On Tango :: Surrender through, not to...

I've been reading "Woman's Love, Man's Freedom" by David Deida off and on for many years now. The copy I have is spiral bound and dog-eared, pre-publication I believe. I think it may have been the precursor to his book "The Way of the Superior Man", but I can't be sure. I've been reading that one off and on now for many years as well. It seems I read all my books that way. Off and on. For many years.

So you've heard me talk about surrender before. Not so much surrender, but "The Surrender". *Not* submission and all that drivel. Some women seem to have it, some women don't. Some nail it on the first embrace of the first lesson, some take more time, some never...never. I was going to say never master it. Or never learn it. Or never get it. Or never do it. Or refuse and refute the concept. It's not a concept. It's a feeling. It's emotional. It's metaphysical. It's hard to say if it can be learned or mastered or taught or explained.

Deida did a good job in Chapter 3, 'Surrender Through, Not To'. As I was reading, it seemed he was talking about tango.

Here it is....intended for men and women, lead and follow...replace lover with follower or leader, and sexual with tango...I suppose...and also, you should understand that 'love' goes beyond romantic love...touched by true love as I have said before...the true, untainted, universal love of the universe...that thread of energy I like to call love...it has nothing to do with romance...that's a separate topic...okay, I digress...

Here it is...

Practice surrendering not to your own fears, nor to the demands of another, but directly to love. Do your best to feel through you own resistance as well as your lover's. Behind all resistive emotion is the motive for love. The desire to give and receive love underlies every emotional action and reaction, including hurt and anger, in yourself and in your partner.

Whatever the emotion - anger, fear, closure - feel through it, breathe through it, relax through it, into the love which lies behind it. And then, actively, surrender to that love. Open as that love. Magnify love by loving.

True sexual and spiritual surrender is not about adapting yourself to what will appease your partner. Nor is it about surrendering to your own momentary emotional needs. True surrender is about relaxing through these secondary needs, both yours and your partner's, and magnifying the primary desire to give and receive love.

I sit here, and wonder, is tango simply a vehicle, a method, through which two human beings can bi-laterally give and receive love? Three minutes. Immersed in the music. Immersed in love? Is that what makes tango so powerful?

I wonder.

Atlanta Tango Weekend :: Part II :: The Perfect Connection

"Followers who know how to follow and feel good doing it."

This was the last sentence of my prior post so I will continue with that thought.

What exactly is it that makes some followers "feel good" and some followers feel "not-so-good"? (This is from my perspective as a leader, but is also true for followers - some leaders feel good, and some don't...)

Is it some elusive nebulous quality?

Is it the experiential/intellectual? Is it her years of tango experience - what she has learned and what she knows how to do?

Is it quantum physics - what she is thinking about, combined in the metaphysical soup between us - intertwined with what I am thinking about? Is it how her/my day went, how her/my week is going, how her/my life is going?

Is it the visual stimuli - the way she looks? Her body type? Her figure? Do I have to find her attractive for this feeling to work? Is it what she is wearing - perhaps showing a little skin in a few of the right places?

Is it chemically induced - whether or not she is drinking wine tonight or just took a Xanax or is on Prozac or Zoloft? Or could it be the olfactory sensory stimuli that I recieve and react to - the smell of her hair, her skin, her b.o.? Or the reverse - her reactions to my scent(s)? Maybe it's some kind of pheromone thing.

Is it the way she feels - the tactile? Is it how she feels when I embrace her - the multitude of physical sensations - the brush of her hair against my arm, the feeling of her hand in my hand, the feeling of her breasts smashed against my chest, the feeling of her cheek or forehead against me? Is it the flutter of her heart that I can detect against my skin?

Is it because she knows how to relax? Is it the energy of the venue, the room, the other dancers, the feel of the floor beneath our feet? Of course it is the music - it is always the music. Is the alignment of the planets - the moon and the stars?

Is it because she knows how to surrender?

I think it is all of these things, combined into one single moment of union with another human being. At the risk of seeming silly, I don't think George Lucas was too far off when he wrote of "The Force" in the Star Wars movies. "The Force is strong with this one."

Is it a synchronicity with the life force, everything that binds us together individually and collectively? The force that binds and drives everything in the universe? The rotation and the orbit of a planet. What of a water droplet that falls from the sky and lands on a leaf in the Amazonian rainforest, and then wends its way through the global hydrologic system - nurturing and nourishing plants and creatures?

That force - the perfection of nature and the universe. The perfection of the human body, mind, soul, psyche. The joys and the horrors of the human experience and all its machinations, trials and tribulations, trappings and travails.

The perfection of the perfect tango. The perfection of the perfect connection.

All I know is that I know it when I feel it. And when I don't.

Stay tuned for Part III.

Tango::"The Surrender" [Follow up]

I've been reading with great interest all of the comments that readers have been leaving on my prior post "The Surrender".

Danzarin's comment in particular (at 5:30am this morning) got me to wondering, is it, this ever elusive "surrender", that is responsible for what we call the tango "epiphany", some call the "tangasm". That special dance with the special someone that may not be repeated all night - nor in a month of dances, nor a year of dances.

For me, I have always said these occured for me one in one hundred dances - alhtough it may be more like one in fifty or one in thirty. Except for the one follower - the one where only one in one hundred dances does not feel like this. Two souls - two energetic beings - our true beings - our true "selves" - embracing one another - a concept that came to me in a dream many months ago.

Is there a tango "soulmate" for each of us? The "one"? The Neo and the Trinity?

Tango:: "The Surrender"

Photo by Leone...from the Catania (Italia) Tango Festival...

I find that some beginning followers have trouble with what I call "the surrender". I feel it in the first few seconds of the embrace and ensuing equilibration. I feel it - or not. Some very experienced followers have still not mastered it. It comes from everything within a woman (I think) - her past relationships - her body image - her self confidence - her insecurities - her nervousness at being new to the dance - or the absence of nervousness.

I have danced with rank beginners (first time on the floor) who although I feel their nervousness - quickened breathing - heart fluttering against my chest - sweaty palms - almost to the point of trembling - but who still seem to have mastered the surrender from the get-go.

Actually, I don't think it's something that can be "mastered". I wonder if it's something that you are born with, or not. But then I know it must come with an increasing comfort level - comfort with the dance, comfort with follower vocabulary, comfort with a leader, desire to dance with a leader. A woman may have a perfect surrender with one leader - and be more tentative about it with another.

I don't think the surrender can be taught...nor "practiced"...nor even conveyed verbally...what's a leader to do?

All I know is that I feel it - when a woman surrenders herself to me - surrenders herself to be led by me - surrenders the placement of her feet to me - surrenders control of her axis to me - surrenders herself to my embrace - and when I feel it, it feels so very good.