Come Friday and the corridors of the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC) in Delhi fill up with music. Peep into one of the rooms and you see a lot of happy faces, dancing away to glory on wheelchairs.

In what is possibly the first of its kind in India, a medical care centre has introduced dance therapy as a healing tool for its patients.

"The benefits of dance therapy - both psychologically and physically - are not unknown in India. But it is for the first time that it has been introduced in a healthcare centre under medical supervision. Needless to say the results have been amazing,"

Deepti Aggarwal, head of the lifestyle management department of the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (ISIC), told IANS.

Explaining the benefits of dance therapy which was introduced in the centre four months ago, Aggarwal said that dance doesn't just help one strengthen the muscles but also boosts the confidence of patients and lifts their mood.

"In a spinal cord injury case, a person's physical and mental balance is destroyed. To ask such a person to dance might seem insensitive, but what we are promoting - wheelchair dance - not only acts like a physiotherapy session but also boosts the person's confidence level," she said.

Photograph: Carlos Alvarez-Getty Images

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