Healing dance is the perfect antidote to the fitness center blues.

When you do a healing dance, the body responds as you allow it to move and groove to music that gives you joy. Your emotions and senses greatly benefit from the ease and flow provided by stimulating music. Dancing freely, without thought of a particular form or set of steps, gives both the emotions and the senses enough room to be released in a natural way that the body itself has decided is best.

When you look at dances around the world, the variety of movements are as astounding as they are educational. An interesting site, Voice of Dance .com, has a lot of information, youtubes videos, twitter members and up-to-date news, but when I searched on the word "African" it said: I'm sorry, there were no matches." And this was even though I tried to look up a well known dancer (Judith Jamison!). The site was near the top of the Google list. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre was listed, and I'm unsure if I should be elated or sad....

I choose to be un-attached to this outcome, and will not make up stories about what it means. I will continue to seek out healing dance promoters however I can.

National Geographic, usually found on cable, does a good job surveying cultures and including clips of authentic dance in its natural settings. I love seeing the Masai of East Africa dance whenever I catch it; it seems to be part of an all-mate ritual in which many men are carrying spears (or they are attached to their bodies).

The men's dance that excites me is them jumping straight up into the air. They do it repeatedly, jumping to the drumbeat with controlled exhilaration. Their arms are straight down or wrapped inside their cloaks, and you can see they are jumping high as they can. They are regal and the dance looks empowering. Even though I am woman, this dance is motivating to me personally, and I am inspired to jump high whenever the music fits the mode. (This dance fit especially well with the Michael Jackson songs playing on the radio to honor this genius; it punctuated the syncopation of his music.)

I took a dance class where the teacher taught us that some dances are for men only, and others exclusively for women. In West Africa, Bantu women in and around Congo and beyond dance by taking small steps, much like the two-step, but very low to the ground with knees bent deeply. It is very feminine and gentle-looking. The low stepping represents sowing and reaping, traditionally women's work. The hands are positioned and moved in such a way as to imitate planting seeds or collecting nuts and fruit.

I loved this class. The teacher taught us that some dances have been preserved in her native Haiti that no longer exist in Congo. The region is just about the most central geographic area of Africa that is also on the Atlantic, and many Africans were captured from this area. I do not recall whether her troupe visited Africa or if some drummers from there witnessed her group dancing in the U.S. Either way, she said the elder Congolese drummers almost cried when they saw the dances that had almost been forgotten. Here they were, retained by the culture very much alive in Haiti. Hundreds of years had not diluted their potency. I wish I could have witnessed those moments of recognition. The elders must have been overjoyed.

Further north but still on the coast, the dances of the Wolof people, mostly of Senegal and the general Mali region, are clearly pro-fertility. I cannot shake the image of Amanyea Puryear literally airborne doing one of these West African dance movements with shins and feet flying to the beat of thunderous drums. Formerly of Brooklyn, I believe she is now in Chicago, teaching dance naturally. Talk about healing and possibility--when you saw Amanyea dance in the 1970s, as a member of the now disbanded International African American Ballet, you knew you had witnessed a miracle.

From that same time period, I will never forget Chuck Davis dancing to drumbeating skins with rhythms reaching fever pitch, and then, with everyone on cue, he thrust out his leg out just so: Take That! The drums stopped in one clap. You'd have to have been there. This and similar incidents inform me that there are few things like the concordance of drum and dancer to heal feelings of uncertainty, hopelessness, or yes, maybe illness. Dances traditionally have been called to officially rout out demons from the sick and, less vehemently, to encourage recovery in the ill.

The fertility dance of the group Sabar Ak Ru Afrik (Drum and Spirit of Africa), performed at my wedding confirmation ceremony in 1982, is definitely the reason for the birth of my daughter, who was born nine months later almost to the day. See the Healing Dance of Het Heru and Belly Dance pages for more about this.

You may have taken ballet lessons, or be a modern dancer, or enjoy hip hop dance or participate in dancing at an annual powwow. I declare all of these are healing. Dance is a healing language of expression and creativity, and there is nothing that frees the spirit quite like dance does.