Dancing through medicine
Anand describes how Bollywood dancing brings his patient relationships to new heights.
Image credit: Unsplash
My first memory of Bollywood dancing was watching my older sister’s performance when I was only four years old. Her colourful outfit, bold stage presence, and ability to portray a story without any words captivated me. As a young child who had not yet learned to read and write, I valued this form of non-verbal communication. Ever since then, I have been hooked on Bollywood dancing. It has proved invaluable to me in my medical training and building relationships with patients.
Originating from Indian cinema, Bollywood dance is known to be very expressive in nature. Through a fusion of multiple styles, it aims to portray a story through purposeful body movements and vivid facial expressions. Growing up as a first generation Indian American, I found my community through Bollywood fusion dance, which combines my eastern heritage of Bollywood dance with western heritage dance styles like hip-hop.
Image credit: Unsplash
While training to perform on a stage, I was always told to make facial expressions and body movements a hundred times bigger than I normally did. A simple ‘hello’ would mean vigorously shaking my hand with a slight head tilt towards the same hand. Showing happy emotions required me to raise my eyebrows, open my eyes wide, and maintain a smile with an open mouth. Even when I was angry, scrunching my eyebrows was not enough. I would have to cross my arms and hunch over my body posture while moving away from the source of anger. These non-verbal gestures performed while dancing helped communicate a story to the audience.
Through continuous refinements, I was able to transfer these non-verbal communication skills I learned on stage to my personal and professional life as well. When I started medical school, I thought I would stop dancing because it would not be a priority with a heavy workload. However, finding no purpose in dancing could not have been further from the truth. Although medical education focuses largely on scientific reasoning during a clinical encounter, my experiences from dancing and teaching Bollywood fusion dance has built skills required to make emotional connections with patients. Through dance, I have learned how to communicate and build trusting connections with patients without even saying a word.
One day, I walked into a patient’s room to elicit a history from an elderly female patient sitting on the exam table and immediately noticed her body language. She was hunched over, did not make any eye contact, and was silent as I walked into the room to introduce myself. I knew I would have to show that I could be trusted and was there to listen. Such connection is key in eliciting a patient’s full history and providing them with the best possible care. Moving the standing desk out of the way, I pulled up a chair next to her, opening the space for dialogue. As the conversation began, she only responded with “yes” or “no”. Although flustered at first, I remembered my lessons on non-verbal communication from dance and decided to use these skills to build trust with my patient: maintaining eye contact, head nodding, raising an open palm as if I was holding a platter. After a big sigh, her shoulders dropped at the end of the conversation, and I recognised this to be an expression of relief as she shared her diagnosis with me.
As seen through this patient encounter, many of the non-verbal aspects of the interaction could be tied to the skills I developed as a Bollywood dancer. The same body gestures and spatial arrangement I used to perform storylines were used in these clinical encounters as well. It is imperative not only for physicians, but all humans to understand the value of non-verbal communication and how they can use this technique to connect all of us. As I move forward into the next phase of my life, I hope to continue honing my communication skills I learned from dancing to build trust with all the patients I treat.