”…Biodanza gir meg tilgang til min egen livsglede og vitalitet. Jeg får lyst til å rope et rungende JA til livet og alt hva det innebærer!..”

Hva er Biodanza?

Biodanza er et system for menneskelig utvikling og integrering gjennom dans, musikk, bevegelse, emosjonelle opplevelser og mellommenneskelig kontakt.

Systemet baseres blant annet på universelle biologiske og fysiologiske prinsipp.

Ordet "bio" betyr liv og "danza" betyr dans.

Biodanza kalles derfor ofte ”Livets dans” eller ”Dans med livet”.

Biodanza har et helhetlig fokus på livet, og hovedmålene er å styrke og integrere din evne til å kjenne glede, lidenskap og tilfredshet, samt å utvikle din evne til medfølelse med andre mennesker og naturen som danner livsgrunnlaget vårt.

Hvert enkelt menneskes identitetsutvikling og livsreise stimuleres; mennesket som enkeltindivid, mennesket i relasjon til andre og mennesket som en del av en større enhet.

Følgende aspekter av vår identitet gis rom til vekst:

Vitalitet - vår vitale energi, vår essensielle livspuls og -kraft, bevegelse og forflytning. Vitalitet handler også om kroppens iboende evne til å finne balanse mellom aktivitet og hvile.

Seksualitet - vår evne til å føle oss levende og åpne opp for nytelse gjennom alle våre sanser, gjennoppdage hva som kjennes godt i livet, våge å gi slipp, kjenne på sensualitet og utvikle evnen til kontakt.

Kreativitet - vårt verbale og nonverbale uttrykk, vår kapasitet til å utforske verden med tillit og fri spontanitet. Kreativitet trengs for å kunne skape fornyelse i livet når det trengs.

Hengivenhet (Affection) - vårt instinkt for respekt, ømhet, kjærlighet, brorskap og solidaritet med oss selv, andre mennesker og alt liv. Vår kapasitet til å kunne knytte bånd til livet styrkes. For Rolando Toro, skaperen av Biodanza, er dette potensialet "vår arts intelligens".

Transcendens - vår evne til å strekke oss lengre enn vårt eget ego, og se på livet i en større sammenheng. Vi vekker potensialet til å oppleve fylde, ekspansjon, intimitet og enhet med alle livsformer på jorden og i universet.

I løpet av en Biodanza-sesjon får vi mulighet til å oppleve, vekke, omfavne, utvikle og styrke disse sidene i oss selv.

Sentalt står det biosentriske prinsipp (respekt for alt liv og den intelligens som finnes i hver minste celle).

Hvor gjør vi i en Biodanza-time?

En Biodanza-time er strukturert og ledet av en Biodanza-lærer/-fasilitator. Hver deltager jobber vekselvis på tre nivåer:       

• Med seg selv      
• Med en annen gruppedeltager     
• Med gruppen  

I løpet av timen veiledes deltagerne gjennom et spekter av ulike øvelser, rytmer og følelser. Sesjonene varierer fra gang til gang avhengig av tema som er valgt og hvilket nivå gruppen er på.

Øvelsene stimulerer deltagerne på et helt fundamentalt nivå, og en føler at hver minste celle i kroppen danser og gleder seg over det den opplever i øyeblikket (Vivencia).  En kan nesten si at klassen er utformet som en fest hvor en kommer i kontakt med en glede som kan sammenlignes med gleden til en 2-åring; spontan og sprudlende som kjennes i hele kroppen. Biodanza er en ikke-verbal, ikke-analytisk prosess som fokuserer på den individuelle opplevelsen her og nå. Dette fører til en intens opplevelse av øyeblikket.  

”…Jeg har drevet med mange former for selvutvikling i mitt liv og var i grunnen lei av å delta på workshops og lignende.
Men så oppdaget jeg Biodanza. Det er kort og godt bare helt vidunderlig og mer helhetlig enn noe annet jeg har prøvd tidligere!..." (utsagn fra deltager)

 Vårt naturlige behov for hvile og la kroppen hente seg inn igjen har også stor plass i løpet av en Biodanza-time. I denne fasen av timen får vi også hjelp av hverandre slik at vi sakte men sikkert kan hengi oss mer og mer til livet.

Biodanza er en oppbyggende prosess både for individet og for gruppen. Gruppens evne til integrasjon er essensiell for individets mulighet for vekst. Alt foregår uten ord fra deltagerne, og det er ikke en analytisk prosess, men snarere en mulighet for å være i opplevelsen, noe som setter spor i cellene våre. Mange opplever at livsrommet de opererer i blir større, og at de blir både tryggere på sin egen identitet, samtidig som de føler seg mer harmoniske i  det sosiale felleskapet.

”...Jeg har kjent meg syk og utslitt i lang tid nå. Det å kunne delta i disse timene er en enorm lettelse for meg.
Her slipper jeg å bruke ord og ”være flink”. Jeg kjenner at det hjelper meg til å finne tilbake til min naturlige vitalitet…” (utsagn fra deltager)

Biodanza hjelper kroppen med å gjenvinne sin naturlige balanse og understøtter våre livsprosesser.

Helse i Biodanza refererer til:

• fysisk og vital helse
  
• psykisk og sjelelig helse
• relasjonell og mellommenneskelig helse
• skapende/kreativ helse
• eksistensiell helse
  m.m.
  

Teorien bak Biodanza er påvirket av vitenskapelige forskning innen for de fysiske, psykologiske, eksistensielle, emosjonelle og biokjemiske aspekter av menneskets eksistens.

Biodanza stimulerer det endokrine systemet i kroppen slik at viktige signalstoffer stimuleres og produseres (hormoner som for eksempel oxytosin, enzymer, neurotransmittere osv).

”Biodanza, det menneskelige møtets poesi. Fundamentet bygger på å vekke gleden over å være i livet, og retten til kjærlighet og kontakt for alle mennesker; kort og godt å være den vi er gjennom å leve ut våre følelser, vår kjærlighet og vårt bånd til verden.” Rolando Toro

Rolando Toros egne ord om virkemidlene i Biodanza

1. Musical Power

An Occident Orfeo has inaugurated the musical power from the mythological point of view.

Through the integrating music Apollo was able to influence the nature laws and the mysterious models that influence our life. Thanks to the music Orfeo could make trees to blossom in winter and calm down ferocious animals. The musical power is known in Japan, China and other oriental countries, moreover lot of anthropologists know that this power is used by shamans, Tibetan monks and Sufi dancers which aim is to call the recovery forces and  the cosmic bond. Now the scientific research in musical therapy and in music psychology confirms the efficacy of the musical power.  Quoting Alfred Tomatis, Don Campbell, Yehudi Menuhim and Michel Imberty  we understand that the music is not only linked to the perceptive areas of sensibility and innovation, but it also has a power on plants, animals and human beings. Alfred Tomatis teaches us to listen to the universe” to open the perception in all the directions and it re-establishes the essential bonds with the surrounding environment and with people. Don Campbell discovered some specific effects of Mozart’s compositions, able to stimulate cognitive and perceptive functions: the “Mozart effect” from which it can be found the “Vivaldi, Bach and Debussy effect”.

Yehudi Menuhim studied the relations between music and neurosciences, trying the musical effects on neurophysiologic functions and on the attitudes of children. Michel Imberty is one of the most important specialists of musical semantics. He did analysis of different musical themes and their emotional meanings. The research about musical semantics has been done also by Gundlach (1935), Hevner (1936), Campbell (1942) and Watson (1942). Many other recent researchers have tried the effect of music on living being. In Biodanza the music is selected to stimulate the eco-factors linked to the five lines of vivencia. We call “organic music” that one which presents biological attributes: fluidity, harmony, rhythm, tone, sense unit and coenaesthetic effects; this one has the power of creating integrating vivencias. Since the music can revive intense vivencias, in Biodanza the selection follows semantic standarts: its thematic, vivencial and emotional implications. Music can wake up erotic, sentimental, euphoric feelings, which become vivencias when danced.

2. Integrating Dance Power

Biodanza has about 250 exercises and dances which purpose is to activate human movements in an harmonic and integrative way; dissociative movements in Biodanza don’t exist. We have several integration motor and sensory  exercises and affective motor ones, and many of coenaesthetic sensibility;  another series of exercises is composed by simple dances that stimulate the vivencias of vitality, sexuality, creativity, affectivity and transcendence. During the Biodanza session music becomes a physical movement and the dancer get into the vivencia. The combination music movement-vivencia provokes subtle changes in many systems: limbic-hypothalamic, nervous-vegetative, immune, neurotransmitters. These dances are powerful eco-factors for the vivencial induction, they mutually  get stronger and they have important effects on homeostasis of organic functions, on the regulation of the integrative- adaptive- limbic-hypothalamic systems, and  on the elevation of life quality and joy of living.

3.    Vivencial methodology power

The Biodanza methodology is oriented toward the induction of integrative vivencias able to exceed the dissociations induced by our cultures. Currently many people live in psychosomatic dissociation conditions. They think something, but they feel something else, so they act in a dissociative way as regards what they feel. The unity of our existence is always crisis. Through the vivencias we can improve the nervous-physiological and existential unity of human beings. The vivencia is the intense feeling of being alive here and now and it has several coenaesthetic and emotional characteristics. Vivencias have many different emotional nuances as euphoria, erotism, tenderness, interior peace. This helps to express the authenticity of identity. Vivencia is different from the emotion. Emotion is an answer to external stimuli and it vanish when they disappear. Vivencia is an experience that touches the entire existence. It has deep and long effects because it makes the organism to participate in its totality and it induces the feeling of being alive, transcending the ego. It is an experience here and now. The vivencias allow us to be ourselves, it constitutes a new epistemology. Our intense instinctive and affective motivations are inhibited because of our cultural models. The deep  vivencias that compromise unity of our psychism are the original forces of life. A rational approach to our conflicts doesn’t  solve our dissociative troubles and being conscious of our conflicts doesn’t modify our attitudes.  The thing that helps us to have a healthy and integrated. For this reason we don’t make an analysis of conflicts, but we stimulate the health part of our identity through intense vivencias. “Instant is the only place we can live in”. The vivencial methodology allows the integration process. Biodanza is an integration system of human potential. Integration means coordination of activities of different subsystems to join the harmonious functioning of a larger system. The vivencia is the essential integration agent of the functional unity: “we live here and now, in a cosmic time”.

4.    The caress power

“Biodanza is a poetics of human meeting”
The connection between people is essential in each act of rehabilitation, it doesn’t exist the growth in solitude (the mystical and therapeutic techniques in solo are fallacious). The contact with other people is what allows the growth. The verbal connection is not enough. It’s necessary the contact, the dance in couple or collective and the corporeal enthusiasm in a sensitive and slight contest, with a feed-back. Currently there are many scientific researches about therapeutic and pedagogic effects of caress. A lot of authors discovered that the contact enhances and gives affective containment to people. Obviously the contact is not sufficient, it is necessary the existence of a connection, that means every kind of physical bound created by a sincere affective force. There are scientific basis about therapy contact. We can mention S.F. Harlow; René Spitz; Rof Carballo, Lopez Ibor; Bowlby; …
Caress is not only contact, but also a connection. Therapies that don’t have the corporeal engagement are dissociative, because they work only on a conscious level and not in important vivencias of love and communion. The affectivity includes: the connection, the participation, the “we” of Martin Buber.

5. The Trance Power

The trance is an modified state of consciousness that implies the decrease of ego and the receding to the primordial, in  a certain way to the perinatal steps. It concerns the phenomenom of receding to the initial steps of existence.The trance effects are a biological renovation because in this specific condition the original biological characteristics are reissued (intense metabolism) and the first need of protection, nutrition and contact. For this reason the exercises of trance allow the rebirth in a contest of love and care. Many adults bring with them a injured child, without love. This exercises help the treatment through trance and rebirth ceremonies.
Between the sources of Biodanza there is the innovative method of  “suspention trance” that allows to reach the trance condition in a progressive way and with a soft abandon.

6.  The consciousness expansion power

The consciousness expansion is a amplified perception condition and it is characterised by the original link with the Universe. Its subjective effect is an intense sensation of ontocosmologic  unity and transcendent joy. Biodanza induces consciousness expantion conditions through music, dances and meeting cerimonies. To accede to the “supreme experience” it is necessary to be prepared and a superior level of integration and maturity. The processes we use to induce progressive changes of consciousness condition are: 

• exercises to amplify the perception of nature and people through the five senses
• reading of the soul through the perception of  companions’ faces after the trance
• exercises of coenaesthetic pleasure to decrease the ego intervention
• exercises of slow fluidity with abandon
• exercises of ecstasy and intasy

 In Biodanza we  activate neurotransmitter’s mechanisms wich lay naturally in our body and induce a similar effect of etheogenic drugs. To live “the supreme experience” (closely accompanied and followed), bring us to discover e new sense of the life, to improve our connection with nature, with people and with ourselves. Transtasis (innertransformation’s immediate change) is the  organic integration of perception, of abstract intelligence and affectivity. Biodanza induces plenitude states and often ecstasies ones, trough exercises of affectivity and transcendence. The expanded consciousness experience has an enduring effect both to the sense of existence and to the way to be-in-the-world and they consist in a feeling of ecstasy in front of the creation, it’s woods, it’s animals and particularly in front of people.

The entheogenic experience is the “awakaning of the divine in man” and has two main aspects:
a.     Ecstasy (connection with the external world and with people): to deepen this kind of state can lead to a contemplative ecstasy with tears of joy in front of the indescribable beauty of the external world, joint to the loss of body bounds and to a feeling of extreme pleasure. It’s also possible to induce a deep empathy with the essence of another person, causing an absolute understanding of her and an intense feelings of love and fraternity.  The Coenesthetic pleasure state  happens when a person abandon herself to be “herself” and all of sudden she feels herself like a medium of the music that is to say  the “individual becomes music”. It happens when individuals dance with eye closed in deep sensitivity, slowly and in harmony.
b.     Intasy (connection with oneself): is the immediate amplification of consiousness joint to the emotional vivencia of “being alive” for the first and single time, assembling all the possibilities of existence. This vivencia is combined to a feeling of beauty and plenitude. That is to feel oneself a living part of an organic whole, joint to a feeling of eternity (timelessness). The corporeal vivencia is pulsating, with feelings of shiver and gooseflesh.

INTASY 

• Coenesthetic harmony
• Musical ecstasy
• Intrauterine vivencia
• Oceanic vivencia
• Enlightenment  

ECSTASY

• Empathy
• Love ecstasy
• Altruistic ecstasy
• Contemplative ecstasy
• Cosmic ecstasy

7. Group Power 

The “group” in Biodanza is a rebirth matrix which integrates itself at an affective level, it constitutes a very intense interaction field. Biodanza is neither a solipsist system nor a verbal communication one. It’s power lies in the mutual induction of vivencias between the members of the group. The encounter situations have the power of changing in a deep way attitudes and human relationships forms. In Biodanza the integration form of the group is very different from traditional group dynamics.

Prof. Rolando Toro Araneda