Dancing to INHABIT the body

“We do not have a body – we are our body.”

When we see our bodies as objects, something we possess rather than inhabit we lose touch with the reality that every emotion, memory, and experience is lived through our bodies. Our bodies are a sensing presence through which we live in constant relationship with ourselves, others, and the environment. Our bodies are not objects to be managed but the place where we experience life fully.

Through dance we begin to sense this wholeness when we realise that mind and body are really one. When we surrender completely to our dances the illusion we live with of separation between our mind and body dissolves. The movements of our bodies when we dance are not just physical but rather infused with emotion, feeling, and meaning. This stimulates our innate creativity, where, instead of being spectators of our lives we actively participate in shaping them.

The act of shaping doesn’t come from conscious action but rather from a willingness to surrender and fully inhabit our bodies. In Biodanza we work with the notion that identity is an embodied process, so that we are not simply living in a body – the ghost in a machine – but we are continually forming and creating a continual expression of who we are becoming. When we fully inhabit the body, Life inhabits us. In the Vivencia we get to experience this as joy, bliss and ecstasy when our dance moves beyond simply being an action or activity.

_Christos Daskalakos