CENTER HERE AND NOW / WORKSHOPS / November 2023 / 03.11.23 - 06.11.23

Sometimes we need to sacrifice our fears so that our heart can remain open and in communion with the Project that Life co-designs for us.

We invite you to an extraordinary inner journey that will allow us enter the labyrinth of our own lives. The Minotaur Project is a transformation ceremony created by Rolando Toro, inspired by the Initiation rites of Ancient Greece.

Rolando Toro has created a system that brings us back to the fullness of life, where feelings of happiness, joy and peace can be evoked and stored in our body and spirit, in a safe and loving space. Rolando draws from mythology and various metaphors and helps, through dance,  to re-energise love and the desire to live and to express ourselves freely.

The Minotaur Project is the methodology used in Biodanza which enables us to access our deepest fears and doubts that keep us from living our lives to the fullest. Inspired by the legend of Theseus and the Labyrinth, the Minotaur Project is a ritual inner journey that allows you to enter the labyrinth of your own existence. Everyone who has gone through this labyrinth with their Divine Child can benefit much more from the Ariadne Thread – they can solve the issues bothering them and guide others on their own journey to happiness and bliss of being.

The Minotaur Project is a transformational experience which aims to get us in better contact with our instinctive strength as well as with the innocent aspect within us from which our primordial force flows, and to free our inner Minotaur, accept it and nurture its beauty and strength.

Through our personal challenges, we can face our fears and concerns and turn them into courage. The encounter with our own life’s crisis leads us to existential liberation.

The labyrinth is an archetypal metaphor that represents our own existence, together with its doubts and enigma. At the center of the labyrinth there is the Minotaur, a creature with a human body and the head of a bull, symbolizing our wild and instinctive aspect that pulses within us as a primordial force.

The aim of the process is to restore the lost connection with this primordial force, rescue its beauty and allow it to self-regulate. The challenge is to assimilate or integrate our Minotaur rather than seeking to kill it.

This ancient Greek myth helps us find the gateway to our inward path.

In addition to the Labyrinth, in the Biodanza system we find the concept of the Tree of Fears. The Tree reveals to us situations in our lives that generate fear: fear to walk through life, fear to love, fear to lose ones limits, fear of change and so on. For each fear there is a specific challenge. When you decide to face this challenge, you are facing your own Minotaur.

The Minotaur Project is an extraordinary approach to Human Destiny. This methodology allows you to overcome your own fears and expand your own identity. Fear is an instinctive reaction to natural danger and it is linked to our responses of fight or flight. Fears are therefore an important mechanism of our survival. However, in modern culture human behaviour has been progressively affected by fictitious fears that have been perverting our innate wisdom. Rolando's proposal is an adventure that allows us to face our fears. The reward for doing so is a release from fear and rebirth in vitality towards life.

The mission of this project is to reconnect with these primordial forces, to appreciate their beauty and power of self-regulation. In this experience, the "challenge" is not to kill the "Inner Minotaur", but to embrace it - to make it a part of us.

“The methodology of the “project” consists in facing the crisis situation by means of dances
and ceremonies that have the appearance of the archaic “Mysteries” that leads us to existential enlightenment”...

(Ronaldo Toro)

What is required to participate in the Minotaur Project weekend?

• Willingness to confront and face fears in areas of our lives where we feel that we do not fully manifest our identity.
• Even if you have already participated in the Minotaur Project, you can attend the workshop again and work through other fears or obstacles that appear in your life NOW.

The Minotaur Project was born out of the possibility to overcome the fears that prevent us from living life to the fullest and from the innate desire to make all our human potentials flourish. During the workshops, we evoke all the existential courage and vital power that will allow us to rewrite our Personal Myth.

It is a more therapeutic Approach of Biodanza and it offers a different methodology than the other Workshops you have attended so far.

Biodanza means Dance of Life. It is a dance of heart and freedom from South America. It's a system that integrates music and movement; it allows you to establish an authentic relationship with yourself, with other people and with the environment. It creates a more intense awareness of life, thanks to mindfulness and presence in the "here and now". The aim of Biodanza is to celebrate life. It stimulates and facilitates establishing relationships, helps participants regain joy and vitality and celebrate the sanctity of life. It helps you feel happy, healthy and more confident by boosting your self-esteem and improving your ability to make choices.

Myths are poetic and philosophical narratives, original revelations of our subconscious psyche. Following Jung, "we don't create myths, we experience them". Activating or not activating these internal patterns suggests our fundamental differences. Knowledge, especially the one that comes through bodily experience, provides the means of understanding and activating of these mental realities.

Greek myths remain relevant and valid in their perfection because there is something deeply true about their connection to universal human experience. When Jung was asked why psychology was so young, he replied that back in the days people were satisfied with myths. “Myths fulfill psychological, metaphysical, sociological and cosmological functions.” (Joseph Campbell).

Other cultures, perfectly connected with the "art of being", knew that in order to know ourselves, we must know the gods and goddesses who live within us. In the words of James Hillman, we must "face the gods.". And "facing the gods" means waking up to psychological dimensions, each of which represents something about our identity.

“Biodanza represents the primordial energy blueprint of deep connection and freedom of expression, beauty, enthusiasm and passion. It lives within us thanks to the original desires of our species, such as the desire for health, love, pleasure and well-being. It gives us an impulse to immerse ourselves in the world of experiences and senses. It teaches us to see life as an art, and to listen to our heart's compass that connects our desire to give and receive love."

(Cristiano Martins)

Life as the most sacred of manifestations constantly asks us to be reborn in total love and return to the fullness of ourselves every moment of our lives. The first step in taking this Journey is to recognize that love is an art. In the same sense that life in all its glory is an art. If we want to learn to love, we should do the same things we do when we want to learn any other art, such as music or sculpture.

Biodanza is a deeply transformative yet delicate work on consciousness based on work with the body, movement and dance.

• It integrates body, mind, emotions and soul.
• It awakens vitality, creativity, sensuality, sexuality and emotionality.
• It teaches openness, joy, building good relationships and expressing emotions.

The transformation takes place through learning to feel connected to your body, emotions
and energy. These experiences are called “vivencias”. They allow the access to our primary emotions and help us express them through movement.

Biodanza also strengthens the "lineas de vivencia" - lines of vitality within five specific areas: vitality, sexuality, creativity, emotionality and transcendence.

Biodanza is based on psychological and philosophical research, dance anthropology and traditional rituals. One of its teachers explains the origin of the word "biodanza" - from the Greek word “bios”, meaning life, and from the Spanish “danza”, which means dance. Classes are based on a personal, direct experience - individually, in pairs, subgroups or in a group composed of all participants. During classes, music, movement and dance are used to create harmony and closeness in interpersonal relationships.

Biodanza of the Rolando Toro System is a method that works on the potential of every human being. It uses the original method of the creator of the system, prof. Rolando Toro, which is based on the positive resources in each of us, which reveal to us various possibilities and forms of expression. Its author is a psychologist, anthropologist, poet and artist from Chile. And since the 1960s, it has been spread in more than 30 countries around the world as a method of personal development.

"One does not live to dance, but dances to live more happily"

Biodanza draws our attention to building bonds and relationships through eye contact, which is the basis of beautiful communication without words. This way helps to open the heart, change the person's needs and desires, as well as to stimulate readiness for new experiences.

No dance experience or preparation is necessary to start practicing Biodanza and experience its benefits. The dance is done barefoot.

This is an advanced workshop, the condition of participation is to have taken part in a minimum of five Biodanza workshops (including at least two with Cristiano Martins).

Thank you for letting us use the beautiful photos taken by:  Agnieszka Cytacka and Magdalena Mogielnicka.

THE WORKSHOP IS HELD IN ENGLISH AND TRANSLATED INTO POLISH!

WORKSHOP TRANSLATED INTO POLISH!

WORKSHOP HELD IN ENGLISH & TRANSLATED INTO POLISH

Details of the workshop