Dance, attraction and shiatsu

Dance and attraction

The news this summer that women are more attracted to men who have good dance moves prompted this musing. (Although why this should be news is not clear, since men are attracted to women who have good dance moves.)

You can see everything in how people move.The basic readiness both to act and to defend ourselves is what lies behind our characteristic posture. To have mobility and flexibility in our limbs and coordination in our movements are ways in which we can respond to actions or to survive threats. Blocked movements, especially, show a deficiency in the ability to react to change.

We see this in the everyday: giving at the knees when you walk over rough ground, shifting one's balance from one leg to another; being ready to deflect a blow or roll with a fall; being able to relax and enjoy the sensations of safety when they are known; being able to communicate one's joy. The body shapes one's state of being.  It's what having 'a posture' means. 

People who are afraid readily reveal themselves in the use of their muscles and limbs, whereas, someone who is ready to face dangers and the unknown is necessarily more supple and physically adaptable.  

We can consider what we as humans do about movement with this in mind.  We can appreciate that sport has this agenda not so far from the surface, but more important than all the sporting activities that modern culture has allowed humans to expand into is dance.  We love to dance and to see people dance.  It belongs in all cultures, in all social levels, ages and epochs and there is a reason for it. Someone who dances, someone who shows their ability to be supple, to move, to respond, is primarily signalling that they are in some unspecifiable way ready to face the unknown and to adapt to it. Women who love dance are signalling to men that they are ready to face the unknowns of mating and parenthood.  They dance to show their willingness to accept the dangers that lie ahead for them.  The dangers of pregnancy and the risks associated with making a choice of partner is often specifically communicated in dance and dance rituals.  When women come of age, dance is one of the most common ways in which this fact is communicated to the community.  Men who can't or won't dance - what do they tell us?  An unwillingness to go beyond their own boundaries. The unresolved inhibition naturally tends towards rigid, inflexible, probably domineering attitudes since those who won't dance are less likely to confront and adapt to the unknown. 

There are shy people, of course, who would like to dance but fear embarrassment or ridicule. In other words, they are already sensitive to where dance can take them. Their to ability to overcome this inhibition is in direct relation to their ability to evolve as individuals.

You can pretty much tell in an individual's posture and the way they move whether or not their the ability to engage with the unknown is firmly established in their mental structure. It is one the things a shiatsu practitioner looks at first of all because it's integral to how we cure ourselves of almost anything. 

October 5 2010