[stinos]

Dance is a sort of trance, and requires alot of letting go

I know what you mean, also when you talk about that certain tenderness, I have experienced that, and I can get that same thing out of sports like climbing/bmx/snowboarding. Take climbing: slowly reaching for a difficult hold you've never touched before, where you carefully lay your fingers on it, just touching it at first to make sure it'll actually hold you - and if not a fall an injury is certainly in there - while the rest of your body is at one wth the rock. That's basically the same for me. Or take snowboarding, just surfing a gentle slope, all alone while a snow shower slowly becomes heavier. There's no real goal there, focus fades, it's just you going with the flow. And getting that trance-like feeling really only works if you let go of certain natural fears.

[screye]

A well executed boulder can often seem indistinguishable from dance. So many sports have a natural flow and tempo (the zone), that once you tap into, you really do feel one with the sport.

Sadly, the feeling can be fickle mistress and hard to tap into.

[spopejoy]

The trance like aspects aren't really what it's about with dance. Sports/martial arts/yogas are great, but the whole point of TFA is that dance is different. The others have all sorts of strengths, so it's a little puzzling to me why the argument would be made "yeah but sports too!" Nobody's criticizing sports here, and the implicit argument here that "naah, dance can't be special" is not based on fact and kind of off-topic.

Having studied a little modern dance, being a sw dev and bicycler, lifelong musician, and a pilates fanatic -- dance absolutely has more for the brain/body/emotional/spiritual connection. It's kind of the whole deal and it is unique this way.

[idclip]

I can imagine sports tapping into that kind of potential .. i get you