Capstone title and abstract
Positive Dance Workshop:
Enhancing Emotional Well-being for Midlifers Through Contemporary Dance
Abstract:
This paper explores the potential of a contemporary dance-based workshop to enhance midlifers' emotional well-being. It challenges the traditional view of midlife as a time of crisis, and instead, highlights it as a period of potential growth and development. The paper introduces essential concepts from positive psychology and somaesthetics, emphasizing the mind-body connection and the role of self-awareness in emotional regulation and resilience. Furthermore, emotional well-being is defined and discussed, emphasizing the importance of authentic self-expression. The paper also presents contemporary dance as a promising medium for enhancing emotional well-being. It concludes by proposing a twelve-week workshop design customized to tackle the specific challenges and enhance the opportunities of midlife. While acknowledging limitations and the need for further research, this paper argues that contemporary dance offers a unique, holistic, embodied approach to enhancing emotional well-being in midlife and calls for empirical testing of the proposed workshop model, along with further exploration of the intersection between dance, positive psychology, and emotional well-being.
