Music, Rhythm, and the Release of Anergia

The body needs space and movement to feel and regulate itself

The lights come on.

The music begins.

On stage, the artist finds space to run, turn, leap, approach, move away, and stop.

Their body can experience intensity and pause. It can change direction, vary its strength, and complete a gesture.

In the audience, you may remain seated.

Even so, something may begin to move.

Your foot follows the rhythm.
Your breathing changes.
Your shoulders relax.
Your torso leans forward.
A memory appears.
A tension finds a passage.

The body needs space and movement to feel and regulate itself.

At the Joinville Dance Festival, the artist finds this space on stage.

The audience may find it within their own experience.

Each person in their own way.

Music offers a path

Within the BrainLatam hypothesis, Anergia is not energy or emotion stored inside a muscle or fascia.

Anergia is a mobilization that began but did not find enough space to express itself, vary, reach completion, or recover.

Perhaps the body prepared to act but had to remain still.

Perhaps it held the same posture for too long.

Perhaps it repeated a tension without finding another possibility.

This does not mean there is a hidden emotion that must be uncovered.

Sometimes the body does not need to tell a story.

It simply needs to find space and movement.

Music may offer this path:

mobilization → movement → variation → completion → recovery

A beat creates expectation.

The body follows.

The rhythm changes.

The body may change as well.

The music stops.

The organism recognizes that the moment has ended.

Each person perceives differently

The same music may produce different experiences.

One person may feel like dancing.

Another may begin to breathe more slowly.

Another may become more alert.

Someone else may feel discomfort and need distance.

None of these responses is necessarily wrong.

The way music passes through the Body-Territory depends on each person’s active perception.

In BrainLatam’s Rock, Paper, Scissors metaphor, we can observe three possible modes.

Rock: the body responds quickly

Rock represents the fast, automatic, sensorimotor response.

The beat begins and the foot follows.

The artist leaps and the spectator holds their breath.

The music accelerates and the body increases its readiness.

Rock enables reaction, rhythm, and execution.

Scissors: the body analyzes

Scissors notices the details.

It compares the rhythm.
Perceives the technique.
Identifies the change in tempo.
Attempts to understand the structure of the music and choreography.

Scissors organizes, separates, and interprets.

Paper: the body notices its own experience

Paper broadens attention.

The person notices the music, the artist, and also what is happening within themselves.

Perhaps they recognize that their shoulders were tense.

Perhaps they notice that their breathing has changed.

Perhaps they feel the desire to move, remain silent, or simply feel.

Paper does not force an emotion to appear.

It offers space for perception.

During a single performance, the same person may move through Rock, Scissors, and Paper.

They may follow the rhythm, analyze the movement, and then notice how the experience changed their own body.

Regulation does not always mean calming down

When we speak about regulation, we may imagine that the goal is always relaxation.

But regulation does not necessarily mean reducing intensity.

Sometimes the body needs calm.

Sometimes it needs strength.

Sometimes it needs to move before it can rest.

Fast music may help a mobilization find expression. Slow music may create room for breathing. A pause may show the body that it no longer needs to maintain the same state of readiness.

The question does not need to be:

“Does this music calm me?”

We may ask instead:

“What possibility does this music offer my body right now?”

Perhaps grounding.

Perhaps intensity.

Perhaps pause.

Perhaps movement.

Perhaps nothing — and the person may also choose not to participate.

Regulation does not need to pass through emotion

A tension can often change without the person needing to find an emotional explanation.

Imagine that your shoulders have been raised for a long time.

The music begins.

You shift your body weight.

Your arms begin to swing.

Your breathing finds another rhythm.

Your shoulders lower.

Perhaps you did not identify sadness, fear, or anger.

Even so, something changed.

The body found another way to organize itself.

This idea approaches a question found in osteopathy.

A therapist’s touch may be directed toward a specific area of the body with the intention of supporting local perception, mobility, and freedom of movement.

This does not mean removing an emotion stored in the tissues.

Relief may occur because that region received new information and found new possibilities for responding.

In dance, music and movement may offer a similar opening, even without manual touch.

Rhythm touches from a distance.

The artist offers movement.

The spectator finds their own way of responding.

Biological faith

The artist prepares to leap.

Before leaving the ground, there is a bodily trust that another point of support will be found.

Within the BrainLatam hypothesis, this trust may be called biological faith.

It is neither religion nor absolute certainty.

It is the body’s trust that there is still a possibility to act, adjust, learn, and continue.

Music may strengthen this trust because it offers continuity.

One beat arrives.

Then another.

The body begins to predict that there will be a next moment.

It is not necessary to know the entire choreography in order to accept the next movement.

Shared agency

The artist finds space on stage.

The audience finds space within perception.

The experience does not belong entirely to one or the other.

The musician offers rhythm.

The dancer offers gesture.

You offer presence.

Perhaps you follow with your foot.

Perhaps you only observe.

Perhaps you notice that you need silence or distance.

Shared agency does not mean that everyone must feel the same thing.

It means that each Body-Territory may participate without losing its freedom.

The artist does not regulate your body for you.

They offer possibilities.

You perceive, choose, accept, transform, or refuse.

When the music ends

The final note arrives.

The dancer stops.

For a few seconds, the theater remains silent.

Perhaps this silence is also part of the music.

The body notices that the sequence has ended.

Breathing may loosen.

A tension may decrease.

Applause may offer expression to what was mobilized.

Within the BrainLatam hypothesis, recovery is part of the movement.

It is not enough to mobilize.

The body must also find completion and a passage into another state.

The body needs space and movement to feel and regulate itself.

At the Festival, the artist finds space to express themselves.

The audience may find space to perceive themselves.

Music does not need to reveal a hidden emotion.

It may simply offer rhythm to what had become still.

It may create variation for what had become rigid.

It may offer completion to what remained in a state of readiness.

Each person will perceive this passage differently.

As Rock, they may respond quickly.

As Scissors, they may analyze.

As Paper, they may notice what the experience is producing within them.

And perhaps music does something both simple and profound:

it shows the Body-Territory that another movement is possible.

In the previous text, we saw how observed movement may continue discreetly within the body of the person watching.

From here, the investigation moves closer to touch, local perception, and freedom of movement:

Does relief occur because something left the body, or because the body found more space to perceive, move, and choose?

References and Their Contributions

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Music, Perception, and Cognition — The Artist Giving Flow to Popular Anergia.
Contribution: Presents the Anergia hypothesis as a mobilization that needs to find expression, variation, completion, and recovery.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Biological Faith, Synapses, and Extended Yãy hã mĩy.
Contribution: Grounds biological faith as the body’s trust in the possibility of moving, learning, and continuing.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Osteopathy — Touch, Local Opening, and Regulation of Embodied Tensions.
Contribution: Proposes that the body may find local changes in perception and movement without necessarily accessing an emotional narrative.

GIESBRECHT, Erica. Listening with the Body: Sensitivity, Music, and the Body in a Local Belly Dance Scene. 2022.
Contribution: Shows that music is perceived by the whole body and that ways of listening are also culturally learned.

KASDAN, Anna V. et al. Identifying a Brain Network for Musical Rhythm: A Functional Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review. 2022.
Contribution: Demonstrates that rhythm perception involves auditory, motor, cerebellar, and subcortical networks working together.

MIGEOT, Joaquín et al. Allostasis, Health, and Development in Latin America. 2024.
Contribution: Supports the understanding of allostasis as predictive regulation built through the relationship between body, brain, environment, and life history.