Introduction
Collaboration can be challenging even in the biodanza world. When we are in vivencia we experience love, care, pleasure, playfulness, and the very best of ourselves. But outside of the vivencia we can experience many difficulties when it comes to collaborating with each other and working together. Suddenly we are back to being limited human beings lacking the inner muscles and skills needed to communicate in ways that work. And the same old issues of power, privilege, race, and gender can resurface, making it difficult to work together outside of the vivencia. So the question is, how can we co-create islands of collaboration that fully reflect the biocentric principle?
Discussion in breakout rooms
- What are typical challenges you find when working with your colleagues to achieve goals? Please choose one thing that has been challenging in a particular situation when you have collaborated with others
- One thing that facilitates or supports your work with other people in the biodanza world
Challenges identified
- The current syllabus does not include elements of collaboration. We don’t have a system in place where people have the possibility to collaborate with others. It would be great if we had more opportunities to collaborate.
- Competitor-colleague: we are colleagues and competitors, especially when teaching in the same territory or vicinity, dealing with the fact that people will make choices as to which class they will join, which will dilute the number of potential participants in our class
- As a student-under-supervision I didn’t have the chance to work freely. I was made to work with certain people, and not given the opportunity to organise events with others freely. There were ego clashes, little divergences, transferential feelings coming in the mix, as in people expressing to the other person what is inside them, all unhelpful patterns of communication that reflect our socialisation and some of the wounds we had in early life which will impact our capacity to stay connected with each other and to communicate well.
- Concern about biodanza as a whole in the country. I see fear of scarcity and non-cooperation. I see lack of collaboration between schools, directors being unable to work well together or to support one another, and what all of that entails. I see conflict between directors and between certain schools poisoning the atmosphere not only at the national level but also in the worldwide community, and knowing that that exists pollutes a bit what it means to be a teacher.
- The inability of facilitators and school directors to "walk their talk" discredits the system.
- Lack of commitment: Difficult to get people in the Association of Facilitators or involved in the committee. A very sad situation in my country. It is difficult to motivate people to commit and to take their share of the work to get the association up and running. The workload ends up on the shoulders of very few people, which is not healthy or sustainable as it leads to burn-out.
Things that support your work with other people in the biodanza world
- The openness of the people I have worked with
- Saying yes when invited to collaborate e.g. in the festivals
- The amount of support I receive from the people in my group
- The willingness to be open, to hear people and to listen
- The opportunities to collaborate that are happening from the ground up
Verene's response
- Shared vision/common purpose: One of the key things that enables any group to collaborate well and to commit to a project is the sense that together we will be able to achieve a great vision. I am aware that some of you helped your local association of facilitators work on your shared purpose. So the question is, what is it that brings us together? People will not engage in an association unless they have to in order to teach, which is not an option as giving no choice would not be welcome. So, in the business of life what would incentivise people to commit? Without a clear purpose to mobilise people it is very likely that you’ll end up with a few people that will be willing to do the work but that is not sustainable long term because it will lead to burnout. Just teaching biodanza is not enough. A bigger purpose bringing us together is needed. Is there a shared purpose between schools? Between directors and facilitators? Without one, then clashes of personality will inevitably lead to conflict. Transcendence is calling some of us to the hard work of collaborating that goes beyond clashes of personality.
- Shared agreements: Another thing that enables collaboration and commitment is the sense of shared agreements. Agreements are decisions we make together to make things work well, e.g. how we share the money, how we come together as facilitators, how we make decisions, e.g. how we decide to create and offer introductory classes together, how we decide who goes to which class, how we support each other, how we ensure the flow of resources and of information. If we don’t talk together to decide how to work together then we rely entirely on luck and on the personalities we encounter. We might end up avoiding or fighting with those personalities we don’t resonate with; going into fight or flight instead of rest, digest and connect.
- Collaboration training: To create those islands of love, within the training it would be enormously helpful to also train in how we collaborate, but that would imply agreements between school directors and within the international movement. This would enable us to shape an evolving culture together, and that is an enormous project, because that is not how we started. We started with the vivencia, so no wonder we find it challenging.
Feedback from participants
- In my small country there are six schools. Lots of factors bring people together and pull them apart. The Association of Schools gives directors a platform to work things out and speak in an equal manner between themselves outside of the federation and to talk about their differences and the things that don’t go well. They talked enough with each other to create an association. There has been sufficient capacity to create a platform to communicate and arrange things.
- As facilitators, if the school directors become too dominant we can refer them to the Association/Federation of Schools. And what about independent facilitators? If I am teaching I still want to be included by the Association of Facilitators.
- There is also Embrace, an Association of Associations of Facilitators.
- We can build structures as well as attitudes to create ease and collaboration.
- We need to distinguish between vivencial collaboration (with its challenges of personality clashes, different levels of experience, what we intend from the class, and the levels of trust and affinity which tend to ease things) and the common vision that connects people that might otherwise drift off because of conflict with other facilitators. The association needs to keep reminding its members of the bigger vision and common goals we have together. We had several situations where we couldn’t even mediate. Unresolved conflicts have the potential to derail the whole community. What are we all here to do? The association needs to make sure that every member continues to feel inspired and that there is a place for their voice and their vision. It is important that the bigger structure holds on to the vision. Not many facilitators are doing this as their main job. We all have a lot going on in our lives and different levels of organisational commitment. Some people are organisational people, and others are not. I am willing to give up a lot of my time for the collective good, but others are not, and are not driven by the same interest for the collective good. What we want is to have organisational structures that are going to compensate for people’s limited capacity and willingness to do the hard work by having agreements. If people don’t want to do the work, then there needs to be enough coherence and walking together as facilitators and directors.
- I am part of a collective that has no hierarchy and no boards but agreements need to be made about how we make decisions, who makes what decisions, and about what. Agreements need to be made about where do we keep the information, and about how resources flow, e.g. resources of time, money, etc. How do we flow information and feedback from all across all?
- Without feedback an organisation dies, if we cut off the feedback loops the system dies. To be open to receiving feedback is very difficult in biodanza. Agreements need to be made on how to handle conflicts, who will pick up the phone and start the peace-making process. Who will create the link, what skills do we call on, what money is allocated for mediation, etc. Without this in place it is a recipe for disaster, because conflicts never get resolved and poison the atmosphere.
- Throughout the school process there was lots of conflict, and no support from the school director.
- Because of the void of collaborative structures that would allow you to work well with your director you had to take things on your hands. That has a cost, because that’s how conflict can emerge.
- Voids are inevitable because in biodanza, like in many other collectives, people are very allergic to the notion of authority because the biocentric principle is inherently participative and collaborative. It is about deep equality, mutuality and generosity. And all of that needs to be reflected in how we work together and the structures we create
How you are left after this session, where you landed with it
- Inspired
- Appreciative
- Grateful
- Accept others
- Really good platform to talk
- Very useful
- Work to do
- Very impressed
- Grateful
- Listen to each other
- Play it to the strengths
- New beginning
- To still see each other as human beings with all of their needs as you dance with your own and still synchronise even if you are in each others way
- Need clear agreements on a variety of things
- Grateful
This skillshare session took place on Saturday, 18th of March 2023, and involved participants who together represented eight countries. Any misunderstandings are mine and mine alone.