There is a common centre in each of us where we meet at a deeper level, … the point at which we converge, … the ambiance in which we float. Teilhard de Chardin
Knowing and being known – in equal measure. This is the culmination of the human quest, our spiritual journey.
It is through the experience of understanding and being understood, by seeing ourselves mirrored in another, that we learn what it means to be human.
Then we will know even as we have been known. St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13.
Intimacy is what we all deeply desire at a soul level. We want to be known, understood, accepted, and loved as we are for whom we are. We want to belong. And we need equally to be able to affirm the same for another.
We can experience this engagement at any time, anywhere – at a bus stop, in a coffee shop, on the dance floor, in prayer and meditation. The only requirement is that we open one to another in an unconditional embrace of love and acceptance.
High-risk behaviour
Intimacy requires abandoning our pretenses, taking off our masks, and revealing something soulful about ourselves, something that leaves us vulnerable to rejection and judgment. And conversely, it requires us to be willing to be attentive to and non-judgmental of another, surrendering our prejudices and defences and whatever else is in our arsenal of self-defence.
But not so fast! There are excellent reasons why those defence systems are there in the first place. We have learned the hard way to keep our guard up unless absolutely sure that we are safe. Vulnerability demands of us caution and discernment.
Mimicry
Typically we consider this type of intimate exchange as verbal (apart from sexual intimacy). Truth is, connection is more often communicated or experienced non-verbally, e.g., through touch, eye contact, laughter, silence or stillness. Body cues, inflections, rhythm and timing, facial expressions, and physical contact communicate much more than words.
Alan Burdick shares these insights in Why Time Flies, (Simon and Schuster, 2017).
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.
Resonance
Mirroring or mimicry, goes much deeper than the five senses, even that of touch. There is a vibration that happens at the core of one’s being when one is engaged with another. I often experience it as a tingling that charges my entire body. The feeling may stay with me well beyond the encounter even a day or two bringing back the encounter to my memory.
This level of engagement can be described as resonating. The entire human body itself is a natural resonator: each organ, tissue, bone, and fluid absorbs different kinds of vibratory energy and responds with harmonic vibrations. It is as if we are each an echo chamber shaped perfectly to enfold the other, within invites us to play, vibrate, move and co-create.
This is in fact, the principal process by which we become thinking, feeling, caring, empathic individuals. When we vibrate on the same frequency as another we develop a rich interior life through co-inhabiting anothers’ interiority and experiencing it with them. It breaks down the surface coating of resistance, negativity, self-doubt and recrimination and infuses safety, understanding, and reverence. (www.heartmath.org is a great online resource to explore these dynamics).
Alan Burdick terms this dynamic motional mimicry:
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 internalizes 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….
But we are also, apparently, absorbing each other’s sense of time, which is encoded in our psycho-emotional states. ….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 and dance.
The concept of becoming more deeply human through motional mimcry brings dance to the centre of socializing. When we dance we are not simply learning how to step in time with the music or how to avoid stepping on our partner’s toes, we are learning to understand, interpret and intuit our partner’s motion and emotion.
I experience this level of intimacy in dancing the Tango. 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 attraction to the Tango is that it combines all layers of resonance so cohesively (mental, emotional, physical). Our internal rhythm is augmented through alignment with our partner’s. 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. Through inner attunement, we enter into the most intimate and nourishing experience of being mirrored in another. In such a way we become not only better dancers and more richly human.
And then finally, it is safe. Sure, all of us have stories about being put down or stood up or stepped on or just plain ignored at a milonga. But in the end it is just a dance. We can go home, lick our wounds and move on. None of those traumas need to haunt us. The bad dances are soon left far behind in the wake of all the wonderful experiences we have had.
Intimacy is worth the risk.