Finding Joy, Building Community and Raising Your Own Pork with Radha Agrawal

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. And I've. I've done some actually really profound work early in my own trauma thing around some psychedelic dance. And I go to Burning Man, I'll stay up till dawn and. And dance. And it is healing. But when you talk about dancing for healing, you're making me think of a few stories, even like some radical, like, you know, paraplegic kind of things. Like people have profound injuries, suddenly heal them in three months of dancing.

That's right.

What's your data or what's your take on dancing to heal?

So, first of all, thanks for asking this question, because to me, this is the new frontier of healing. I think that yoga, meditation, forest bathing, all these practices live in that space of. Prescribed by doctors as a healing modality. But dance continues to be the redheaded stepchild where dance actually is the original healing modality that exists on the planet. And I'm measuring it now with UC Berkeley and the Greater Good Science Center. So I partnered with Dr. Dacher Keltner, who is the principal and founder of the Greater Good Science center, the number one behavioral science lab on the science of happiness. And we are embarking on this really exciting new study together where we're going to be studying dance and collective joy. And I think one of the things about 5Rhythms, which I think is so special, but it's still a very individualized kind of. You're dancing in quiet, you know, sort of like no talking allowed, no eye contact really allowed. And you're just in. In a space together, but not really in a collective, truly collective experience. Right. Which I, by the way, I love five rhythms. I think it's truly a wonderful modality. But what I think really the new frontier is this idea of collective joy, collective dance. The way Burning man, when you go to Burning man, it's like you're there, though, you know, the substance issue can often be the sort of. It might not be supportive of your healing. Right. So sometimes if you're taking all the substance that you take at a festival, you need to be sober. You need to be in collective joy sober to really experience that true euphoria on your own and to practice that. And I think that, yes, of course, there's beauty in some of the substances and the medicines that we take to feel that. But I think to really practice being the pharmacy in your own mind, to really practice unlocking your own dose, which I coined. And it's basically your four happy neurochemicals, your dopamine, your oxytocin your serotonin and your endorphins. And if you can do that, it's in a collective experience with music, in dance with the sun beating down your face without substances, that is actually the true antidote for loneliness, anxiety, depression. And it's also the most ancient form of celebrations, the most ancient form of human experience around just dancing around a campfire, you know, sort of being in a moment of reverence for whether it's, you know, a totem that you're worshiping or whether it's a celebration for the fall harvest. You know, we forget that dance isn't just a fun party thing, but dance is actually essential to the human experience and essential to joy, essential to moving through pain, essential to remembering your self expression, right? To remind yourself that, oh, right, when I'm downward dogging, I'm following a teacher, I'm being told what to do. But to allow your body to move the way the music is just moving you to do so, and to be courageous enough, and courage being a virtue of joy, but to be courageous enough to actually allow your body to move the way the beat takes you, that's a joy practice, and that is healing. And that takes you to presence, but that takes you to a state of mindfulness, takes you to also move, takes you to creativity. It takes you to so many states of remembering who you are that no other form or modality can do or take you to, especially when you're in a collective experience.