HYDERABAD: The atmosphere at the Aaromalé Café, Film Nagar was filled with serenity and harmony. A workshop on Biodanza by Dr. Yaron Ziv was organised and all the participants were strangers to each other.
Prior to the start of the session, all of them sat down, chatted over hot cups of coffee and made themselves comfortable.
With over 36 years of experience in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and gestalt theory, Dr.Yaron Ziv is a master psychotherapist and clinical psychologist from Israel and is a professor at different universities in New York and Jerusalem.
Gestalt therapy being his primary focus, he’s been practising the same in India for the past six years. He first brought Biodanza to the city in September 2019.
The session started with Dr. Ziv briefing the participants a little bit about the history and description of biodanza.
He proclaimed that Rolando Toro, a philosopher, psychologist and educator was the brain behind Biodanza.
“He did it out of protest against the dictatorship in South America just like Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence movement in India,” Ziv adds.
The aim was to let the children of the future enjoy and celebrate life as it comes.
It is a modality incorporated in daily life to remember and appreciate everyone in our life and make life holy.
Exercising Biodanza helps people connect with others in totality and not just superficially. Rather than separating people into fragments, the exercise brings them into real intimacy with others. Dr. Ziv broke down the word ‘intimacy’ and described it as “Into me see”, which means see through others and form a deep connection.
The whole concept of Biodanza works on five basic modes of living - vitality, sexuality & sensuality, affectivity, creativity and transcendence which humans lost touch with.
Biodanza primarily focuses on work with self, work with the other, work in group or work infinity. He also mentioned that it was close to Osho’s teachings as he believed that when one dances and rejoices, it becomes experiential and we learn to appreciate life.
“When I was at a festival long time ago, leading the active meditation programme of five hours, a teacher of Biodanza was present; he later offered me to join and I did. I liked it at the very beginning and started to train in this exercise until I became entitled to facilitate and teach Biodanza. I then combined psychology with dancing and there is no looking back since then. I feel that Indians have dance running in their blood and it’s my dream to soon open a school of Biodanza in India,” he shared.
One of the participants Sayantoni Ghosh shared her experience: “It feels like a disservice to talk about my experience as my heart feels full. I had a wonderful time dancing with strangers who are not strangers anymore.”