DANCE - Framing Life

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,

a quickening that is translated through you into action.”

— Martha Graham

Just as we frame our dance in space, so we frame life through movement. Just as an artist meets the boundaries of a canvas, so too do we dance through time and space giving expression to life. Yet life itself is not bound and flows through it all. Dance like a painting, like all art reflects the infinity and mystery of life and when we totally surrender to our dance, so do we touch this cosmic flow.

Each Biodanza vivencia unfolds within a clear structure of time, music, and encounter, creating a safe container for movement to arise organically. Here this no performance, this is real. Dance becomes the direct expression of our life force, bypassing analysis and returning us to an embodied truth.

Dance does not imitate life, it is a movement towards remembering as we participate in its ongoing creation. We reconnect and reframe life, freeing it from the illusion of boundaries and limitations. Our individual movements and gestures open up into a larger flow of existence we call the “Biocentric Principle”. In these spaces we reframe our own lives creating a context far greater and more magnificent than anything we can imagine. This is true freedom.

_Christos Daskalakos

VisVita 2.0

“Do not feel lonely; the entire universe is inside you.”

_RUMI

Another aspect of VisVita (Vis = force + Vita – Life) is that life also has a metaphysical aspect. Life force beyond its physical manifestation is consciousness itself, and dance becomes one of the few languages capable of meeting this directly. I have long loved the idea, born out of personal trance state experiences, that each living body is an explosion of consciousness – not separate entities but concentrations of energy given form through movement.

This aligns with Carlos Castaneda’s image drawn from Toltec tradition of the human being, as a luminous cocoon (described in The Eagle's Gift), and refers to luminous egg-shaped energy fields. In dance our attention shifts away from the body as merely an object moving around in space to our bodies as vibrating, responsive, and permeable fields of experience. Pure Vivencia, in Biodanza.

In Biodanza this experience is encouraged and explored intentionally. Rolando Toro Araneda, creator of Biodanza refers to this as experiencing “The Eternal Human Being.” This experience manifests through intense dances in which we experience the vital force of life as something beyond ourselves. A force of life that is cosmic, endless and timeless, where boundaries dissolve and we can experience ourselves as a wave on the sea of consciousness.

_Christos Daskalakos

VisVita

“Movement is the song of the body.”

_Vanda Scarvelli

VisVita comes from two Latin roots: “vis” = force, power, strength—and “vita” = life. Together they speak to life as an irrepressible force. Even when suppressed, this life-impulse finds a way to express itself. Sometimes it emerges as beauty, sometimes in distorted forms when we’ve held back. This primordial movement inside us is not just a metaphor but an actual force in the body that continuously seeks expression through movement.

Francisco Varela’s enactive approach reminds us that mind “emerges” through movement, engagement, and interaction with the world. We literally think by moving. In this sense, every impulse to movement is part of how we co-create reality. When we place ourselves in positive eco-factors like Biodanza, we step into conditions that amplify this creative force. The physical and the cognitive come together, bridging action and meaning, instinct and imagination.

Dance then becomes a dynamic process of integration. Through the movement we weave together mind, body, and heart, allowing experiences to integrate and reorganise us from within. New meaning arises through the subtle intelligence of the lived sensation we call “vivencia” in Biodanza. Each session is a renewal and a reshaping of identity through presence and feeling in our dances. This is why the name VisVita felt right for both the group and the centre. It is an acknowledgment of the living force that animates us and to the way dance helps us remember our connection to that force again.

_Christos Daskalakos

dance...EMBODIED LIFE

“Dance is like dreaming with your feet.”

_Constanze Mozart

Biodanza delivers opportunities which is different from the conventional sense of chasing goals. When we dance we reconnect with a pulsating life that reveals itself the moment we return to ourselves. Through the dance we enter this field which is already alive with possibilities. Our moving bodies soften the rigidity of thought that arises from expectations formed through habitual behaviours.

Dancing opens a more fluid and responsive way that allows intuition and feeling to arise from a deeper place. Guidance is not directed from the mind but rather an embodied sensation that quietly seeds movement, awareness, and new pathways. We simply have to be willing to be open to feel into that which we desire and through the dance gently become that which we desire. This is not an external intervention of life but a deeply rooted flow that emerges from our deepest and most authentic centre.

Dance therefore allows us to embody that which we desire. Nobody gives us joy for example, but if we are truly present and willing we dance ourselves into the “field” until we become joy. The collapse of subject-object mirrors the dance where creator and created, dancer and dance, merge into one. This way we embody and integrate that which we seek so that it is less transient and more rooted, even as ironically the dance itself fades.

_Christos Daskalakos

Dancing the Gaps

“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

_Albert Einstein

Life sometimes feels as if we move from one story to the next, like episodes in the unfolding drama called “My Life”. In the rush, we barely notice the quiet spaces that lie between stories. These almost invisible pauses are where choice resides and, when we miss them, habit takes over and it can feel as though things “must” be the way they are.

 

True choice lives in these gaps, much like in dance where one movement flows into another and we forget the magical point where all possibilities open. This gap is a delicate field.  It is not empty, but spreads out like a sea of potential when we pause, breathe, and bring awareness into it. As in life, our dance becomes an act of conscious creation rather than unconscious momentum.

 

When we learn to sense and feel these subtle spaces, we begin to sense the quiet intervals between our own stories. We stop being driven by them and start moving from a deeper intuition, trusting the wisdom of the body. In these gentle pauses, we reconnect with our power to shape the dances life and of our becoming.

 

_Christos Daskalakos

The Joy of Imperfection

“The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and j

oy is not imperfection, but a demand 

for some supposed perfection or order.”

_Richard Rohr

My formal dance training was shaped in a world of mirrors, precision, and perpetual striving. A feeling of never being good enough permeated every class draining the joy out of dance. Driven by the desire to be that perfect dancer classes sometimes became a weight and stressful.

On the other hand the trust placed in me by my teachers created a different yet conflicting perception of self. This all changed when I discovered a way to let go of technique and rediscover the unfiltered joy of dance I had grown up with. My discovery of Biodanza was pure excitement because here I didn’t have to “become a dancer”, I was “already a dancer”. Every person who steps into a Biodanza class is a dancer of life.

In these spaces we dance life and every experience is valid and has its place. There are no “perfect” dances, nor “perfect” technique. There is just the dance which connects us with a deep and profound freedom to just be ourselves. Each dance shines a light on what is genuinely unique and magical about each one of us. In these moments there is neither perfection nor imperfection – just life

_Christos Daskalakos

Dancing Self-Trust

“Everything you need to know is within you. Listen. Feel. 

 Trust the body’s wisdom.”

_Dan Millman

Beneath the noise of the mind lies the quiet wisdom of the body. When we slow down and listen we connect with the movements arising out of an inner guidance without seeking approval. Self-trust begins when we dare to move freely beyond the restrictions that arise from seeking validation either internally from our inner critic or externally from the world around us.

In Biodanza we learn to trust our experience in the Vivencia. Our dances invite us to move beyond self-consciousness and to return to the natural intelligence that breathes through our instincts. As we move in response to the natural call of life the thinking mind softens its grip and we rediscover trust. We embody the ease with which we move and make way for this to manifest as a dance of life that acknowledges ourselves as agents of creation and transformation.

To surrender to the dance reflects a confidence that arises from effortless connection to life. The dance becomes a mirror that reflects our innate ability to move with ease, to make choices, and express our uniqueness. To dance self-trust is beyond trying to prove anything to anyone. It is simply a manifestation of the joy of being unapologetically alive in this world.

_Christos Daskalakos