This process is dynamic, creative, and continuously evolving in a spiralling movement. Every individual is unique. Its ontogenesis (i.e. development from birth to maturity) is also unique. However, the cycle is continuous, since all beings are part of the totality.
The connection with totality, which is one of the manifestations of an integrated identity, is also a transformational point. It is a point of dissolution, in which the disorganisation and death drives (katabasis) are acting - death as transformation for renewal (entropy). In turn, this disorganisation refers to the basic principle of everything, to the beginnings of cosmic life generated in the chaos.
On the other hand, anabasis refers to the point of association and to the impulse of organisation. Symbolically, calm and clear waters represent peace and order (anabasis), while stormy waters signify disorder (katabasis).
Anabasis e Katabasis
The points of intersection between the primordial broth and the vertical axis would be analogous to the moments of birth and death. Birth is a passage from chaos to the intrinsic organisation of self-organising systems, whereas death is the disorganisation of these systems and the return of their components to the raw material of the cosmos.
In the theoretical model of Biodanza the symbiotic pair of life-death or creation-destruction is called anabasis-katabasis. Anabasis represents the point of association and the momentum of organisation, and katabasis the point of dissolution and disorganisation.
Metaphorically, we have already compared the evolutionary path of a being - ontogenesis - to a river. Maintaining this association, the moment of birth (anabasis) would be the source of this river, while the moment of death (katabasis) would be the mouth of the river, where the river merges with the ocean.
The spring is the place where the water flows to the Earth´s surface. This same water is evaporated from the oceans, living beings and other bodies of water and the waters associated with seminal fecundity descend through the rains. From there, they infiltrate the soil and go through a period of germination inside the earth, filling the pores of the soil, slowly flowing due to gravity until they sprout on the surface. In the cycle of life, each being is fertilised by semen, goes through a period of gestation in a welcoming womb until the moment of birth, when it comes out of the mother, its Earth.
The point where the river and the sea meet is the mouth. At this point everything is mixed; sweet and salty waters no longer distinguish themselves - river and sea become a single mutable body, and the waters become intermediary. The estuarine environments are not easily delimited because they suffer the cyclical influence of the tides, which in turn vary according to the season, the proximity to the moon and many other factors. However, it is from the relative disorder inherent in this environment that some of the most ecologically fertile, relevant and sensitive environments emerge in nature.
Likewise, katabasis represents a merging, a dissolution - it colours the state of integration. According to Freitas,
Integration is the capacity to be connected integrally with our personal, social and spiritual dimensions, in the sense of being whole with oneself, others, and the world, feeling a sense of belonging to the inexorable becoming of the cosmic totality.
Like the tides, the eternal becoming is the uninterrupted movement that dissolves, creates, and transforms all reality.
This text is a translated and edited version on an extract from this monograph
http://biodanzars.com.br/biblioteca/14_Agua_e_Biodanza__fontes_de_vida_e_integracao.pdf