Dancing through life with balance

The tango community is filled with people who are a rare breed of humanity.  

Throughout time, people who learn the arts with passion often look at the world in a different way.  What makes tango and my tango friends special, I think, is that this art form has its origins in social connection and improvisation.  

Tango is a rare "performing art" for just two people.

Even though tango has a special place among the arts, all artists--passionate dancers, artists, musicians--have at least a chance of looking at all of life in a deeper way.  I think the passion for dancing tango helps people to find a more harmonized world view.  Ancient civilizations or any modern country that appreciates the arts has more of a three-dimensional view of life in general. Tango, with its social, improvisational core, makes it especially wonderful for helping people gain a multi-dimensional world-view.

I have garnered many close friendships from dancing tango with people from all over the world.  And the one thing that is most amazing is not that tango is a universal body language, but it also helps all of us be more balanced in our world-views. The world around us tends to try to understand reality empirically.  That is good but limited.  In a sense, it is the "body" or "outward manifestation" model. The ancient Greeks had a great way of explaining three ways to understand reality.  This is the artist's view, a three-dimensional model to look at the perceptual world:  Body, soul and spirit.  This 3-D model is a common way for truly amazing tango dancers to see the world, and here below I think, is how they understand their art. 

Harmonizing of a 3-D World Body (outward expression model) Soul (the balance of intellect & emotion model) Spirit (energy & flow model)

BODY (Greek: soma): Health Model: Wellness-focused dancers take care of their body's health. They avoid over-use, which leads to injury and pain. She sleeps, eats, and exercises to maintain bodily health. A healthy body relies on other qualities from soul and spirit. A healthy middle ear is the only reason a dancer can physically balance. This type of balance is only an analogy of the balance of intellect and emotion (soul).

SOUL (Greek: psyche*). Balance Model: A long-term excellent dancer who has emotional and intellectual balance is creative, passionate but intellectually aware. The balance (soul) model is dissimilar to the body wellness/sickness model of the soul. "Mental health" exists in ancient literature but only as poetry and analogy. Still today, "mental health," is simply a way for "therapists" (from Greek "healers") to be accepted into the payment side of insurance and the medical system. Have a balanced soul but a healthy body! Even then with balance and wellness, finally, where does energy/flow come from? Something is missing, and that is the third model of Spirit.

SPIRIT (Greek: pneuma*). Energy Flow Model: Certain dancers, although older, may have a huge reservoir of energy flow or Chi. Where does that come from? Sometimes the ONLY time they really have great energy is when they are dancing. When the music stops, they may even limp off the dance floor and are weary again.

How well are you harmonizing these three models in your dance, or for that matter, your life? Look around. Many apparently good dancers may have dead-end dance and personal lives. They mistreat their body with over-use, poor sleep, too much alcohol, or push themselves to dance when they are not well. Even if the body is well, perhaps they may not be balanced in their psyche because they spend too much on intellectual choreography or are passionate but too much in their own world. Or perhaps, they are healthy in body and balanced with emotion and intellect, but some dancers may be burnout, leaving tango because they lack energy flow. Their energy may wain or be totally blocked by events in their life which will cause this energy to go off on some other tangent.

Harmonizing body, soul, and spirit is the ancient way of harmonizing everything, including dancing. Isn't dance one of the most ancient wonders of the world? Being a healthy, balanced, and spirited dancer makes you a living ancient wonder in our modern myopic health-and-body-focused world. You, a tango dancer, have learned, indirectly perhaps, a three-dimensional view. That is why you love the dance and the people in the community who organically see many of the world issues similarly and harmonize with the planet more than most communities to which they belong.

My hope is to my body, soul, and spirit into everything you do.

*Spirit in Greek is pneuma. and means breath, wind, and spirit in Ancient Greek. Other words used by ancient writers used shakti (Sanskrit) and chi (Chinese). **Psyche does not mean the "mind" in Greek but means "soul" which is a balance of emotions and intellect. Note: Did you notice that I did not have to explain soma, "body." Everyone seems to understand the empirical, externalized, non-contemplative, what-you-see-is-what-you-get model. :-)

Photo credits:

• Balancing tango dancers. "Tightrope Tango" by Christopher Clark http://www.christopherclark.com/
• Spirit, soul, body graphic: https://www.slideshare.net/salvation123/spirit-soul-bodyr1