The Tango Trance

               Candace Pert, Ph.D., the New Age scientist who discovered the opiate receptor in the brain, references research in her novel Molecules of Emotion by a famous psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, Milton H. Erickson. I put down her book and read a few of his Wikipedia entries on the hypnotic process. The work of these two scientists does much to explain a phenomenon most tango dancers are quite familiar with, the tango trance.

               In Dr. Pert’s book, she theorizes that our emotions shape our perception of reality and, consequently, how we remember things. If we experience a terrifying event, our emotions may cause us to block it out. Our bodies, she says, and not just the brains, are where our memories are stored. Our bodies are capable of processing so much data that it is impossible for a person to remember it all, so our body-mind subconsciously selects which events to keep and which to ignore.

               As a child, we remember grandmom’s pies smelling and tasting particularly good; we record that as a pleasurable memory. At the time, however, our parents may have been fighting or bombs may have been exploding all around us and yet we still remember that occasion as a happy moment.

               Later, when we encounter that same smell, we recall that incident and become elated by it, even though there may have been so many bad things happening around us at that time.

               The same may be said about hearing a particular sound, or song. If we associate it with a happy or sad event, it may cause us to experience the same emotion when we hear it again.

               Dr. Erickson writes that the confused person is the most easily hypnotized. He reveals his methods to induce a trance with a handshake. During this seemingly innocuous salutation, he distracts that person by grabbing their wrist. He continues to divert the patient’s attention in such a way until he is finally ready to implant a suggestion into their subconscious.

               Often, I find myself dancing tango with a woman who is a nervous wreck. She finds this dance extremely difficult and is uncertain as to why she continues to pursue it. If I am calm and distracting, I can make her believe that she can dance tango. If I can prevent her from constantly analyzing her perceived faults, she can easily accept that she is indeed dancing and doing it well.

               If I am successful, she will remember this experience as pleasurable. If I am not successful, then, hopefully, she can block out this experience from her memory.

               The occurrence of the tango trance differs from a hypnotherapy session in that it can be a shared experience for the couple dancing as well as by the people around them.

               I’d like to take Dr. Pert’s and Dr. Erickson’s theories one step further. There is a collective body-mind-universe and it stores memories in things like the smell of the ocean, the sight of a star-filled sky and the sound of music.

               Tango dancers are drawn together because we are spiritually wounded and overwhelmed by the stimulation of a technological society that is always increasing in complexity. There is too much for us to comprehend so we block it out and find our way to the milonga. 

               There, we remember a time when things were simpler because the memory has been stored in the music by our collective consciousness.

               When we take up this dance, we are bewildered because tango is an illusion. A thought is planted into our brains that we can learn how to move on our own balance and we do. Subconsciously, we find the answer to the question we didn’t know how to ask: where is the balance in our lives?

               In a world where we are constantly multitasking, nothing could be more simple than a dance that requires us to move only one step at a time.

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