This is very much the case. Things are confounded because of the overlap of body movement with the attraction among the sexes and this brings into the discussion additional parameters where there may be inner fears and prudery at work, to see such activities as being offensive or the work of the devil in extreme cases. While most pleasures of the flesh can be taken to excess and perverted in ways to lower a person and those participating with them in certain acts, that is really a separate discussion than we are having here.
We are talking simply of the joys of music coupled with body movement with the natural attraction to sound and the imposition of rhythm having a soul level satisfaction to the being because they are divine energies and manifestations, and will be influencing the listener and imparting pleasure in most cases. As you discussed with Sitting Bull, there are many benefits to be had from such body movement, and especially reinforced with music, because it adds so much additional divine love to the experience. So the interlopers, in the same way they wish to contaminate thinking and undermine anything that is positive in human experience, have targeted all of the arts, including dance, as being suspect at times and, if it can be arranged, will promote a negative view to constrain its practice.
This is the case when religious sects dictate very strict prohibition of dance categorically. This is unnecessary and does nothing for the individual, but rather can take something away that has value as a reliever of stress and the harboring of negative energy, as well as the ability to even reach a state of rapture in the opening of the intuitive gateway to commune with the higher realm in a kind of ecstatic spiritual experience. Much depends on the intention held by the experiencer as to what might happen. One line of evidence about this is the enhancement in the joy felt by dancers experiencing their physicality while on mood-altering drugs. What is happening is the lowering of inhibitions and the inner freedom to experience possibilities and that, in part, is adding to the enjoyment, along with some distortion of the perceptions involving augmentation of positive feelings that are a kind of exaggeration only. Dancing, however, taps into a natural built‑in body mechanism for grounding negativity, literally, and that is the purpose for movement while on one’s feet. It is literally a way to shed one’s cares and woes to allow them to be transmitted into the earth and be transmuted leaving the person in a more relaxed and balanced state of being.
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