Jinx!

I saw a TED talk online ("My stroke of insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor) delivered by a neuroscientist who had experienced a stroke. As they lost access to half of their brain, they experienced a change in their sense of identity. They no longer saw themselves as a separate entity from the world around them; when they looked down at their arm, they saw that the edges of their body were a haze – molecules in space, surrounded by other molecules… a blurry edge. They felt incredibly connected to the world and a sense of love and deep peace. I highly recommend watching this talk; it changed my perspective on the world and on death as well.

I experience something from time to time in social dance, and I wonder what its relationship might be to the level of activation of the right side of the brain. When I really clear my mind, and my body feels really alive and open, I can synchronize with people (or they synchronize with me, who knows) in a way that shows up not just in dance, but also speech patterns. I will be standing near a friend that I know speaks very differently from me, and then for a few seconds, we will respond to situations with the same phrasing, timing and tone of speech.

As kids, this is usually what summons the “jinx! you owe me a coke” game – but as adults, I don’t think this happens nearly as often and I wonder if there’s any relationship between how much we rely on one side of our brain (or another) and the way we observe, connect and interpret other people’s body language. Because when I'm in my utmost prime in synchronizing as a follower with my partner, the way my body feels is pretty comparable to the moment before a "jinx". Kind of interesting, right?