aikido and dancing

I have to say how cool it is being a salsa dance teacher, and now an aikido teacher as well. The two things have so much in common in terms of how the participants carry themselves, and only differ in purpose. I use many of the same exercises in both activities in order to train myself, my partner, or whoever is involved how to carry themselves in balance. Examples are a simple as learning to take small steps, keeping your feet below you, holding up the weight of your own hands, and just becoming aware of tension in your own body. I find it fascinating how much easier it is for someone who is learning to dance to learn these things. My guess is that martial arts infuse much more fear into the participants, while dancing is for fun. Imagine that you are in some kind of combat situation and you have to fend for your life, bombs going off, ninjas everywhere, it's not that relaxing, and not condusive to the relaxed inner state that is needed in order to move in balance. Dancing on the other hand is the opposite. If you stick with dancing, that bug up your butt will have to die some day. Through the months of dance training, those layers of guardedness shed themselves. I have also seen people storm out of dancing forever once they realized that there was no place for their darkness amongst the light of those others that know the spirit of dance. I like this comparison because my training with Henry and the crew has produced an evolution in martial arts training that has left behind the Rambo fantacies and created a practice infused with the spirit of a dancer. We now know that the Holy Grail of martial arts is inner and outer balance, and not just another egocentric martial arts myth.