Dance Physiotherapy

Dancing is the creation of many shapes, movements and emotions with your body.

Your posture or carriage during dance and outside of dance both need specific requirements.

At Mind Heart Body Centre we understand a dancer’s body and the art of dancing. Our practitioners are both physiotherapists as well as Pilates instructors specifically trained in rehabilitation. We have a dance background and we treat following Connect TherapyTM. This model involves assessing your everyday walking around posture as well as your dance posture specific to your dance style, looking at its twists and rotations and unwinding them throughout your entire system to decrease your pain, allowing you to perform at your optimal level.

We will find the main driver or cause of your particular problem— losing balance on one leg, hip pain with developés, back pain with arabesques or Achilles pain with jumping or dancing in heels. If you are having specific problems or pain with certain dance moves we can help you correct areas in your body that are letting you down—this may be a mobility issue, stability issue, a coordination difficulty or a combination of any of them. Once finding out your problem we may provide hands on treatment, incorporate Pilates exercises, as well as prescribe dance and non-dance related exercises to improve your condition.

By the end of the assessment you will know:

  • What is causing your problem
  • How we will help you treat it
  • Expected treatment outcomes
  • What is expected of you in terms of exercises to achieve your desired goal

Just remember: how you treat your body outside dancing is going to affect how you are able to move during dance.

Common Dance Injuries

Great dancers make dancing look absolutely effortless. That goes hand in hands with many hours of practice.  Often in the pursuit of perfection injuries may occur be it from overuse or trying a new routine or trick. Your bodies need to be kept in peak condition.

Areas of common dance injuries are:

  • Hamstring , glutes, calf strains
  • Hip impingement or constant hip tightness
  • Lower back injuries
  • Shoulder  and neck strains
  • Foot and ankle injuries

All of these require immediate attention. If one chooses to ignore signals from your body saying an area feels a little niggly and you continue to train, these niggles con often develop into more severe conditions that require a longer time away from training to recover. Listen to your body, understand your body and learn how you can help yourself. If you don’t know how, seek professional advice.

Core Assessments

What is your core? No… it is not just your 6 pack muscles.

Your core is your stability muscles that reside deeper within your body—underneath your obliques and your 6 pack. Muscles that make up your core are the transversus abdominus, pelvic floor, multifidus and your diaphragm. All these muscles need to work in harmony to get a good core contraction.

Benefits of good core strength:

  • Ultimate balance between flexibility and stability
  • Decreased injury rates
  • Body movements become more effortless

At Mind Heart Body Centre we use a real-time ultrasound machine to assess your core so you have visual feedback if you are actually engaging your core muscles correctly. Many people think they are doing it properly, but in actual fact, many of them brace and lock everything down, becoming too rigid.

If your life involves hours of dancing, book in to check your core. Your body will love you for it.