About Biodanza

Biodanza (meaning “the dance of life”) uses music, movement and contact with others to develop our vitality and capacity for integration. It has a particular focus on the link between the body and emotion, promoting our instincts for what is healthy and nourishing. Biodanza works primarily with positive emotion, amplifying and strengthening what is healthy in us.

Central to Biodanza is the regeneration of the link to our instinctual basis for life in order to know and experience our fundamental needs with more ease. This arises from the perception that elements of modern culture demand that we override many instincts, thus living progressively further out of touch with ourselves, with others and with the natural world around us.

Five core aspects of life, linked to underlying instincts, are the key to the structure of Biodanza.

These are:

Vitality - the vital impulse to stand up in the world; the survival instinct;

Sexuality - to feel pleasure, desire and passion; the preservation of the species;

Creativity - spontaneity and innovation, curiosity; the desire for exploration;

Affectivity - profound empathy with other living beings; the instinct for communion and cohesion of a species;

Transcendence - to experience something other than an isolated, limited self; fusion and unity with the universe.


In any Biodanza session, exercises and music that corresponds to some of these aspects will be used, working to deepen our contact with particular areas of life and expression. Participants are invited to enter into a mode of experiencing, rather than analysing or speaking. In this way, the emotion and experiencing centres of the brain are prioritised over the cognitive and verbal. As facilitator, I explain movements and dances in turn and usually demonstrate them, before inviting the group into movement. Some exercises are individual, some are in pairs, and some involve small groups or the whole group together.


A class of Biodanza, is an opportunity to bring ourselves into the present, engaging with the lived moment in all its fullness. How often in life do we find ourself ‘elsewhere’ or ‘absent-minded’, not really paying attention to what is in front of us? Biodanza is a simple and enjoyable way to bring ourselves more fully into our lives.


Biodanza was developed in the 1960’s by Rolando Toro Araneda, a Chilean psychologist, living in Argentina. He has been working with and refining the Biodanza system for over 40 years, and establishing training schools which have made Biodanza available in many countries. It arrived in the UK about 15 years ago. Rolando Toro is still teaching and dancing, now aged 83!