How can you give coherent and positive meaning to your existence? According to R. Toro, the creator of the Biodanza system, the answer lies in affective intelligence.
Affective intelligence gives meaning to our existence
Research shows that affectivity (feelings/emotions) is the hidden drive of life. Scientists are telling us that emotions drive decisions, and that human beings live emotion driven lives. The positive integrative experiences generated in Biodanza are capable of awakening positive emotions e.g. courage, pleasure, and will to live.
R. Toro was aware that affects (emotions/feelings) also have an impact on perception, human motricity, memory and learning.
- Perception - the Honi phenomenon in the Ames Room was used by R.Toro as an example to show that how we feel affects what we see. Recent research has found that positive emotions literally broaden the scope of the visual field (Schmitz, T. et al 2009).
- Human motricity and the impulse toward action - Again, this has also been confirmed by neuroscientist R. Llinas' research findings, which showed that emotions not only provide the context for action but they also drive or deter our actions.
- Memory has filters that select and reorganise information around affective experiences. Did you know that pleasant emotions are usually remembered better than unpleasant ones? And that positive memories contain more contextual details? Another interesting finding is that remembering is easier when your mood matches the mood you were in when experiencing or learning the information.*
- Learning depends on affective and not just cognitive motivation - R. Toro was passionate about education, and I imagine he would have loved neuroscientist F. Mora's findings that the essential element to the learning process is emotion because we can only learn that which we love - ‘without emotion there is no curiosity, no attention, no learning, no memory.'
Affectivity is also key to language. In a paper published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Lois Bloom, an expert on language acquisition, wrote that "word learning is intimately connected to a child's emotional life, because infants learn language to talk about and thereby to share those things that they are thinking and feeling: the persons, objects, and events that make up the goals and situations in everyday events that are the causes and circumstances of emotion."
Parental loving speech is also crucial. Some researchers, including Rima Shore (1997), believe “that baby talk is an important part of the emotional bonding process between the parents and their child that help the infants learn the language.”
R. Toro believed that children's development of language was connected to love. In his words, "the evolution of language in children is the embryological creation of a primal loving semantic." He didn't expand on this, so I'm not quite sure what he meant. Perhaps that it represented the beginning of the important emotional process of giving meaning to life's events.
Biodanza uses music and dance to trigger intense experiences that connect you with the feeling of being alive. Its aim is to help you access the joy of living and learn to dance with life. Its effects are multifaceted. It allows you to express your identity and develop your creativity. And by connecting you to the harmony of the universe, it awakens you to your transcendent condition.
Post based on chapter 6 of R. Toro’s book "Affective Intelligence"