Talk by Helene Levy Benseft at the Biodanza School of Russia
Transcript by PJ2017
In a sense Biodanza is apart from all the dances we learn and apart from all the concepts and theory we try to explain because concepts and theories are food for the mind. Our mind is very greedy. It only starts to rest when it is full. But the mind is not the soul. The soul needs something else. You don't feed the soul with ideas and concepts. For the soul, learning comes from the experience. And the soul is not in the mind. It is in every cell, in every fibre of our being, in our eyes, in our smile, in our tears, in our joy, in our emotions, in our sadness, in everything that makes us human beings. But most of all, it is in the relation we create between us. So I will talk about love, because this is what Biodanza is about.
We say are connected. However, if we are sincere and honest with ourselves we may admit that we are not that connected. We are virtually connected. We have thousands of Facebook friends. Sometimes lonely people spend a lot of time in front of the computer trying to make friends. But they never touch, they never embrace, they never truly connect.
That's why I like this passage from Rolando Toro, the creator of the Biodanza system. When he designed Biodanza, a system capable of shaking all the living structures, and of waking up in each one of them the potential to connect, this is what he said, “I believe in an organic dance that would resonate with the models of movement which gave birth to life.” Not the movement that gave birth to culture, ideas and concepts, or the movement we learn to be well educated. Not these movements, but the movements that gave birth to life.
Biodanza is the dance of life. We have looked for this coherence and we have found it. What is this coherence about? What is it telling me?
Are you alive? Move as a living person.
Are you alive? Express yourself as a living person.
Are you alive? Enjoy life as a living person.
Are you alive? Create life!
Are you alive? Love beyond all your criteria and selectivity.
Are you alive? Expand your consciousness.
Then you are coherent, because what you feel is the expression of your vital needs. What you desire is not what you don’t have. You desire to BE. What you create are not empty forms. It’s like your creativity going overboard. And when you love, it is not to satisfy a need like a child. It is because you become the flow of sharing the essence of love. You love when you give yourself in whatever you do. And what you think is exactly the picture of what you need, what you desire, what you express, and what you love. And when you reach this coherence there is no more war in you. Everything is in order. This is the coherence we talk about.
Biodanza is a movement capable of absorbing the negative entropy. Entropy is when the energy can no longer maintain the structures coherent and the energy is lost. So the negative entropy metaphor refers to something that degenerates the link. It refers to the loss of connection. Now, in our society, in our culture, what would negative entropy be? How would it look like? Negative beliefs, fear, indifference, racism, exclusion, fanaticism, the greed to have more, and so on. All these things weaken the human capacity to see the other as a similar, as a brother. So movements capable of absorbing the negative entropy are the generative postures, living harmony between living beings, a deep resonance of microcosm and macrocosm. This is what you dance when you come to a Biodanza class. What are the generative postures? Giving, opening your arms, holding hands, embracing, walking together, dancing in a circle holding hands, and so forth. They are very simple dances, so simple that nobody needs to be a dancer to do Biodanza. We don't have to learn these things. They are part of our inner language.
It’s as if you had a huge dictionary with beautiful words to write the most incredible poems but someone had told you that you can not use these words. You carry the book and you don’t use it. And when you come to Biodanza someone tells you, let’s look at the book. So that's not something you need to learn from outside. You open your own natural inner vocabulary to connect and to create what is the most incredible poem ever - the poetic of human encounter, which is the definition of Biodanza.
We do all this for one purpose. Not to realise ourselves selfishly, just “me, myself and I”, but to be able to welcome any human being in the circle so that he feels that he belongs. The microcosm refers to every cell in me. The macrocosm refers to all the cells together. Our proposition is to facilitate the expression of structures of movement that support the reality of the relationship of life with itself. When I connect to you it’s life connecting life. If we go back to mythology, what was this god called Eros? Why was he sent from the Olympus? He is the god of connection because what feels good gives me the desire to stay. If it is good to hold your hands I keep your hand in mine and we can do something together and stay together. This is the language of Eros. It is love that allows us to create things together. So to restore the movement of love is simply to restore our human intelligence. This is what we believe. And we believe that it is urgent, necessary, and vital.
How do you explain Biodanza?
Every person faced with an unknown experience is going to try to compare it to something that she knows. If someone asks me, is Biodanza like contact-impro? In a way yes because there is contact, a special kind of contact, a contact induced by affectivity. Impro? Yes, because we don’t learn steps. We are given an indication on how to achieve an exercise, but based on that it’s here and now. So yes, Biodanza is a kind of dance which gives me a direction with a frame. I have the freedom to express myself with the emotion of the music in contact with someone else here and now. In Biodanza instead of calling it contact-impro, we call it vivencia. Why don’t you come and try?
Is it like yoga? Yes. Because in a way I am called to be totally present to myself, full consciousness, in my body, and we don’t create new dances all the time. There are some dances I’ve done thousands of times. But the teacher doesn't stand in front of me so it’s kind of free yoga. Do you know what is the meaning of yoga? Connection. And Biodanza is connection.
Why do people ask what is Biodanza? Because when you look at them they have the feeling you look different. You look in the eyes naturally, you smile naturally, you speak with your body, when you feel the impulse to touch you don't think twice, its alright. You become more natural. So don't try to give a definition of Biodanza, be the definition, be the message.
The definition of Biodanza
Here is something more concrete that might help some of you who would like to give nutrition to the mind. And then you can explain why we do it. It might help to start a dialogue with people.
We do Biodanza so that we feel well in our organism, so that our body may function as a whole.
We do Biodanza because we want to stimulate our capacity to feel I AM! The capacity to say yes, to say no, to choose, and to have the feeling of my self.
We do Biodanza because so many people in this world are lonely. They go back home and they are alone. They don't know how to love anymore. They want friends. So here we learn how to be friends again. We develop this education that makes us practice friendship, sympathy, collaboration, participation, and acceptance. This is called affective re-education.
We do Biodanza because life is an extraordinary miracle. We are here to see the beauty of life, to hear the beauty of the music of life, to have the perception of living. Not to have the perception of “what is this for, what is this going to bring me, what will I have,” but to open my consciousness to living.
When I find myself in my body, when I feel good in my own shoes, when I feel good in my body, when I learn how to express my needs, to say yes and no and to make choices, when my communication with the world is full and sincere, when I become awake again to the beauty of the world, then I can talk about ethics, which is the ethics of life that comes from the heart and not an external system that tells me what is good and what is not. We do Biodanza to give value to simple fact that we are alive. This is why it is called the dance of life.
Watch the talk on the Biodanza Moscow YouTube channel
https://youtu.be/8-OPS1OVrlA