on some music and dance in your living room, I encourage you to explore the healing power of dance. Your body, mind, and spirit will thank you.

I am living proof that it is possible to heal holistically and naturally. It’s possible to heal from migraines, not to feel pain while having hypermobility, clear HPV and reverse abnormal cells, and eliminate the effects of stress, trauma, anxiety and depression. 

It’s possible to reset our stress hormones, detoxify, and help our body and mind to recover. I help patients with to do this in my practice every day – by phone and zoom, anywhere in the world. You can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

To learn more about my approach to healing from all of this using my Stress Recovery Protocol which involves optimizing cortisol and adrenaline levels to heal the adrenals, as well as neurotransmitters, using nutrients, herbs and C.A.R.E.™ – my proprietary program to support clean eating, adequate sleep, stress recovery and exercise – I encourage you to read all about it in my latest book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

If you would like to learn how to do a detox to improve your overall health and wellness I definitely encourage you to check out my New 14-Day Detox Program. This program includes two protein shakes per day with 18 grams of protein, and two meals per day with a meal plan that I created based on making sure you get at least 20 grams of protein in each meal. 

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It also includes antioxidants, and videos from me to teach you to use mindfulness, as well as to replace toxins in your food and home. In this way, you can reset your diet, lifestyle and cell health all carrying on with your daily activities and routine.

Thank you all for joining us on this episode of How Humans Heal. Remember to subscribe if you haven’t already so you don’t miss our next episode. I’ll see you all soon, and until then, keep dancing!

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