Dance Concept: Weight

With weight, we can feel heavy or light. Muscle resistance is key for weight. Muscles can be contracted to feel heavy and released to be light.

When we’re doing heavy work like pushing, pulling, crawling, dinosaur walk, marching, stomping, we are contracting our muscles.

When we’re floating and flying, waltzing and turning and swinging, we’re feeling light as a feather in our body, which requires releasing, letting go of our muscles.

Benefits of playing with heavy and light:

• Alternating contraction and release has a relaxing effect on the nervous system. It helps centers the child and calms the mind which creates optimal state for learning.

• When your child can learn to intentionally change their muscle tension, they can use this capacity to change their state from upset to calm because our physiology affects our emotions.

• Doing heavy work will also help develop our proprioception sense, which is our body position sense. Proprioception is the ability to know where our body is in space due to an inner awareness of our joints, muscles and tendons, so you don’t have to look to know where your body parts are. It is also crucial to have a sound proprioception sense in order to feel grounded and secure. Proprioception sense also helps our children learn how much pressure to use when doing things like holding a paper cup or an egg without crushing it.

So next time when you feel like your babies and toddlers are getting overwhelmed, or they’re running around wild, do some heavy work with them. You can squeeze their bodies, hold them in body ball position, hug them tight, walk around like dinosaurs, do the wheel and barrow with them, playfully come up with games like “who can push this chair to the end of the room fastest”. And then alternate with swinging and swaying, light activities to help calm them down.