Depression is not sadness, and most of the time is not a physical illness. Depression is a sign of the problems in your life that are difficult to resolve, stress. There are many reasons for them in modern life.
One of the most extraordinary and powerful ways to heal depression is by dancing. Not any dancing, but specifically tango dancing. Many people come to tango in search of a cure. They say, "I do not know what I would do if I had not discovered Tango." Scientific research proves the stress-relieving and healing properties of tango.
The conventional road to Tango is difficult. It takes years to start dancing if one only attends group classes. Tango master Igor Polk has special abilities to help people to obtain and gain from dance feeling.
Get help right now. Arrange a stress-relieving private session.
Igor Polk,
phone (510)-582-8711
e-mail ipolk@virtuar.com
2108 Oak Creek Pl.,
Hayward, CA 94541
www.virtuar.com/tango/ or www.virtuar.com/jcc/
I can come to your home, office, or you can come to my private studio in Hayward, California.
How is a session conducted?
We will start with a simple dance based on walking together to the rhythm of Tango music. I will share with you how to enable your own body, mind, and spirit. You will dance through the whole session with Igor and experience the healing effect. One session lasts 50-60 min.
How many sessions do I have to take to feel better?
The positive effect will start to show after 2-4 sessions.
Is it different from group dance lessons?
It is very different. It is even different from a private dance class. It is a healing session where I will tune myself to your body, mind, and spirit and through this you will experience the healing effect. It is similar to what great dancers experience dancing together: I will dance with you, not teach steps.
I never danced before. Do you think I can do it?
Yes, you will dance.
I do not like jumping around..
Tango dance does not require you to jump. The movements are based on a simple walk. Step by step we will move graciously, feel great, and discover enormous possibilities and healing effects in this walking. Tango is the Yoga of the West.
How did you find that you could heal with Tango?
I have practiced tango since 2000. It is commonly accepted that tango has a healing effect. But this is not enough. Since my discovery of Tango many people have told me about my special qualities as a dancer. They say after dancing with me that they feel reborn and healed. I meditate and work to discover further healing qualities in my way of approaching Tango. As a dance teacher I teach tango group classes in Palo Alto, CA: www.virtuar.com/jcc/
What is Tango?
Tango is a cultural phenomenon. It includes music, lyrics, dancing, singing, and memorabilia. Tango was born from a mix of African, Native American, and European, mostly Spanish, Italian, French, and German influences. Tango was the way of life for generations of "Tango Monks" who did nothing but practice Tango. Somehow in the midst of immigrants a ritual was born in Argentina from their meditation to tango music. The music was written specifically for the purpose of meditating. The meditation is done when two people are embracing each other and are surrounded by other couples. The light is dimmed and couples advance in a slow dance around the room for hours non-stop. Every four dances the meditating couples "change partners." In the trance that is achieved by experienced practitioners almost immediately upon taking the first step in the dance, the material world disappears. Dancers are drawn completely into their own emotions and feelings fueled by majestic music. Even vision is blocked -- dancers do not see anything. They move completely on instinct with help from above. Intricate surrounding, complex moves, and intense listening to the partner effectively block all unwanted irritants, including those which are inside your own brain. Time is stretched out: moves are simple at first glance, but they are filled with such meaning that even a simple step becomes a symphony.
What are the side effects?
Only positive side effects are known:
During the healing sessions, Igor will serve as your dance partner...
Sadness and Joy - Sadness heals depression wounds; Joy brings tissue back alive. Sad songs and poems allow your mind and emotions to calm down, dissolve peaks of negative feelings into an even and smooth landscape, and find the growth points from where Joy will build castles of positivity. What can be more pure than the Joy of Dancing? It is equal to the Joy of Being. All Tangos are written with interchanging sad and joyful parts. Some tangos are mostly sad, other tangos are mostly joyful. Taken together they become the right mixture to heal your emotions.
Dance movements also are sad or joyful. A dancer emphasizes her state by performing the right movement at the right time, thereby increasing the effect of healing. An experienced partner induces the best healing moves.
Creativity - The act of creating and the result of it are tremendously satisfying and self-assuring. Many therapies use creativity in subtle and effective ways. For example, art therapy has demonstrated that creative people live longer and happier lives. They have a purpose in life: to create! Our modern style of life gives a lot of opportunities to create, but leaves little time and energy for it. Inspiration is required, but to obtain it the spirit should be content.
In Tango, with its philosophy in improvisation and inventiveness, creativity flourishes. Every dance becomes a work of art -- and you have your admirer - your partner. Tango music kindly provides you with inspiration -- it falls on you from above. An experienced partner helps you find inspiration and personally guides you to create a masterpiece.
Physical exercise - It awakens the body, makes you generate the chemicals you need for an active and meaningful life. The main problem with exercise is that one has to find motivation to start exercising.
Tango being slow or fast, provides a healthy dose of physical exercise to anyone. And it is done in nice settings to the great music with all the pleasures of dancing. An experienced partner motivates, guides, and leads you to the results.
Games - Involvement in a game averts attention from problems, while stimulating mental and physical agility.
Tango is a game between the partners. One proposes -- the other one supports. One acts -- the other one reacts. An experienced partner makes the rules of the game attractive for any level and plays with you. With every dance the game becomes more satisfying.
Rhythmics - If rhythm therapy helps stroke and brain injury patients, as well as heart patients, one can only imagine how healing it is for us.
Tango is ideal for rhythmic healing. It alternates slow calming rhythms of Salon Tango with faster energizing rhythms of Tango Orillero and Milonga and with heavenly gratifying Tango Waltz. This combination works magically. An experienced partner finds the right mix for you and stimulates the rhythmical orchestra of your body.
Touch - Humans are pets. Touch and embrace appeal directly to our deepest instincts of security and assurance. Since the day we were born a warm touch heals us.
Tango is the Art of Touch, and on a large scale the Art of Embrace. We touch each other with our palms, arms, shoulders, chests, abdomens, heads, cheeks, backs, hips, legs, fingers, and feet. An experienced Tango Therapist will find the right touch for you and teach you the great Art of Touch in the movement.
Yoga - Poses and Energy. Nirvana, Enlightenment.
Tango is Western Yoga. Dance of Poses. Poses of Tango are very much alike Yoga poses -- stretched legs, twisted and bent bodies. It helps to find inner energy and absorb outer energy. It is Yoga done as a couple -- there is oscillating exchange of energy. You feel the energies flowing among partners, the floor, and air. During the practice there is enlightenment -- you did it, it came! In the tango dance, there is Tango Moment -- a state of transcendence, ecstasy. An experienced teacher will lead you to the right pose, provide positive energy flow, and teach you how to experience Tango Moments -- the ultimate goal of Tango.
Soft Music - Besides relaxation and the effect of rhythm ( see Rhythmics ), Tango Music directs your attention to the magical gardens of great melodies. Interweaving melodical lines cannot leave anyone inattentive -- they boost positive imagination and give immense pleasure. Tango music is written to the highest standards of classical music. And at the same time, it is dancing music -- toning up. Dancing to this music compels you to step deeply into this and it greatly increases the healing effect. An experienced DJ will provide you with the suitable music to support healing.
Meditation - Calm, absorbing, and revealing state of mind. Difficult to achieve in our modern fast-paced world.
Tango dance is a meditation process with splashes of Tango Moments. Magic of movements, music, and interaction with a partner facilitate meditation. Even beginners easily achieve it. An experienced Tango Teacher brings you into the meditation, and meditates with you.
Solitude - Solitude can heal or kill. Solitude in a relaxing environment, like deep in nature with the background of the magnificent mountains, when no one but you is around, or at the ocean shore, or at a museum, helps you to free your mind and find inner calmness. For solitude to heal, one has to be transported into something tremendously large and powerful to take troubling thoughts away and fill the heart with strength.
Tango is like that.
The dark side of Solitude is that it can be the source of depression. It is cured by:
Sense of Community - Tango is an intimately tight community, but without any obligations to the "outside" world. A Tango Teacher helps you to enter this community. An Experienced Tango Teacher helps you to enter the upper class.
Forgetting it all. As soon as you start dancing Tango, you enter into a magical land, when your worries do not exist. An experienced Tango Teacher leads you to this land.
Finding purpose in life -It is known that people who have an inner, deep, true-to-self purpose in life rarely experience depression - they do not have time for that. Tango provides an amazing purpose: to receive pleasure from being great! How? Ask me!
Sharing of emotions: talking - One of the best remedies of all is talking to other people. Sharing your thoughts is like sharing the problem and getting help. But in our modern world we are so far from each other. Who can understand us?
Tango provides an incredible opportunity to share the deepest part of yourself without saying a word. Tango is your therapist who asks for nothing back. A Tango Teacher teaches you a language of speaking without words. And talks with you!
Self empowerment - Power builds confidence, one of the greatest remedies against depression. Money is not always power, and who has money nowadays anyway? The greatest empowering feeling is given by self-empowerment: when you do something and you see your progress and you feel that you are able to do it. You gain trust in yourself, even without having much of actual power. And that is what you need.
Tango is ongoing self-improvement. Every time you exercise it, you find that you do improve, and it gives you the empowering feeling that things are improving. Positive trend. Things are going to get better and better, and you are a part of it!
Happiness - Happiness, as it is known, is not related to other things, but to itself: want to be happy? Be happy! One can experience happiness in any circumstance and when it is happiness, there is no depression. But how? How can you find these things which help you to find happiness in yourself?
Tango gives you that unconscious feeling of heavenly happiness after a good dance. Dance well and you will be happy! A great Tango Partner will call forth your feeling of happiness. A great Tango Teacher will teach you the mastery of dance to experiencing happiness and to attract other great Tango Partners.
And then a day will come when you say: "Thank you Teacher, I do not need your lessons any more: I have mastered my body, I know how to make the spirit relax and forget about anything but pleasure; I move beautifully; I dress elegantly; My music is always in my heart; I have found a place where I can hide, relax, and meditate; I have found a lot of friends who value me for who I really am; I am not afraid to share my deepest emotions, because I share myself, not information about me. I have found my purpose: to be myself, and be proud of it. Depression? I am healed, and I know how to heal myself and bring healing to my partners. How one can be depressed if one has Tango!?"
And this would make me most happy, thank you!
Igor Polk,
Hayward, 2008