What is peace? The variety of responses is wide: opposite of war, absence of violence, overcoming of a conflict, harmony, holistic well-being of all. Peace is a complex and plural topic. This exploration leads yet to another perspective: I invite you to take a moment to reflect on when you feel peace. What are you usually doing in those moments when you experience an outpouring of that feeling? I have collected varied experiences shared by students: sleeping, praying, surfing, reading, singing, hugging, and being with family and friends. Do any of these experiences resonate with you? For me, dancing is an activity that opens that space within me. Reflecting on these questions, students and I noticed something peculiar: In our definitions, peace was often abstract, but when we brought the discussion to the experiential level, it was substantially corporeal. What does that mismatch say about our approaches to peace? It certainly influences the strategies adopted to have peace in the world, and the outcomes of it.
What happens when my way of contacting that peaceful experience is meditating, while the way of my loved one is singing? What if a mother experiences peace being with her family, but her teenage daughter experiences it listening to music alone? Conflict may arise, naturally, because human beings are different in many ways, and so are their experiences of peace. So even in my best intention, out of a will to be in peace with myself and others, I may get involved in struggles. What does this tell about conflicts, and how to deal with them? In those discussions, students and I reflected on how often we practiced those activities that enable experiences of peace. Many of us pondered that it was not as often as we would have liked to. Other times, even while doing such activities, we were so distracted that time went by, and we could not enjoy the momentâs peaceful potential. What prevents us from accessing peace more frequently? We realized that we often prioritize our daily responsibilities. So, why can we not feel the same experience of peace in our daily activities? Or can we? This perspective thrilled our imagination.
Finally, how does it feel to be in peace? How does that experience make itself evident into consciousness? Can movement contribute in the process of dealing with conflicts and unfolding peaces? How? Exploring possible answers for these questions is the journey I invite you to join. By the way, I am a dancing peace and conflict researcher, lecturer, and practitioner. This research is an academic, personal, and professional journey. It entails an academic exploration of how movement can be a method to elicit conflict transformation and unfold peaces at the intrapersonal and relational levels. It involves an intention of personal transformation in terms of trying to see each personâs uniqueness and authenticity, beyond bias and prejudice. This research is also motivated by exploring new edges in applied work with elicitive conflict transformation methods, particularly movement.
1.1 Authorâs Perspective: Stepping onto the Dance Floor
I stepped onto the dance floor, barefoot, after a couple of days at a 5Rhythms workshop, a meditative movement practice. The big and bright room was inviting, the wooden floor was open to whatever could come. I knew from previous experiences that it would hold me and whatever I brought into it. I had been dancing since I was a kid; I trusted it. The white curtains were fluttering around, moved by the soft breeze of a delightful summer day in the charming city of Graz, in Austria. The curtains and the breeze were inviting us to dance. There was an atmosphere of trust and support within the group and the teacher, courageous people from different regions and backgrounds. I had traveled from Brazil to participate in a conference in Vienna and made quite messy arrangements to conciliate holidays and appointments, as well as ensure a suitable budget for expenses. It was my first experience with the spontaneous dance of 5Rhythms, one I had been eager to undergo for some time.
We had moved and sweated together for many hours and a couple of days, and I felt supported by the group. Each of us was going through his or her own journey, but we shared a common floor and intentionality. We delved on feelings, observing how joy, sadness, anger, fear, and compassion were sensed and felt in the moving body. Hours of dancing, exploring, resisting, releasing, and starting over. In the beat of the music, I uncovered some of my hidden layers and shattered some unhelpful beliefs and attachments. It had been an intense and deep activity, but I sensed that in the afternoon a more significant challenge was awaiting. The facilitator invited us to work on fear, guilt, and shame. I was scared but also excited with the possibility of confronting the topic of shame that had long been bothering me, in a subtle but recurrent way. Shame connected to an experience of not being authentic to myself and to a dear person, hurting both of us.
To really embody fear, guilt, and shame, each participant was asked to concentrate on a situation in his or her life and bring the resulting judgments and head trips into awareness. The process implied unlocking years of suffering, diminishing the importance of it, and judging myself. Each person was guided to run in circles around herself, creating a swirl in the center of the circling movement. I gathered everything related to this feeling and put it in the swirl. The next step was to jump right into the center and let the swirl of shame move us. I circled around fearing the appeal of the swirl, until the lure was too strong. What was there? Boiling energy, which took me into an intense dance. Movement, tears, contraction, fears, expansion, breath, pain, letting go, chaos, release, laughter, more tears, more sweat drops, self-forgiveness, compassion, unification, gratitude, calmness, and peace. A powerful and transformative journey.
What happened exactly? Hard to tell, but the shame seemed to melt away with each drop of my sweat and tears. When the music finally waned, I was exhausted, dripping sweat from each and every pore, my clothes wet and stuck to my body, my hair a complete mess, my face red from exercising, and my eyes burnt from the tears shed. A comic picture, indeed. And I was in complete peaceful joy, emptied. There was nothing else I wanted to do, besides being there at that moment. And the next, and then the next. Opening the space and being present to move with my feelings put a healing process in motion. Through movement, I dropped shame and bias, found compassion, and was deeply grateful.
Giving into the rhythms was not a novelty for me, although, exploring a range of emotions with it definitely was. In the Northeastern region of Brazil, where I was born, I experienced dance as celebration and joy. The rhythms of lambada, axé, forró, and samba were part of my childhood soundtrack. We danced to celebrate Carnival, São João (St. John), birthdays, to celebrate life. Life that could be harsh in a region where drought was as constant as poverty for part of the population.
Having lived in different parts of the country, I was constantly enchanted by the richness of human relationships and cultures, which varied so differently from region to region. People from each region had its difficulties, but also rich and diverse ways of dealing with them and producing beauty and art, living a meaningful life. On the other hand, I saw inequality and social problems that concerned me. I was also baffled by the innumerable misconceptions from people from one region to another, prejudices and labels that did not translate the richness of each culture. Moreover, these pejorative characterizations were misleading and would hinder the possibility of dialogue or empathic engagement. In the crossroads of those identities, the responses I deve...