Trending across countries, Zumba is an exercise program that's making its way into the hearts and lives of many who seek spiritual, psychological, and physical health. The bio-psychosocial model helps to explain health and illness by determining psychological, biological, and social factors (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts). There are different ways that social factors impact health. Zumba positively affects people's physical and mental health by helping cope with stress, staying physically fit, improving self- esteem, and having fun.
Social factors impact health through socioeconomic factors such as by being influenced socially by friends or family. The people around us may engage in certain behaviors that we then adopt depending on what they believe to be approved behaviors (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). How we cope with stress and illness depends on some level by our social factors because the presence of certain people may affect our health positively or negatively. People make seek an appraisal to a stressor as a judgment of how to respond to stress such as taking a Zumba class to relieve stress (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). Zumba can be used as emotion focused coping (deals with issue indirectly & to control emotions) but not as problem focused coping (which focuses on dealing with the issue).
Zumba created by Beto Perez is a dance- based fitness program that can help people lose weight by lifting moods, improving physical fitness and improving the general well- being of its participants. CNN reports a woman named Ashlee who weighed 330lbs. at the age of 21 (Wilson, 2013). However, through Zumba she managed to lose more than 123lbs. dancing to the Latin- inspired fitness class that blends international music with booty shaking that can burn up to 650 calories (Wilson, 2013)! Ashlee experiences different Zumba classes by going at least 5 times a week for an hour with different Zumba instructors. Zumba influences cross culturally by bringing Latin, Hindi, & other different kinds of music to exercising.
