The Collective Joy of Kindermusik Space
How Synchronized Movement with Others Promotes Cooperation, Compassion and Trust
By Daphne Berryhill
When my family moved to Madison four years ago, it felt like entering a new era of “who knows?” Who knows what the safest or riskiest paths forward are in our rapidly evolving – and sometimes devolving – world? We didn’t know, but with our youngest only two and our oldest entering college, it seemed like the best way to simplify our lives as much as we could. And while it’s helpful having a smaller mortgage and closer schools, it’s still hard to know what to do because we continue to live in more and more uncertain times.
It’s not surprising that I hear so many people saying different versions of “I feel stuck.” And lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how this relates to body movement. Movement of the body, movement in our minds, lives, and relationships – how can it not all be tied together? Many of us spend our days bending our bodies into 90 degree fixed chair positions, locking them behind steering wheels, slouching them on couches, or hunching them over counters. It’s really no wonder why so many of us feel stuck, both figuratively and literally.
We know our bodies need more freedom to move than the confines of modern living typically allow. I saw this need in my own children, who all fought the baby containers, schedules, routines, and structures. If you watch children at play, they move, they fill up space, and they act in whatever way feels right to them in the moment. As a parent, I saw the necessity of this in their development. Swinging, jumping, drawing, constructing, rolling, touching – each doing what each needs to do. Children live in the physical world, fully inhabited in their own bodies. Recently I started taking hula lessons again – a passion left off decades ago – and I’m rediscovering just how much being present in the body while connecting to others matters.
Holding Space, Filling Space
In recent years, the physical domain is often used conceptually to understand relationships and emotional well-being. I remember the “bucket-filling” analogy used in my older kids’ school programs. I sometimes found paper certificates in their take-home holders, rewarding them for a bucket-filling act of kindness that day. Teaching our kids that kindness matters is of course a good thing, but I think the imagery suggests that we have control over another person’s reservoir of good feelings, rather than mere influence.
Holding space is more like holding a neutral bucket out for another person to fill up with their own thoughts and feelings. You have no control over what goes in the bucket; you’re only there to be fully present in support. Being present with one another provides the space for feelings to be felt, and therefore processed. Within my own life, I can think of countless relationship dysfunctions and needless pain that was caused when emotions go unprocessed, and I know I’m not alone. Being fully seen and heard is powerful.
Early in life, our need for presence begins rooted in the physical dimension. Love is being fed and held; the sound of a familiar voice and touch of familiar arms. My youngest child was born when my oldest was a sophomore in high school and I found it striking how much easier it was to care for my newborn than my teenager. All I had to do was pretty much give him whatever he wanted. Physically exhausting yes, but emotionally so simple. If he was in a safe place and I couldn’t come right away, he’d be just fine and forget it all as soon as I picked him up. Navigating relationship space becomes much more complicated as children grow.
And as your growing child’s connections deepen in emotion and complexity, expanding outward to other family members and then further to the larger community, their own relationships become increasingly complicated too. As a parent, you want them to feel secure showing up as themselves within their own expanding space, while respecting the space of others, including you! Understanding this concept of space helps build healthier relationships, and like most things, needs to be learned through experiences. While this will happen over time, there are things we can do to promote this understanding.
Kindermusik Space
Kindermusik classes are designed around synchronized musical activities that allow children to fill their own spaces, while holding spaces for others. Sometimes children follow someone else through active listening and watching, but there are opportunities to lead as well, when they can share their own preferred way of creating music or movement with others in the group. Some of my favorite examples are:
Sharing “special hellos”: Each child chooses a special body movement and action word, with the class following, as they are welcomed through song.
Learning through scaffolded play: When we connect with a child by immersing ourselves in their world, with warmth and presence, we create a foundation on which new ideas and experiences can be continually added in layers. Learning expands outward from a place of trust and security.
Dancing in community circles: Connectedness and unity are promoted when we joyfully move to music together in a circle – where no one is first or last, and there is no beginning or end.
Learning to share space with other people who are different from you and your own family is best learned at an early age. Once kids get to school, opportunities for learning this are limited because there are two dozen kids separated in desks and lines. Recess comes and kids tend to self-segregate with others who share their same preferences for filling up space.
Collective Joy
In her newest book, The Joy of Movement, best-selling author Kelly McGonigal explains how synchronized activities provide a “feeling of boundaries dissolving” for the individual while benefiting the culture at large. This idea is not new. McGonigal illustrates the ways this concept has been appreciated across place and time, while backing it up with current research, showing that it’s still relevant. One study referenced in the book found that when 14-month olds connect with a stranger (the experimenter) by being bounced to music, they’re more likely later to help that same person with a task. Moving in synchrony, McGonigal summarizes, fosters “collective joy” which leads to cooperation, compassion and trust.
As we’re thinking about relationships using concrete physical terms, such as space and boundaries, our relationships are moving more into the realm of cyberspace, often not even in real-time. Does this matter? Humans are wired for synchronizing with each other, explains McGonigal, pointing out that we’re able to better synchronize with a slightly irregular human beat than that of a computer generated one. As more of our kids’ interactions move online, often in simulated environments, we should remember what we already know: it’s not the same.
Musical Pathways’ mission is to change the world, one child, one family at a time. An aspirational goal that may seem impossible to find a start. While we scroll through a stream of news and information that might give reason not to trust each other, trusting each other is exactly what we need to teach our children right now.
As author Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health: safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
Kindermusik space for collective joy through music and movement is a wonderful place to start.
