The ineffable strangeness of the human brain

[Helen-Healing]

Dancing death

Sometime in mid-July 1518, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman stepped into the street and started to dance.
She was still dancing several days later. Within a week about 100 people had been consumed by the same irresistible urge to dance.

This was not the first outbreak of compulsive dancing in Europe. In fact, there had been as many as ten dancing epidemics before 1518, one in 1374 engulfing many of the towns of modern day Belgium, north-eastern France and Luxembourg.

[Grahame]

Here's an interesting bit of related trivia - In classical ballet, there is a dance known as the 'Tarantella', so called because the compulsive dancing was said to be caused by a bite from a spider:

In the Italian province of Taranto, Puglia, the bite of a locally common type of wolf spider, named "tarantula" after the region, was popularly believed to be highly poisonous and to lead to a hysterical condition known as tarantism. This became known as the Tarantella. The oldest documents mentioning the relationship between musical exorcism and the tarantula are dated around 1100 BC. R.Lowe Thompson proposed that the dance is a survival from a "Dianic or Dionysiac cult", driven underground. John Compton later proposed that these ancient Bacchanalian rites had been suppressed by the Roman Senate. In 186 BC the tarantula went underground, reappearing under the guise of emergency therapy for bite victims.

The tradition persists in the area, and is known as "Neo-Tarantism." Many young artists, groups and famous musicians are continuing to keep the tradition alive. The music is very different—its tempo is faster, for one thing—but it has similar hypnotic effects, especially when people are exposed to the rhythm for a long period of time. The music is used in the therapy of patients with certain forms of depression and hysteria, and its effects on the endocrine system recently became an object of research

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From Wikipedia.

[mike]

The human brain is a most powerful tool, its open to everyone, if you just take the time open your heart and mind to things outside the box.Dowsing is one of those things, and again its possible to stretch dowsing in one form or another much further than normal, to a point where the Church will claim you work for the Devil. And just because they dont understand you, or how you do the things you do, and where the inspiration comes from to reach out and tackle problems no doctor or clergy can help you with. Its the unknown again,if you dont understand it, call it the work of the Devil, that should hide it away perhaps long enough for the people to forget about it.

[mike]

Healing groups of people who meet or just at a precise time of day sit quiet and think of sending healing thoughts out to folks who are ill or suffering do work wonders, I dont know of any such group but knowing what the brain/mind can offer its a thing we could all take part in.Before I drop off to sleep I try and make a habit of in my mind of walking the local hospital wards, offering good thoughts to all the people there and healing to those who want it.I DONT have a clue if it does any good,but I feel its something that does help, and whats more I feel better for it. Im sure healing thoughts for those people who are in need does reach out and do good, I have no proof of that but I know the human brain can work wonders, you just have to have faith its working and helping others.