free intro to Biodanza: reviving our evolutionary heritage

[Guest guest]

Hello veg*n friends,

 

This is not a food event, but the philosophy of the Biodanza

system is inherently supportive of vegetarianism. Biodanza seeks

to build a life-centered (rather than human-centered) ethics by

inspiring a personal aesthetic of life, informed by both

scientific learning and experiential introspection. The premise

is that modern life has alienated us from the wisdom (of

compassion, assertiveness, protection, play, etc.) that evolved

in our mammalian and primate ancestors. The method encourages

the healthy expression of the instincts to teach us to to be

better caretakers of ourselves, each other, and the biosphere.

 

Folks at the Aries dinner encouraged me to post this to SBVS if I

could tie it to a dinner or dessert gathering, but the time (7:30

PM) and neighborhood (few restaurants nearby) of the May 1 San

Francisco session just doesn't make that practical. If people

feel it's really important to involve food, I could schedule a

dinner before the May 2 session in Berkeley. If you would be

interested in having dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in

Berkeley on Saturday, May 2, please email me directly. I'll send

another announcement if there was enough interest to set up that

event.

 

A concrete description of what happens at a Biodanza session is

at the end of this email, below the horizontal line.

 

 

For directions to the May 1 event, please view the following

evite and RSVP there, in case any announcements need to be sent

out.

http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/FBHVRDCFULTHCSRZDJZU/May01Biod

anzaSF

 

 

Incidentally, if enough people in the South Bay get excited about

Biodanza, I'm sure someone would be interested in trying to start

up a session further south. The San Francisco School of Biodanza

just recently graduated several new teachers who don't have their

own groups yet.

 

In total, there will be three free Biodanza sessions (April 26,

May 1 and 2: see http://biodanza.us/events.html) during National

Dance Week (http://bayareandw.org/). Note that the April 26 class

is missing from bayareandw.org and the May 3 class is listed with

the wrong time, so it would be prudent to confirm the details of

other National Dance Week events on the studios' websites.

__________

 

 

What happens at a Biodanza session...

 

Biodanza is a celebration of life through collective joy, play,

dance and ritual. Music (Brazilian, classic rock, classical,

etc.) is carefully chosen to create the right mood for each

exercise, and then we are invited into movement full of genuine

meaning. No dance experience is necessary.

 

Some dance experiences challenge you to think on your feet -

" What can I come up with now? What is he asking me to do? " A

Biodanza experience challenges you to allow parts of your

neocortex to quiet down, so that you can fully appreciate the

richness of feeling that the music and the movements around you

are inspiring in you, and so that you can be uninhibited in

expressing oft-repressed aspects of yourself through your own

movements. Dance is the method of the system, rather than the

object.

 

While there are other movement practices that fit the preceding

description, what sets Biodanza apart is its attention to

stimulating the range of positive emotions. Most dance forms

either have a narrow range of mood or stimulate you with a range

of songs chosen for their abstract differences in attributes such

as tempo, rhythm, harmony, etc. The difference between the latter

and Biodanza is the careful pairing of songs and exercises to

support a particular theme of human expansion. (Once a group is

established, the themes are tailored by the facilitator to the

circumstances of the group.)

 

There will be a mix of solo, partner, and group exercises, and an

alternation between expressing identity and experiencing unity.

The overall rhythm of the session is that exhilaration builds and

then flows into calm.

 

The system of Biodanza has been developed by an international

team led for the past 45 years by a Chilean psychologist and

anthropologist, Rolando Toro, and each facilitator has completed

hundreds of hours of training. The May 1 session will be taught

by the director of the San Francisco School of Biodanza, Belisa

Amaro.

 

Cheers,

 

Richard