Biodanza was born during the 1960s in Chile, South America. It became the life's work of Rolando Toro Araneda, a psychologist and university educator who drew on anthropology and ethology - as well as on biology, "the Science of Life” – in order to “grow” his multifunctional system of regenerating a taste for Life through dance/movement & music..
Why and how? - Rolando began by working with some institutionalised psychiatric patients, bringing music to install a new sense of purpose in their lives. He found out that different kinds of music had very different effects – eventually coming up with the word “Vivencia” to describe a timeless & ineffably rich moment, evoked by the music & the supportive presence of other dancers. watching closely for what he called vivencias — the felt, lived experiences that certain music could stir in someone. Over time he came to believe that different kinds of “humours” (e.g. depressed, apathetic, anxious, over-excited etc) called for different musical stimuli in order to evoke Vivencias in the dancers – and that, although music itself carried a real healing power — one capable of shifting even chronic physical and emotional states – being in safe company mattered too.
Those observations became his life-long work, tested again & again against real people and real rooms, patients, then staff, then neighbours.. All wanted to take part.. just to dance & have fun in his sessions. Over time, Rolando was led to settle his findings into a proper theoretical model. At its heart is a simple, biological idea: that we're each born with a genetic potential, and that this potential broadly unfolds along five lines:
(1) Vitality, or the ability to assert our identity, our presence on earth,
(2) a natural instinctive mammalian sensuality, which he called Sexuality for short,
(3) Creativity or the ability to free ourselves from old patterns when inspired to in the moment,
(4) Affectivity or recovering the quality of the loving attention & connection we all need from birth, and
(5) Transcendence, remembering our divine origins.. our real purpose in living a more natural, fulfilling life.
The whole Biodanza method is designed to progressively stimulate, recycle & support that multidimensional unfolding.
So: what can Biodanza offer me? - the chance to take gradual, gentle responsibility for your own growth along many vectors; to bring all these threads — vitality, connection, creativity etc. back into ordinary daily life; to recover & find new reasons to want to live fuller, better lives; and - above all - to let our body to FEEL what can is essentially good in Life, in order to make it a happier life a priority, rooted in more joy, health and wellbeing.
Biodanza has been called a system of human integration - of organic renewal, of learning again how to go about feeling safe, to potentially re-learn some basic but specific behavioural “movement-IS-life” functions, as they were always meant to have ideally been experienced in earlier years. It does this through the combined support of music, voice, movement, and the simple, powerful fact of getting to actually feel met, unconditionally, within a group of similarly searching souls.
For some more historical details have a look here.
