EPIGENETICS AND BIODANZA

EPIGENETICS AND BIODANZA To understand how epigenetics was born its link with Biodanza, we need to take a small step backwards. In the last few decades we have seen technology develop with an impressive acceleration without precedent. This is mainly dues to the progress achieved in turn by the field of electronics, where after the appearance of the first transistor that dates back to the first post-war period, a development took place that still advances in giant steps, all following a trend that we could define as almost exponential. The field of research has therefore been able to obtain the instruments that have gradually become more and more powerful and ultra sophisticated up to the point of determining the appearance of new elements of science: one of these being epigenetics. It began as a branch of biology, which is the science that studies life, and it deals with the study of the inheritable changes that vary genetic expression, while not altering the DNA sequence.   We can therefore safely state that modern sciences such as Neuroscience and Epigenetics exist thanks to the progress of modern means of investigation combining with the most advanced technologies.   Thanks to all of this, what was previously impossible, today is now possible. At first sight for most, it could really be difficult to imagine links between these more modern sciences and the Biodanza System, conceived and realized by prof. Rolando Toro. But these new strands of scientific research are demonstrating today, what Rolando Toro had conjectured and described extensively in the course of his research, reaching conclusions that anticipated what science is proving today, even if to a minimum extent.   The sciences, from the oldest to the most modern, were born with the aim of deepening knowledge. It is the latter that we want to talk about and we do so with a certain pride, decreed by the fact that what Rolando Toro already intuited in the middle of the last century is now scientifically demonstrated. Insights that inevitably led him to conceive Biodanza thus giving birth to a wonderful system: what he himself called: social science. This was a social science with a new epistemology, that is, a new way of looking at science, where observer and observed are one and the same.   Rolando Toro, was in some cases, also challenged, on his intuitions and reflections but in each case he is a forerunner of the most up-to-date scientific discoveries which confirms the accuracy of what he defined at the time.   The vision that dominated almost the entire last century was based on the Charles Darwin’s postulate which placed the origin of the human species as a random evolution in which, through millions of years, genetically the strongest survived: the most suitable. A vision in which little or nothing mattered to the environment, for the simple fact that the DNA molecule, being isolated from the outside world, could not be influenced, and this point of view influenced every field of science giving rise to a materialistic and deterministic vision of life. However, Rolando Toro already around the middle of the ‘900, instead began to think that the environment, understood as the set of stimuli both internal and external, influenced the functioning of the genes, and moreover, subsequently this line of thought drew a growing number of researchers. In 1942 Conrad Waddington coined the term “epigenetics” indicating the recent branch of genetic studies that in current decades has become increasingly important.   In our opinion, this video by Dr. Erica Poli, is very interesting, whose achievement is suggested, by the simple fact that clearly reveals how the power of the gaze, the caresses, the embraces and contact are phenomena attributable to the environment and able to modify the set of characteristics of the living, this despite the same result of being the expression of the genes themselves. All this, further confirms the words of Rolando Toro when he says: “Biodanza is not an alternative discipline, but an extension of the human sciences, whose goal is to develop potential health” and again: “the Biodanza System offers a concentrated set of positive eco-factors (the environment) that stimulate the integrated development of genetic potentials. This concentrated stimulation allows evolutionary changes and a constant biological reorganization “. It is clear that Rolando Toro talked about epigenetics long before epigenetics itself took place, but not only, because the words of Rolando Toro, say much more than what can be understood by following a logic of linear thought.   Leonardo Moreno Mariano