Having adopted tango many years ago as my self-improvement project, I am always on the lookout for something that promises not only to make me a better dancer but a better person in the process. The blending of the tango and focusing into a weekend workshop was instantly enticing.

The promo for Tango and Focusing: Presence in Motion (http://focusingresources.com) read:

• (this workshop) is designed first to explore ourselves as energy bodies before we move in relationship with another.  Men and women will play both the roles of "inviter" and "receiver" of the energy as we learn to move together.
  

• Focusing offers a way to experience and practice: finding and strengthening Self-in-Presence; keeping company with emotional reactions that arise while learning something new; and going beyond your familiar ways of moving with kind support.
  

• Tango offers a way to experience and practice maintaining your grounded center as you move, communicating clearly and respectfully - without words, claiming your own space while offering space to another.
  

At the time I knew nothing about focusing but signed up for first level because it was a prerequisite for the tango workshop. Lucinda Hayden's' expert tutelage quickly made me realize that there was something of lasting value in this part of the process, irrespective of the tango connection.

Nonetheless I was still uncertain about how the introspective stillness of focusing would blend with the active outward expression of dance. I have been experimenting for a long time with various processes that might assist with tapping into the rich psychological insights that tango presents. One notable example is Transforming through Tango, a program developed by Gwen Spinks (www.gwenspinks.com), a lifelong dance teacher, which combines journalling and reflection with tango instruction in a workshop setting.

I have for years done this type of processing (with a good portion of psychoanalysis and counselling mixed in) and found it very meaningful and healing (and in fact, eventually wrote a book about my process.) The one limitation with the juxtaposition of journaling and tango in a workshop setting is that I found the process of moving back and forth between the two lacking flow, likely because dancing is intuitive, sensual, body-based and the journalling is reflective and analytical.

To my surprise and delight, this was not my experience with blending tango and focusing. In fact, the modalities felt complimentary. I could transition instinctively from my body awareness in tango to my felt-sense in focusing. We danced tango for and hour or two and then did focusing exercises for half to one hour. This allowed a smooth transition from one to the other and a deeper exploration of the dynamics and inner issues which surfaced in the dancing. Consequently the learning was not just about the dance steps but more importantly, about the issues of trust, intimacy, communication, sensuality that tango identifies.

This process was supported by Lucinda's gracious and hospitable leadership and the sensitive,  insightful spirit of her colleague and tango instructor, Tom Lewis, who is not only a talented tangero but also a gifted energetic practitioner. Throughout the instruction Tom had us focus on the relational dynamics as much as the particular steps. Tom introduced the terminology of intender and receiver to underscore the deep energetic exchange and connection between lead and follow. Add to the leadership was a guest appearance by talented San Francisco musician and tango teacher, Guillermo Garcia.

One of the most exciting aspects of this learning is that the surface is just being scratched. There are so many layers of exploration and understanding as to how tango and dance can assist in our personal development and healing. I am committed to both tango and focusing in pursuing this exploration.

Folk dancing with a gaucho family on the Rio Limay in Patagonia, Argentina. 2009.

During the winter Olympics, a commerical sponsored by Cadillac, showcased the (alleged) North American obsession with work, disdain for down-time (vacations, relaxation, fun) and deep satisfaction with material acquisitions (e.g., nice cars). An A personality-type executive states brashly that other countries may think it is acceptable to sacrifice productivity for pleasure (at which point he slips in a n’est-ce pas to clarify that he is taking a jab at the French, those connoisseurs of pleasures and self-indulgence). But this just does not fit our more virtuous, aggressive, goal-focused attitudes and our insatiable desire for more stuff. 

I know this attitude well, as likely most of us in this culture do. All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but it does makes him rich. So what if money can’t buy everything? Happiness is overrated anyway.

So how does dance fit in to a culture that is totally obsessed with achievement and possessions? Not very well. In other cultures dance, movement, music is accepted as an essential and integral part of life and love and community (see photo above). But not so for us nose to the grindstone NA’s.

This brings me face-to-face with the existential question, “How do I give myself permission to dance? How do I answer the inner critic which says that I am being lazy or irresponsible or self-indulgent or (horrors!) effeminate?”

”Dance therapist, Michele Lemolo coined the term Universal Rhythmic Intelligence to articulate the fact that there is a natural rhythm or vibration that is alive in each and every moment in the universe. As human beings we can dance and move in the flow with this rhythmic intelligence, this vibrational frequency in each moment of our lives.” (Brian Piergrossi, www.entheos.com.)

So that is the answer. Motion and music are an expression of our intrinsic nature. We dance because it is in our DNA. It is the most natural thing we can do. 

Even more compelling, it is an expression of the soul and structure of the universe. It is as integral to life as the motion of the sea, the orbiting of the sun, photosynthesis and plants. 

To not dance is to do violence to our spirit and distance ourselves from our source. To dance is to move in unison with the heartbeat of the universe, the breath of god.

Yes, this does require shedding my goal-oriented, acquisition-focused mindset, if only for an evening. But in exchange it provides something far more enriching and soulful than a shiny automobile every could. Who knew?

‘Tis the season for quoting Nelson Mandela, so allow me to relay a conversation between Tony Roberts and Nelson Mandela.  Tony asked him the question: 'How did you make it through all those years of suffering? And how did you survive?.... to which Nelson stiffened and responded indignantly, 'I didn't survive. I prepared.' *

*(Thanks to Roch Randon at www.quantumcoaching.ca for sharing this. Treat yourself and subscribe to his excellent blog.) 

This is how Nelson Mandela not only survived through over 25 years of imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement, but how he became one of the foremost moral and political leaders of our generation: he embraced the (unimaginable) difficulties, disillusionment and pain that was heaped upon him, as an opportunity to learn and grow and change and be better prepared for the life task that he envisioned as set before him. He lived his life with the conviction that everything that came his way could be given meaning, could be transformed into something redemptive and make him and his world better as a consequence. 

There is a little of Nelson Mandela in each one of us, in as much as we embrace the difficulties and challenges that come our way, not as an excuse to give up or to play victim but to grow stronger and wiser. 

And for those who do that transformational work, nothing could be more offensive, as Tony Roberts discovered, than to be identified as a victim or mere survivor.  

I have a personal story that parallels the above slur in a small way. I was at an authors’ seminar and had the opportunity to relay briefly the scope of my book Trauma to Tango: dancing through the shadows of unforgiven dreams, beginning with aninsight into childhood trauma and sexual abuse and ending with the healing and strength that can be fashioned out of adversity.

A fellow participant came up to me afterward, placed a very sympathetic hand on my shoulder and looking softly into my eyes said, “So you are a survivor.” 

My gut turned. I thought, “Thanks alot. I share my life story of strength and courage and all you heard were the bad bits of my childhood? Where does that leave me as a powerful and wise adult?” 

I did not revisit my childhood trauma simply to feel sorry for myself or find a lifelong excuse or someone else to blame for my screwups, although that was a temptation and I did spend some time there. But I didn’t stay there. I made choices that took me beyond that sense of victimhood and making someone else responsible for my life path. 

My comment back to her was, “I am a thriver, not a survivor.” 

The very turmoil in which I was steeped as a child steeled my resolve to become something more, to rise above. Throughout life I have been impelled by a vision to do more than simply repair the damage but to overcome past patterns and create from it a learning. In the end, my marred past has become a gift not only to myself but that I offer to others. 

All of us to greater or lesser degree are called to make a difference in this world. It is my belief that this calling begins as often as not, with some atrocity, injustice, or trauma that we endured, as a child or an adult   As we dig our way out from under that rubble we learn not only to heal from the scars but to undo the propensity to repeat those patterns. Our learning and growth becomes humanity’s learning and growth. Our pain and healing becomes our gift to the world. 

One more reference to Nelson Mandela. While in prison, engaged in his herculean struggle to maintain his mental and moral strength, he repeated endlessly to himself the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley. It ends with these lines: “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of  my soul.”

We have come to be danced, 
not the pretty dance... 
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance, 
but the claw our way back into the belly 
of the sacred, sensual animal dance. 
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance. 
The holding the precious moment in the palms 
of our hands and feet dance. 

We have come to be danced. 
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance, 
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance. 
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance, 
the slap the apology from our posture dance. 

We have come to be danced. 
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance, 
One, two dance like you 
One two three, dance like me dance; 
but the grave robber, tomb stalker 
tearing scabs & scars open dance. 
The rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance. 

WE have come to be danced. 
Not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle, 
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama 
shaman-shakin, ancient bones dance. 
The strip us from our casings, return our wings 
sharpen our claws & tongues dance. 
The shed dead cells and slip into 
the luminous skin of love dance. 

We have come to be danced. 
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance, 
but the meeting of the Trinity: the body, breath & beat dance. 
The shout "Hallelujah!" from the top of our thighs dance. 
The mother may I? - Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance. 
The Olly-Olly-Oxen Free Free Free dance. 
The everyone can come to our heaven dance. 

We have come to be danced. 
Where the kingdoms collide 
in the cathedral of flesh 
to burn back into the light 
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray 
to root in skin sanctuary... 

We have come to be danced. 

 See more at: http://awakeningwomen.com/2010/05/16/mother-i-need-to-dance-mother-i-want-to-dance/#sthash.xduosMFz.dpuf

The Church of Tango: a memoir by Cherie Magnus

Review by Aydan Dunnigan, 2013/09/28

For the  tango devotee, all roads lead to Buenos Aires. However, immediately upon joining Cherie Magnus on her pilgrimage to tango’s birthplace, the realization strikes the reader that no two paths are the same. The path is often twisted and treacherous and certainly not for the faint of heart. Each is as intricate as the individual walking it and each step taken unearths both treasure and trauma.

To put it bluntly, Cherie's journey is shocking. It is almost inconceivable that fate would inflict one gentle soul with such calamity. Propelled from her comfortable home, marriage, and affluent lifestyle in Los Angeles by the devastating death of her beloved husband and soon after afflicted by cancer herself,  Cherie sets off on her search for a sanctuary for her soul. This quest takes her over three continents, in and out of failed love affairs, betrayal and abandonment by her closest friends, and unrelenting financial peril, (not counting the ordinary everyday mishaps like being assaulted or robbed).

Nonetheless, as a reader I was continually taken aback that my feelings for the writer were never those of pity but rather admiration for her indomitable spirit. I became enthralled by the prospect that all this turmoil could somehow, someday find its healing balm in tango and that Cherie and her dancing will be richer for her trials.  Tango is of course the quintessential dance of pathos and melancholia and the reader shares the secret conviction that from the grief and despair Cherie will rise as a virtuoso tango artist.

I was not disappointed. By the end of book, when Cherie has settled permanently into her long yearned for home in Buenos Aires, she has nursed the wisdom and soul-depth captivated in the following words:

After years of running from illness, loneliness and loss, I at last knew where to find peace. Sitting at a table drinking sidra with friends, sometimes going to tango heaven with a remarkable dancer, stepping - sweaty and spent- into a waiting taxi at five a.m. and driving home through the quiet dawn, climbing into bed with that sweet body and soul exhaustion that connects me to the universe - I didn’t want more than that…. What a blessing to be dancing in this “chapel” of fellow believers.... It was a miracle that my twelve years of journeying towards the light put me just here, just now. Maybe I made mistakes, maybe I’ve had to pay for them, maybe I’ve had bad luck and loss, maybe I’m not young and am alone, maybe my loved ones are gone, but I am here and dancing, dancing, dancing, blessed and happy.  

For anyone who has ever danced tango or aspires to do so or shares in any small way the heart of a dancer, Cherie's work is a thrilling and inspirational read.

Aydan Dunnigan, author, Trauma to Tango: dancing through the shadows of unforgiven dreams.

Skating at the Montreal International Tango Festival.


I wish I had a river that I could skate away on.
I wish I had a river so long that I could teach my feet to fly. Joni Mitchell


We are an ice people, a people whose consciousness and psyche have been crystallized with the cyclical freezing of our rivers and lakes and liberated by the feeling of gliding effortlessly and endlessly across a pond or along a river, as light as a snowflake driven by the wind. As a child growing up on the shore of Lake Superior, I lived or dreamed this euphoric, expansive experience twelve months of the year.

This sensation came back to me this summer during my brief foray into the Montreal International Tango Festival while watching the endless, rhythmic flow of dancers over the large outdoor patio with the majestic Saint Lawrence River as a backdrop. As they floated effortlessly, weaving in and out of the line of dance, each with their own style, rhythm, and tempo, they evoked for me those formative childhood experiences of weightlessness and freedom, skating over a crystal channel, mirroring the flow of the river beneath.

This, apparently, is not the vision of Argentine tango that my devoted teachers try to instill into this weathered, frost-bitten brain. I remember vividly - and fondly - Alicia Pons' passionate plea to her Edmontonian students this spring to never ever under any circumstances pass someone on the dance floor. She made a very reasoned and impassioned defense of tango as a social construct that we create in community by adhering to these constraints. Every dance couple, every move, every pause by the person in front and press by the person behind is an integral part of the fabric of the dance. If one steps out of line and passes the couple in front instead of waiting patiently, then one has ripped the social fabric of the dance asunder.

Out of respect to Alicia's experience and leadership in the international tango community, I determined to follow her directive. The next milonga in Edmonton that I attended was held in a hall with a dance floor as wide as a prairie river. This certainly was not the tight physical constraints that one finds at an Argentine milonga, where people are squeezed in so tightly that dancing in series is an absolute prerequisite to preventing severe injury or a mob riot. 


As I watched people flow in and out at their own speed doing whatever felt right, dancing in their own little bubble without much thought and attention to others around them,  my resolve to wait for the dolt in front taking way too much time trying to  impress his partner, dissolved.  Instinctively, I  broke out from the line of dance, skating away just as if I was back in Northwestern Ontario.  Inspired by the spirit of freedom and expansiveness and buoyed by the music and the embrace of my partner, I took off for open ice, resolving never to return until we tumbled into the snowbank at the river's edge and I kissed her on her frostbitten cheek.  

Certainly there are perversions to this skating/ dance metaphor  like the speed skater who zips around the dance floor like it was a time-triaI or the tangero-hockey player who seems to invite collissions, throwing a hip-check whenever someone gets close. These are to be discouraged.

But I  wonder how many Canadians who like me learned to skate before they learned to read and write, retain within that instinctual motion of push and glide, spinning, cutting, faster, further, without constraints and limits. And whether this can ever be distilled out of us. Or if it should be. 


I for one, carry this awareness deep within wherever I go, even to tango. And in some ways, especially to tango.

Tango Interludes - blog #4,  Aydan Dunnigan, 06.09.2013

TANGO INTERLUDE: the healing feeling #1,    Aydan Dunnigan

“Envision yourself between each dance step, as throwing a handfull of rose petals in front of your partner and inviting her to step through and over. There is no hurry to get to the next place, the next step. It is the present moment that is to be savoured, relished.”  

Alicia Pons (practica this spring at Casa Tango, Edmonton).

“When you have a good experience try to stay with it for 10, 20, even 30 seconds in a row – instead of getting distracted by something else. As you can, sense that it is filling your body, becoming a rich experience. The longer that something is held in awareness and the more emotionally stimulating it is, the more neurons that fire and thus wire together, and the stronger the trace in memory. By doing this you will increasingly feel more fed inside, and less fragile or needy.”

  “Really Enjoy a Good Feeling” Posted: June 27, 2013 @ 2:52 PM | By: Rick Hanson

Both quotes make the same point, though from different perspectives - one from the dance floor, the other from a psychologist’s couch. But it is not surprising that they overlap. Tango, from my experience, is a deeply healing practice that can transform the way we inhabit our relationships, our bodies, the present moment.

The key is to soak up the exquisiteness of each step, every shared embrace as if it is the first and potentially the last. Allow yourself the permission to breathe in the sensuality and breathe out all resistance to pleasure. Go for the “tango high,” as my friend and dance instructor Gwen Spinks says in her Transforming  through Tango workshops.  

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Simplicity Dances.  by Gisele Leblanc (a colleague of mine)

Simplicity Dances
Delicately chaste
Eloquently floating with 
Childlike innocence
Pirouetting and prancing
Uninhibited by
Self-conscious fears

Graceful flowing movements 
Supple ripples
Rhythmically embodied
Flexibly synchronized

Flooding sensations
Gently greet
Each humble performer
En-fleshing and tuning
All muscles an sinews

Ever tender motions
Waft heaven ward
Offering salutations to Cosmic audience
Inviting all
who secretly desire 
to fly forever free

Gesture hungry limbs
Await
Refracting prism spectrums
Caressing sensitivity
Into an original
Life - full Ballet
Universally inspired
Individually choreographed
Inclusively performed.