Are you a dancer? While some of us might answer an adamant “No!” to that question, we were all dancers at some point. In fact, as a three-week-old baby, you were already starting to sync up your movements to the beat of any music you heard. And even if you now identify as a klutz with two left feet, I’ll bet you have trouble staying completely still when you hear your favorite tune.

Dancing is in our bones, and it’s more than just a fun form of entertainment, explain Julia F. Christensen and her colleagues in a 2017 paper. Cave art seems to suggest that humans were dancing as far back as 70,000 years ago, and it serves important functions for us.

Dance transports us into a state of flow where we forget about our troubles, which is good for regulating our biological systems and nourishing our long-term health. At a deeper level, it’s a way of getting in touch with our bodies and our feelings, allowing us to “try on” different emotions and see how they feel.

It turns out dance is a combination of several activities that are each good for us in their own right: exercising, listening to music, and connecting with other people. Remix those into one groovy package, and you’ve got a behavior that has potent benefits for our mental and physical health.

“Dance is an antidote to stress, a way to combat negative emotions, an elixir for the body, mind, and brain,” write Christensen and Dong-Seon Chang—an Argentine tango dancer and swing dancer—in their 2021 book Dancing Is the Best Medicine.

Hopefully, the many benefits of dance will motivate you to get up and move your body, whether it’s in a packed salsa club, at the next wedding you attend, or alone in your living room. Here are four reasons why dancing is good for you, according to science.