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I compare the energy released when a marriage breaks up to the energy released when an atom is split. It takes an amazing amount of power to join to people into one and if the union then formed is broken again that energy has to be released. We spend our childhood and youth forming a personality as an individual and it takes enormous hormonal power to push us into the arms of another and to then accept them as a part of our lives so we are no longer an isolated unit we must allow great psychological transitions to happen. One part of that process is to identify the other with our primal dream image of an ideal mate. As that image is not clear to our conscious mind it is very possible to pick ‘the wrong one’. Life is complex and difficult so it is not only possible but quite likely that a relationship which made us feel complete at one point in our life journey will no longer be ‘the right one’ later in our life. Then comes the problem of splitting it up. The huge investment of two selves into each other is difficult to untangle and to abandon the dream is terrifying. Even if both fully understand the reasons enormous quantities of emotion are released if the relationship is to end. We all know people who hate each other just as powerfully as they formerly loved each other. Nuclear family fission is awesome in its power.

Sometimes it all just comes together. For a poorly co-ordinated and extremely shy child it never seemed that dancing would ever be possible but here’s the story of my relationship with dancing.

What do I mean, my relationship with dancing? Well, I love it but I don’t often do it. As a child I took up dance lessons several times and withdrew from the classes in embarrassment at my failure to co-ordinate or remember the steps. When we emigrated to Australia a church we attended was the venue for Scottish dancing classes and perhaps in an attempt to preserve our heritage my sisters and I were sent along. Strangely enough I learned well and began to enjoy it, then we moved house. I had even been walking to school tiptoe to strengthen my legs for points, the most stylish way to do Scottish dancing. In High School I was hopeless. Apart from mortal fear of girls keeping me to the side benches at the school dances I was completely incapable of finding my rhythm when I got up. My crush, Suzanne, finally agreed to go to a school dance with me and I was so incapable of making the bits of me move in time to the music or with each other that she ditched me. I didn’t go to the end of year ball. This was the year Weeties or some other cereal put dance moves on the sides of the boxes.

In my great year, 1971, I went to James Cook University for a time and spent my time talking to people. I met an interesting group of people who smoked marijuana and (some) dropped acid. We all went to a pub which played Creedence and other music with a strong driving beat, in a room with ultraviolet light and strobes flashing in time to the music. On my first night there I found my rhythm and I’ve never lost it again. My friends failed to convince me that their drug centred lifestyle was worth trying but they helped turn me on to a trip that for me is much better – dancing! I love dancing but over the years the opportunities I have had to really let myself go with the music have been too few.

At the end of that year we had dances in the Refec. of Queensland Uni. after the demos, street marches and protests. There was plenty of room and I was able to jump around, making up the steps as I went. Later, I went to dances there with a beautiful girlfriend and as she was a great dancer we had a wonderful time together. It seems as if I have some natural ability, locked up by my shyness for so many years.

To my dismay, my wife’s dancing was conservative and not energetic. I liked to dance vigorously and could keep going for hours despite my usual avoidance of exercise. The music carried me and I just kept going and going. Sometimes I felt exhausted and left the dance floor only to hurry back on after a few minutes. The opportunity to dance didn’t arise often. We didn’t go out for dancing and in the circles we moved in there were few parties of that sort.

Occasionally I would dance alone at home, making up moves and trying to be cool, imagining that I could attract admiration by it, a lot of other dancers noticing I was pretty good. It has been nice sometimes to hear people tell me my dancing was good. Someone once asked me if I had learned Rap when I was young. It was a double compliment because I was too old when Rap came on the scene. Maybe I treasured that so much because of the disaster of my High School dances.

When I left my marriage one of my firm intentions was to dance more often. A friendship with an ageing rocker and his band was a great opportunity. I went to every gig in the small town I lived in and just let myself go. A close female friend also loved dancing and at some of the functions at the hotel she ran and at a couple of other things we went to together we danced and I taught her a bit about ‘freestyle’ dancing. I lost my inhibitions to the point where I once danced alone when everyone else in the hall had retired in exhaustion. This was when I was on heart medication! I believe music can take the body well beyond its limits. My doctor just looked at me when I told him about it.

The wonderful little Wintermoon Folk Festival in North Queensland (Australia) was more an experience of listening to music than dancing to it but on a couple of occasions I got up, inspired by Campbell the Swaggie, a unique man of about my age, who went into a dance trance right in front of a huge speaker cabinet. He did the same at a Folk Festival in Townsville.  Health was a big obstacle around then and I didn’t feel I had enough energy to get up sometimes. In a central Queensland mining town where I felt like the only sensitive New Age guy around I combatted the alienation by playing music and dancing to it in my home. Lovely.

I came to China expecting to do a bit of the nightclub stuff that tourists get into but I decided fairly quickly that it was not my scene. There were venues that some of my laowai friends went to but the Chinese tend to play dance music at dangerous volumes. I got into it a couple of times but left the ear-splitting noise much sooner than I would have if the sound was at a reasonable level. I mean, loud is good but not that loud. I want to be able to hear the music when I am old.

Then I met Latinfan, a natural dancer whose wonderful movements were part of what drew me to her. Now we are living together in Wuhan and she will break into dance at any given moment. I haven’t had a lot of physical energy since we arrived here and too seldom join in. Now I have organized my music, having copied everything I formerly owned when I went back on my last trip to visit the family in Australia. I’ve added the things I bought in China and have almost finished sorting them into folders. I have to find out how to sort everything suitable for dancing into playlists. Celtic, Rock and Latin (for Latinfan).

It would be good to think music could be a path to fitness and improved health for me. That’s not looking likely just now as I have either become damned lazy or just can’t conceive any more of doing anything physical. No, no self-condemnation please. I do have serious health problems.

Parents must be careful what they say to their children. Their words are so powerfully integrated into the child’s personality that they can affect the whole of the child’s life. When I first went to school, Dad had already been teaching me to read, using the Blue Star Readers that the schools also used in those days. I had no trouble at school at first and enjoyed first year. The only problem was that I did too well in the first test and was second in the class, so dad shared some wisdom about watching I didn’t get a big head, something that could happen to people who were too clever. The boy who came first in the class actually did have a large head so I decided not to be too clever and through some instinct set up a pattern that kept me about tenth in the class from then on and throughout my school life. It is still difficult for me to have the will to be at the top.

How about you? Share your experience of positive or negative, empowering or disempowering parenting. How did you do yourself when you became a parent? How have you overcome negative patterning

When I was a young child I went with the cubs to the Edinburgh Tattoo. The lone piper up on the battlements had my heart stilled and strong emotions filling my eyes. For some reason unknown to me, I have always found I wanted to cry when laments were played and there was talk of people dying in the First World War. If we have come through a series of lives, is this an emotional memory of a past life experience? Did I die in the First World War? Did I lose someone dear to me? I can’t say. I don’t have any clear indicator of any previous life. I don’t have that connection to the Second World War. Whenever someone asked me to give a pretend name, when I was a child, I always said ‘George” without hesitation. I once had an awful clear dream of having my throat cut in a Mongolian yhurt while someone was holding my woman and we were looking into each others’ eyes, and I was powerless to save her. I can never forget that dream.

What do you think? Do you believe you have evidence of having other lives before this one? I cannot say the experiences above are clear evidence

Here’s another early memory story. Remember my birth posting? These are both examples of the intricacy of the human mind. Though the first was from a pre-verbal period and this one is from very early childhood, my conscious preserved the experiences and brought them to my attention.

My cousin Bobby, about six months older, once put a hot poker against my leg when I was still fairly helpless and he was able to be up and around and do mischief. I can’t remember the incident but again there is a way the awareness was revealed to me later. My Aunt Margaret, Dad’s cousin, came regularly to babysit us and let Mum and Dad have a ‘date’, go to the pictures. She was a great storyteller and one of the stories, the Giant who Reached for the Sun, used to disturb me a lot. The Giant’s downfall came when he put the sun in his pocket and it burned his leg. It was as if I could feel it! I had a very unpleasant sensation in my leg every time she told it. Only as an adult, perhaps in my thirties, I made the connection between my cousin’s action and the sensation which Aunt Margaret’s story gave me.

If you have any experiences like this, of remembering in non-verbal ways and later coming to understand the meaning of the sensations you experienced, share them with us. I must say, however, that if some of these memories are sexual you would be better to explore them with an experienced and professionally trained psychotherapist than to expose them in this forum. I can pray for you but can’t do an adequate job of helping you here.