What are the 7 powers of Biodanza?

The 7 transformative powers of Biodanza

We continue with the dissemination of valuable contents extracted from the Biodanza Argentina Magazine, following the line of our previous posts about the interview with Román Mazzilli. Today we want to share with you how Biodanza sessions can transform your life.

In this article, based on the writings of Rolando Toro Araneda, you will discover the seven key elements that make Biodanza a unique tool for personal development.

Where does its effectiveness come from?

Biodanza achieves exceptional results thanks to its holistic approach to the human being and its ability to restore existential balance. Its effectiveness is based on seven pillars:

• The transformative power of music
• Inclusive movement through dance
• Experience-based methodology
• Conscious contact and caressing
• Healing trance states
• The expansion of consciousness
• The transformative power of the group

Each of these elements generates significant changes on its own. When combined in a coherent scientific model, they create a powerful synergy that can even influence our genetic expression.

1. The transformative power of music

Music has an ancient capacity for transformation. From Greek mythology with Orpheus and his lyre, to shamanic practices in Eastern cultures, sound has been used as a tool for healing and connection.

Shamans, Tibetan monks and Sufi dancers already knew this secret: the right music can awaken healing forces and establish deep links with the cosmos.

Contemporary science has validated this ancient wisdom. Researchers such as Alfred Tomatis, Don Campbell, Yehudi Menuhin and Michel Imberty have shown that music goes far beyond entertainment. Their studies reveal concrete effects on plants, animals and especially humans.

Tomatis taught us that «listening to the universe» expands our perception and restores essential connections. Campbell discovered the famous «Mozart Effect», proving how certain compositions stimulate cognitive functions. Menuhin explored the relationship between music and neuroscience, while Imberty analysed the emotional meanings of each musical theme.

At Biodanza, Each piece of music is meticulously selected to activate specific aspects of the five lines of experience.

We use what we call «organic music»: compositions with biological characteristics such as fluidity, harmony and rhythm that generate integrative responses in the body. The selection follows precise semantic criteria, considering the emotional and experiential impact of each melody.

2. Dance as a vehicle for integration

With more than 250 exercises and dances in its repertoire, Biodanza seeks to harmonise human movement in an integral way. There is no room for fragmented or disconnected movements.

Each session integrates sensory-motor, affective-motor and deep body sensitivity exercises. It also includes dances that awaken vitality, sexuality, creativity, affectivity and transcendence.

What is fascinating is how music becomes movement. The sound literally «embodies» itself in the dancer, generating genuine experiences. This combination of music, movement and experience triggers subtle changes in key systems: limbic-hypothalamic, neurovegetative, immune and neurotransmitters.

The result is organic homeostasis, regulation of the adaptive system and a marked improvement in quality of life. That is why the benefits of biodanza are manifested from the very first practice.

3. The experiential methodology: feeling to heal

The methodology of Biodanza focuses on awakening integrative experiences that counteract the fragmentations imposed on us by modern society.

Today, many people live disconnected from themselves: they think one thing, feel another and act in a totally different way. This dissociation generates constant existential crises. Experiences are the way to recover neurophysiological and existential unity.

An experience is to feel intensely that you are alive «here and now». It has powerful bodily and emotional components: euphoria, eroticism, tenderness, inner peace. Each nuance contributes to expressing your authentic identity.

But be careful: experience is not the same as emotion. Emotions are temporary responses to external stimuli. Experiences are total experiences that encompass your whole being, generate deep and lasting effects, involve every cell of your body.

Our instinctive and affective motivations are often repressed by cultural norms. Deep experiences represent the original forces of life.

Here is the key point: rational conflict analysis does not solve deep dissociations. Being aware of your problems does not necessarily change your behaviour. What it transforms is the experience of being alive, the perception of your body, the possibility of being honestly yourself.

That is why in Biodanza we do not analyse conflicts. Instead, we stimulate the healthy part of your identity through intense experiences. As they say: «the moment is the only place where you can really live».

4. The touch that heals: the power of the touch

As he rightly defined Rolando ToroBiodanza is a poetics of the human encounter. The genuine link with other people is fundamental in any process of healing or personal growth. The idea of solitary development is an illusion.

Verbal connection has limits. We need physical contact, shared dance and bodily engagement in a sensitive and conscious context. Numerous scientific investigations support the therapeutic effects of human contact.

Researchers such as Harlow, René Spitz, Rof Carballo, López Ibor and Bowlby have shown that contact validates people and provides them with affective containment.

But touching is not enough: real connection is required. Any form of contact must be driven by a sincere affective intention to be truly transformative.

5. Trance states: being reborn into the present

Trance is an altered state of consciousness that involves diminishing ego control and returning to the essential, the primordial. In a sense, it is a return to the earliest stages of our existence.

The effects are of profound biological renewal. During the trance, we recreate the conditions of the beginning of human life: intensified metabolism, awakened bodily perception and the primary needs for protection, nourishment and contact.

That is why trance exercises in Biodanza facilitate «reparentalisation»: to be born again in a context of love and care. Many adults carry a wounded, abandoned or unloved inner child. Reparentalisation allows to heal it through trance and rebirth ceremonies.

Biodanza includes the innovative method of «suspension trance», which allows access to this state gradually and through a gentle letting go.

6. Expanding consciousness: connecting with the whole

The expansion of consciousness is a state of expanded perception that restores our primordial link with the universe. Subjectively, it is experienced as an intense feeling of oneness with all that exists and a joy that transcends the personal.

In Biodanza we induce these states through specific music, dances and meeting ceremonies. Accessing this «supreme experience» requires previous preparation and a higher level of personal integration.

The procedures we use include:

• Exercises to broaden the perception of nature and people through all senses
• «Soul reading» by observing the face of the companions after the trance.
• Deep body pleasure exercises to quiet the ego
• Slow flowing movements with abandonment
• Ecstasy and ecstasy practices

Some therapies use psychoactive substances to induce an expansion of consciousness. Dr. Albert Hofmann, creator of LSD-25, proposed using these experiences to educate perception and develop empathy.

In Biodanza we take another path: we activate the body's natural neurotransmitters that produce effects similar to entheogenic substances, without using drugs.

After a properly accompanied «supreme experience», one discovers a new sense of life and a heightened connection with nature, people and oneself. This is called transtasis: a sudden transformation that integrates perception, abstract intelligence and affectivity.

Biodanza generates states of wholeness and often ecstasy through exercises of affectivity and transcendence. These states have lasting effects on how you experience existence and how you relate to the world.

The entheogenic experience is «awakening the divine in the human being» and has two dimensions:

a) Ecstasy (connection with the external world and people):

This state can lead to contemplative ecstasy, where tears emerge at the indescribable beauty of reality, accompanied by the dissolution of bodily boundaries and intense pleasure. It can also manifest as deep identification with the essence of another person, generating absolute understanding and genuine brotherly love.

Deep bodily pleasure occurs when someone abandons himself to «just be himself». The person becomes a medium of music, dancing with closed eyes in deep sensitivity, slowly and harmoniously.

b) Intasis (connection with oneself):

It is the sudden broadening of consciousness combined with the emotional experience of «being alive» for the first and only time, concentrating all the possibilities of being. This experience is accompanied by a feeling of absolute beauty and fullness.

It is a feeling of being a living part of an organic whole, connected with a sense of eternity (timelessness). The bodily experience is pulsating, with sensations of shivering and piloerection.

The different manifestations of consciousness expansion include:

• Intasis (inner look)
• Ecstasy (external connection)
• Deep body harmony
• Genuine empathy
• Musical ecstasy
• Ecstasy of love
• Intrauterine experience
• Altruistic ecstasy
• Oceanic experience
• Contemplative ecstasy
• Lighting
• Cosmic ecstasy

7. Collective strength: the power of the group

The group in Biodanza functions as a matrix of rebirth. It integrates on an affective level and creates a field of interactions of great intensity.

Biodanza is not a solitary practice, nor is it based on verbal communication. Its power lies in the reciprocal induction of experiences among all participants. Genuine moments of encounter have the capacity to profoundly transform attitudes and ways of relating.

If the idea of experiencing Biodanza sessions appeals to you, we have a space waiting for you.

Article based on contents of Biodanza, publication of Campo Grupal. Director: Román Mazzilli - Alma Mater: Betina Ber Argerich 2543 "B" - (1417) C.A.B.A. - Argentina. Tel: 4504-2449 Email: campogrupal@gmail.com