Let’s face it. We are a needy bunch.
We want all the affection and attention we can get. We long to be appreciated and affirmed. We seek to be rocked, comforted, to be touched with gentleness and respect. We need to be assured we are not alone.
The solution?
… Mirroring.
Okay, this takes us back – all the way to our baby in arms phase. Apparently, according to science and mothers everywhere, we address this need for connection through the infantile practice of mirroring.
Communication through movement
Relational engagement is not instinctive (although it does become intuitive later), but rather a learned or developmental process. Surprisingly, this learning is not principally through language or thought but through our bodies. We learn to become human through movement, through mimicking or mirroring, and moving in consort with the motions of others.
We tend to think of communication primarily if not exclusively, as verbal. Wrong. Communicating through language carries less impact or meaning than more primal and foundational forms of nonverbal communication. Body cues, inflections, rhythm and timing, facial expressions, and physical contact communicate much more than words.
Some reflections by Alan Burdick from Why Time Flies, (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
Is there anything more infectious than excitement around a newborn baby? We touch, we cradle, we make funny noises and faces, we smile, anything to engage and indicate our delight with the child. There is the instinctual rhythmic rocking response that kicks in when we pick the child up and then immediately, every adult around also starts rocking in rhythm!
This is not time-wasting idleness. The child internalises from our behaviour a sense of personal worth and well-being that is stored in the body and sustains it throughout life. And as part of the exchange, we invigorate and satisfy our primal need and desire for touch, rocking, hugging and just some light-hearted fun….
Motion evokes emotion
Our slightest social exchanges — our glances, our smiles and frowns are indicators of empathy; my ability to envisage myself in your body and your state of mind, and you in mine.
We perform this kind of emotional mimicry intuitively and incessantly over the course of our daily social interactions, in some degree donning the emotional and mental outfit of each person with whom we come into close contact.
Motional mimicry
But we are also, apparently, absorbing each other’s sense of time, which is encoded in our psycho-emotional states. The key ingredient seems to be a physiological response called arousal, which … refers to the degree to which the body is preparing itself to act in some manner. It’s measured through heart rate and the skin’s electrical conductivity; … Arousal can be thought of as the physiological expression of one’s emotions or, perhaps, as a precursor of physical action; ….When we see movement, even implied movement in a static image … we enact that movement internally. In a sense, arousal is a measure of your ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes. ( Alan Burdick, Why Time Flies.)
Resonance
The entire human body itself is a natural resonator: each organ, tissue, bone, and fluid absorbing different kinds of vibratory energy and responding with harmonic vibrations. In this way, we actually internalize the thoughts and feelings of others communicated through their movement, motions, and visual cues.
And almost magically, we become thinking, feeling caring, empathic individuals. We not only develop a rich interior life, but we are also able to see into others’ interior lives and experience it with them. We resonate with them. We vibrate on the same frequency. We find a home. We are no longer alone. It is as if our partner were an echo chamber shaped perfectly to enfold our being.
Resonance and intimacy
When we experience someone else vibrating at the same frequency as we do, it breaks down the surface coating of resistance, negativity, doubt, self-recrimination. This vibration channels safety, understanding, reverence into a place of comfort. In turn, we offer that spatial cavity to another within which they can play, vibrate, move and create. (www.heartmath.org is a great online resource to explore these dynamics.)
Resonance and dance.
The concept of becoming more deeply human through mirroring the movements of others brings dance to the centre stage in essential socializing. When we dance we are not simply learning how to step in time with the music, we are learning to understand, interpret and intuit our partner’s feelings and motion. We become deeply engaged and connected with the other and more fully human in the process.
Dance as Mirroring
One experience that stands out for me that illustrates this dynamic was an Aikido exercise, used as a warmup exercise for a Tango workshop. We stood in front of our partner and passed back and forth without touching but in time with the music.
The first minute was spent awkwardly figuring out the step and letting go of self-consciousness before allowing ourselves to sink into awareness of moving with the music and our partner. Then, in the middle, a shift happened. I responded to an inner invitation to open to love, and in that instant, simultaneously with my partner, we both experienced a shift. (My partner’s experience was that she heard a “call” from the Dance). Our movements became as one, melded by the loving energy. The change was visceral and visually apparent to both of us and others who were watching.
Tango as mirroring
The gift of tango is that the structure and the technical intricacies are the ideal medium for precision mirroring. We listen with deep attention to the minute details of our partner’s body positioning, places of tension and resistance, skill level and responsiveness to our motion. And our partner attends to our body positioning and energy with equal precision.
My intrigue with tango is that it combines all layers of resonance (mental, emotional, physical) so cohesively. Our internal rhythm is augmented through alignment with our partner’s while dance. We are not only able to read our partner’s intentions (mental) and intuit their feelings (emotional) but we resonate with their inner motion (physical) as well. In our attuned state of awareness, we enter into the most intimate and nourishing experience of finding ourselves mirrored in another.
As referenced in the Burdick quote, the experience of resonance comes as we are “aroused” or sensitized to our partner’s inner dance. Although it is often the sensuality of the embrace that gets the most attention, the most important aspect is actually the movement that it supports. That is why we never just want to stand still and hang on each other (the preferred style in our high school dancing). We want to move the energy, charge it up through motion, listening, intuiting.
Maybe what we are really looking for in all this elaborate schema called the Tango, is a pattern to move in consort with someone else.
On-line instruction
One of the gifts of COVID isolation is that the international Tango community has been strengthened through the focus given to online instruction and videoconferencing.
One of my favourite teaching sites is www.tango-space.com. They recently posted an excellent instructional video by guest teachers Fernando and Lya. What impressed me most was the attention that they paid to the structure of the embrace – getting it “right” before they moved into the actual step sequence. The focus was not on the physical sensation of the connection but the structure required to create space and fluidity and allow for responsiveness to the music and one’s partner. Check it out.