Psychological resilience can be defined as mentally or emotionally dealing or coping with any major or minor crisis. Daily, we deal with stress, emotional situations, and mental challenges. Everyday resilience can have a major impact on our mental health and well-being. Low resilience can affect our mood, sleep, habits, memory etc. Dance is a universal art form with applications for mental, physical, emotional, and social well-being. Studies show that dance can have an impact on resilience. Dance can reduce anxiety, and stress, control symptoms of depression, and improve sleep by altering certain chemicals that are responsible for well-being and happiness. Dance even has an impact on the confidence level and self-esteem of a person. Dance increases memory by avoiding the shrinkage of brain cells. Dance psychology is a new branch of psychology that tries to understand dance and dancers from a psychological perspective. 

How your topic relates to the conference theme: The benefits of dancing are hardly understood in many countries. With so many applications, dance is still seen as an art form. Applying dance in school, work, health care and social settings can have a major impact on mental and physical well-being including resilience. 

Nisha Kalarikkal Suresh is an associate faculty at Westford University College (UAE), holds an MPhil in Psychology from Christ University in India and is a PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology. She also holds a master?s degree in social work (Medical and Psychiatry) and a master?s degree in psychology from Bharathiar University, where she received a top place in MSW. With three years of experience teaching, studying, and working with non-profits, hospitals, and clinics. Nisha is also an internationally published researcher who has presented research papers on ?dream studies? at national conferences. Besides psychology, she has 8 years of experience as a professional dancer, choreographer, and fitness trainer both nationally and internationally. She is also an Internationally Certified Advanced Yoga Trainer who specializes in utilizing yoga and dance to improve mental health. Some of her study interests are dance psychology, yoga and psychology, sleep, and dreams.