As a living cultural heritage of Chinese traditional sports, lion dance combines physical exercise, cultural heritage, and social cohesion. Although its health value is widely recognized in folk practices, there is a lack of systematic and theoretical mechanism analysis in academia. This study aims to reveal the promotion mechanism of lion dance sport on individual physical and mental health and social adaptation through multi-dimensional analysis, and to propose its practical path in modern health governance. The literature method was used to systematically sort out the relevant literature during the period of 2006-2025 and establish a theoretical analysis framework. The expert interview method was used to conduct in-depth interviews with a total of 10 national-level non-genetic inheritors, professors from sports colleges, and community lion dance coaches. The fieldwork method was used to conduct participatory observation in Qingdao, Shandong Province, and Urumqi, Xinjiang Province, for a period of 6 months. Using the experimental method, a 5-week comparative experiment was conducted with 30 participants, and their push-up counts before and after the experiment were measured to represent strength qualities. A questionnaire method was used to measure pre- and post-trial levels of mental health and social support using the GHQ-12 and MSPSS, respectively. Mathematical statistics were used, and the paired-samples t-test and independent-samples t-test were applied to the relevant data using 27.0. The strength quality of the experimental group increased from 6.3±3.8 in the pre-test to 8.2±4.3 in the post-test (p=0.001), the total score of the GHQ-12 scale decreased from 9.2±2.1 in the pre-test to 5.8±1.7 in the post-test (p=0.003), and the total score of the social support decreased from 48.5±5.2 in the pre-test to 57.9±4.8 in the post-test (p=0.004), which were significantly superior to that of the control group (p < 0.01). The health promotion of traditional lion dance exercise is based on the acquisition of physical skills, the internalization of psychological self-confidence as a bridge, and the externalization of social adaptation as a result. The traditional lion dance sport achieves health promotion through the triple mechanism of “acquisition of physical skills, internalization of cultural meaning, and reconstruction of social relations”. However, its development faces challenges such as insufficient scientific knowledge of the traditional training system and declining participation of youth groups.
Leng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.