Reflections on the powerfully therapeutic “Three M’s” of Argentine Tango: Music, Movement and eMbrace

Tango has brought together all the passions I have had through my life into one marvelous thing: Argentine tango.

The opposite sex:

It starts here for everyone with whom I love to dance. Women who like being women and men who like being men celebrate it in their dance. My first passion in life as a little boy was for girls. My first steps as a child, my mother tells me, was getting up and walking for the first time, following my neighbor Caroline, who had just learned to walk. I no longer chase the opposite sex, but instead harmonize with them in an enchanting tandem walk to music–“the tango walk,” a remarkable mixture of simplicity and complexity.

Being a musician:

I was eleven years old when my next big passion took over my life–music. By the time I was thirteen, I was playing professionally as a percussionist and drummer. I “took a break” that is still going on from professional music when I was 28. At that time I was playing in the MGM Orchestra in Reno, Nevada, and I had just earned a degree in English. I decided to sell my house and live in Mexico, teaching English to Mexican children.

Writing:

While not giving up the first two, I added the passion of writing and learning languages, English creative writing, Spanish, later Greek, German and now French, my partner’s first of four languages. Then came the passion of philosophy and theology with a Master of Divinity at Boston University. Yet more graduate education nurtured a passion of helping victims of psychological trauma as a licensed therapist. Tango has given me new insights in the therapeutic process of bilateral stimulation to the brain for trauma victims (via EMDR).

Being a fit and playful animal through sports

I started very late as an athlete, but long distance sports and sports I picked up after being a father (starting at age 39) created multiple avenues to be a fit and playful animal. I became a runner on the eve of becoming a Medical Service Officer in the Army, but then followed it with absolute passion in windsurfing, running marathons, and completing long-distance triathlons. Fatherhood added in-line skating, skiing/snowboarding, street hockey, unicycling and aggressive inline skating in the halfpipe. Who was having more fun, my sons or me? It takes a weird kind of passion to complete an Ironman at age 50.

The Concourse of Passions: Tango

I discovered tango while deployed as a medical officer to El Paso, Texas. Tango has united all my passions, and for that reason it has been very intensely pleasing for me. I have never experienced the absolute joy and depth of any one thing so much as with tango. I enjoy dancing with the opposite sex; I feel more like a musician than ever through dance; I understand endurance sport’s tricks, so I am often dancing nearly every tanda once I start (drink lots of water, guys!); I experience as see it’s therapeutic effects on a community of dancers, and then I write about the psychological/spiritual challenges it gives us.

Tango isn’t a dance for me, it is the focus of all my previous passions into one thing–the concourse of passions–Argentine tango.

mariabuenosairesargentina@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/mariabuenosaires