Biodance
What is “Biodanza?
Biodanza means “body and movement”, it’s a system of affective re-education, of existential renewal, which aims to rescue the values of life, respect for life and the sacredness of life.
Music and dance are its instruments, bringing up situations to facilitate communication and develop affective expression between people.
To reconnect and enjoy life, through vitality, affectivity, creativity, sexuality and transcendence.
Objectives
To promote the values of human encounter, respect for diversity and the exchange of affection, emotions and feelings.
To allow the reestablishment of nourishing and healthy human relationships.
To transform personal crises into opportunities for change and improvement of the quality of life.
To promote the recognition and integration of one’s own identity.
Integration of our feeling, thinking and acting
Contents
Biodanza proposes five lines of experience for its work through movement and dance: Vitality, Affectivity, Creativity, Sexuality and Transcendence.
Benefits of Biodanza
Through the exercises, people experience changes in their lifestyle, in the sense that they increase their well-being, their health, express their potential, have the courage to live and connect with their inner freedom; stimulating self-confidence and increasing the capacity to sense.
Biodanza seeks the integration of thought, emotion and behavior, and that the deep desires of each person can emerge and manifest in daily life.
On a physical (organic) level, the integration of the nervous, endocrine and immune systems is achieved.
What does Biodanza bring to our world?
We live in a world that is intellectually very advanced in terms of intelligence, but in terms of affectivity we are in the stone age. Wars, exploitation, violence, lack of respect for the rights of all living beings indicate an absence of affectivity. Biodanza postulates a philosophy of the “glory of living” through movement, dance and human encounter.
In the Biodanza workshops, integrative experiences can be experienced that produce courage, health and joy of living.
Biodanza can only be known by experiencing it. Biodanza is a fruit of human culture that, when savoured, helps us feel part of nature and invites us to live a meaningful life.
Where does Biodanza come from?
Biodanza is a system created by Rolando Toro, a Chilean psychologist and anthropologist, in the 1970s, which was inspired by anthropological and ethnological sources.
He began by carrying out clinical experiments with psychiatric patients to verify the experiences that music can induce in people. He came to the conclusion that each disturbance requires certain musical stimuli and that music has a healing power capable of modifying chronic physical and emotional states.
Eduardo explains: “My relationship with Biodanza”
At the end of the 1980s I had the opportunity to meet Rolando Toro himself. I was fascinated by his proposal and did the training and studies with him in Argentina and Brazil. Once certified as a Biodanza Facilitator I began to work with groups, from 1990 in Argentina and from 2001 until today in Spain.
In 2005, I completed the training to become a Biodanza Didact Teacher with Rolando in Milan. Before his death in 2010 I saw him for the last time the year before at one of the annual congresses in Madrid.
I will always remember him with love and gratitude, I learned a lot from him.
In all these years I have worked with hundreds of people teaching and enjoying Biodanza.
From Thinking to Sensing
The epistemological basis of Biodanza is nourished by three main sources: Western thought, Eastern tradition and indigenous experience.
Advantages of Biodanza
Biodanza creates a strategy for affectivity: learning to look into each other’s eyes, to hold hands, to walk together, to appreciate each other instead of criticizing each other and, above all, to accept the other as they are, without trying to change them. Tenderness through caresses, security through hugs, are our instruments.
Biodanza works towards health by recovering in people the capacity for self-regulation and neurovegetative balance.
Through a climate of trust and solidarity, Biodanza allows the development of self-esteem and self-efficacy, both in achieving our goals and in our relationships with other people. Achievements are always reinforced by emphasizing the positive, appreciating the progress made, no matter how small.
The pedagogical dimension of Biodanza also allows, through learning by observation and modeling (psychological processes of imitation), the development of new skills.
Biodanza develops a new way of thinking in people, not by imposing a model from outside, but by generating in each person a style of thinking in accordance with their vital and personal needs.
Finally, Biodanza invites us to come together in the embrace, in the hug, the most human gesture that can exist, the path to our most precious identity, a maximum awareness of humanity.