Reviewer: Maricene Crus
I’m very happy to be here,
really happy to be here.
Do you know that kind of happiness we can’t hold inside ourselves?
If everything goes well, you will feel that too.
Can you see that I am very happy?
Because if you can,
this happiness will have fulfilled its role for me and for you too.
If there is something I believe and love is empathy.
We are made to interact.
Our whole body is made out of sensors that allow us to feel
what other people are feeling, or felt, and enable us to relate to them.
Small children do that really well, don’t they?
Why is it then that we end up forgetting this as we become adults?
Maybe because we get stiff.
I have always been passionate about the body and its potential.
On the other hand, I was very lucky to have been born in a family of artists.
I am the daughter of a poet, my father, and of a painter, my mother.
I usually joke saying that when I decided to be an engineer, I was almost disowned.
But I kept my connection to art, dance
and having ideas related to body and this potential art.
What I want to do here is show you
how you can use this artistic vision,
this artistic view,
to become more intelligent.
More emotionally intelligent, of course, but also rationally.
Nowadays, it has been proven that we don’t do only one thing.
It’s not just one side of the brain, they both interact.
So we are going to follow a path now.
The first thing I need is that you all realize,
and agree with me, that everyone in this room
has the potential to become better.
Do you agree?
Audience: Yes.
Everyone!
Everyone in this room has the potential
to be better than they are at this very minute.
And your body is your operator in this world, right?
When I started teaching
— my family is also a family of teachers —
I used to see some people like this.
And I’d say, “Does this person realize that being that stiff
will make their learning more difficult?”
But sometimes they don’t.
I saw people saying, “I am not angry!”
(Laughter)
We all have more possibilities in our body
than we are used to noticing or thinking.
And in these liquid modern days,
whenever we have time to ourselves,
sometimes our mind seems to be somewhere else, right?
How often have I practiced a ballet step while waiting for the elevator?
I looked like a crazy person.
Isn’t it weird to be considered crazy when you do something you feel like doing?
I am not hurting anybody.
If I decide to walk like this, “Oh, I’m so happy!”,
people will judge me as crazy.
But you heard today that being crazy must be good.
(Laughter)
Why would I let others restrict me like this
if I am not hurting anyone by doing that?
The fact is that we have more potential in our body than we imagine.
Have you ever noticed that there are five different ways to clap your hands?
You have clapped your hands many times today.
There are five ways to clap hands and one of them
is considered sacred in many parts of the world.
There are some people who clap like this.
Do you want to see how you do it?
This is the usual way; these are not for me, OK?
It’s just an exercise, you can try.
Many people do it like this.
Some do it like this.
Some do it using just two fingers.
Some people use the back of their hand; I’ve always found this intriguing.
And the sacred one – let’s see if I can do it now – is called Catira.
It’s like stretching the palm of your hand like leather from a tambourine.
And then…
(Applause)
Can you hear the sound like a small crack?
You all have that.
If you have to say, “I’m the man!”,
where would you tap on your body?
That’s right, on your chest.
But why the chest?
It’s the biggest acoustic box in your body.
Have you ever thought about it?
And you look bigger too.
We have another box in our mouth.
I know I cannot tap to this side because of the microphone.
Here we have a very good acoustic box.
We have another unknown and very cool acoustic box
when we snap our fingers.
Some people cannot do it,
but those who can, probably trained hard when they were kids.
You form an acoustic box here.
Without this acoustic box no sound would be made.
We do that and don’t even notice we are creating acoustic boxes.
I was a fussy eater as a child.
My mom is here and can testify to that.
Some people in the family still brag about being able to feed me.
(Laughter)
I used to – and still do –
roll a small bean in my mouth from side to side…
what a delicious thing!
Is is so smooth.
And when you bite it,
it explodes in your mouth, so creamy; I’ve always loved this sensation.
And why can’t I be left alone to have fun with my senses?
I am doing no harm.
I am not forcing the person in front of me to do it.
But it’s delicious!
When you are really thirsty, my suggestion is that you
instead of drinking the water without thinking about it…
The water going in when you are thirsty
is one of the most delicious sensations one can have.
William Reich, who was a disciple of Freud’s,
although they quarreled and he was even expelled from the Academy,
conducted a lot of research about the body.
Reich was asked what the body meant to him.
Can you guess what his answer was? “The body is a party.”
And it is! And I am not even talking about dating.
It’s a party in itself if you allow yourself to try.
And the coolest thing about this party is that it can include others.
If you are aware of your body as well,
to the extent that becoming smarter has to do with self-knowledge.
Sometimes we forget some of our body parts.
Some people cannot separate their toes anymore.
They can only raise four of them together.
Blink one eye at a time.
Play with their eyelid.
It’s very appealing when it brushes against the skin.
I propose you use your idle time at the line in the bank, for example,
when you have to wait,
to choose one small body part at a time.
Left-ear day.
Today I am going to focus on my left ear.
Today I’ll focus on my knee, the thin skin behind it.
Why?
Because whenever we pay more attention to a body part
and understand it better, we create neural connections in order to use that part.
Actually, we also get the possibility
to use what we learned with our body to different areas of our lives.
I have a curious story about that because I have always danced.
I love ballroom dancing and I try a different rhythm each time
to challenge myself.
Once a friend invited me to watch her jujutsu practice.
I went to see her and thought it was cool and I decided to try it…
I fell in love with it!
I started to practice jujutsu and when told people
that I found it very similar to ballroom dancing,
they called me crazy, which we already know is good.
(Laughter)
Why did the two seem similar to me?
Because ballroom dancing gives me the ability to understand
what my partner wants me to do,
and then quickly respond, preferably with some flair.
If, in ballroom dancing, my partner is there to help me,
in jujutsu it is the same thing,
I have to quickly read my opponent,
but he is there to finish me.
And the more flexible I am in both, the better it is for me.
So, isn’t this an exercise in empathy?
I am not reading just my own body, but the other person’s body too.
Research shows it’s quicker for us to read other people’s body
than to rationalize about them.
I want you all to try a small exercise with me.
Please just raise your hand like this.
And now, please raise your thumb.
And now look around you and see who has really raised their thumb,
instead of the index finger, as I asked.
(Laughter)
This works every time.
Since we are kids we learn to mirror others,
and to feel, in our own body, what the other is feeling.
It’s this mirroring that will guarantee we have empathy.
And mirroring occurs faster than reasoning.
So if I can learn to intuitively use my mirroring abilities,
I get one more decision tool, which is really important.
But I can only get it if I pay attention
to the body attitude of the other with some degree of subtlety.
We are humans.
There is a TV show called “Lie to Me,” maybe you have seen it,
very interesting, based on the work of the psychiatrist Paul Ekman.
And he talks about human expressions,
how everyone widens their eyes when they are surprised.
Why do we do it?
Do you know?
Because we need to see things better. Think about it.
If I am surprised, it’s because I could not accurately see that situation
and now I need to have a better look.
And art?
Art is one of the best tools that exists
for us to gain new possibilities.
The philosopher Alain de Botton recently published the book
“Art as Therapy,”
proposing seven ways in which art can help us to be better.
An English author, Guy Claxton, published “Intelligence is in the Flesh.”
It doesn’t mean that we have a big boss at the top of our heads
ordering our bodies around.
Our body knows how to do things, but when we are undecided, we access the brain.
I know it’s different from what we believe,
but doesn’t your body know how to do things by itself?
Sometimes you don’t remember a phone number,
but your fingers know how to dial it.
I remember sometimes playing the piano, and, in the end, I thought,
“How could I have played that if I don’t remember what I did?”
So it was not my brain thinking about it anymore.
Our body has great possibilities it has already learned how to use.
This is great on one hand, but a problem on the other,
because I can only do it differently
if I challenge my body
and provide it with new experiences, so it creates new circuits,
I need to experience new things.
Do you want to hear a simple experiment?
The eating process I mentioned, to enjoy doing that.
It’s very difficult for a lot of people.
Even when people love what they’re eating, they chew it just twice and swallow.
Try to chew it fifteen times.
I doubt you can.
Because the process tends to be so automatic
that you will find it hard to keep the food being tasted in your mouth.
Try it.
And this is my invitation to you: find the artistic view.
The artistic view is this possibility to see the world with beauty.
To see the world even better than it is. Every day.
I was here at Barra da Tijuca the other day,
a lot of things going on in my head, noise and traffic everywhere.
Then there was a piece of lawn being mowed.
What a great smell, that of wet grass.
That smell made my day; I could remember it and that sensation.
The tool I suggest you use
to enhance your experience in the body you reside in,
is to search for beauty.
Do you know what the exercise is?
At the end of the day, try to remember ten beautiful things.
Ten.
The best antidote that I can offer you, based on my experience,
against this pessimism that sometimes catches us,
is to see beauty.
It’s to notice that there are a lot of people trying to make it better,
even if these same people also have bad days.
If I can see beauty,
and I know that I am looking for it,
my whole body responds to that.
Because it knows how to do that, it’s just a matter of adjusting the look.
And since I know that my goal is to reach the tenth finger – guess what.
I spend the day like this,
“I’m not good today, still around the third or fourth finger,
I need to see more beauty.”
And I might decide to call a friend who has a pleasant voice,
or to put some music on.
If you can look towards beauty in your life
you will have a better body,
a lighter body,
and this usually attracts lightness and better opportunities as well.
When I defended my PhD.,
I was nervous so my parents gave me a painting,
which I didn’t even remember having painted myself when I was 17,
with the message,
“So you always remember that art is what matters in life.”
I am grateful… oh, I got emotional…
(Laughter)
I am grateful for this possibility
to bring that regard to life.
I was recently in LA for a conference.
And curiously, or not,
I was there to perform a didactic technique
using body percussion…
that I had developed to teach
behavior improvement to my students.
They liked it, I got invited to participate in a research group
in the University of Liverpool,
the technique was replicated in Norway, it’s going to be published in a book.
Look how nice and curious that is, with art!
I went to present my findings a year later,
I called a cab using an app
(Laughter)
and I asked to visit places, since I only had a day.
I chose to visit the most famous beach.
I got in the car, the driver asked: “Are you going to that beach?”
It was a lady.
I thought her name curious because it had to do with Yoga
and I have been practicing it for a while.
And she continued, “But you like art.”
She had never seen me before.
My profile on the app says nothing about me.
“You like art. Why don’t you go visit the LA Art Museum? It’s great.”
I stared at her for a while, “That’s a good idea.”
She told me it’d be wonderful and talked about the collections.
Some time ago I’d have been worried, and thought she was crazy.
Nowadays I think, “That’s nice, for some reason or intuition,
or because of something she saw in me, she thought I’d be passionate about art.
And it’s true. I was going to be much better off in an Art Museum.”
So I ended up inviting her to have lunch with me there.
So we did it, and she told me many stories.
Then I visited the museum, and when I finished, she said,
“I’m nearby and I can pick you up, if you want.”
Then she took me to Café Gratitude,
that serves vegetarian food of the best quality.
If this is not empathy, I don’t know what could be,
because she is still my friend,
and I think she keeps rooting for me.
She said, “As soon as your talk is subtitled, please let me know.”
(Laughter)
And I hope that she, and you as well,
notice and receive the power of empathy.
I cannot do anything more than leave my heart with you here.
And I hope you feel it too,
and that you notice, in your body, what this feeling is like.
For example, I wonder if you are in the best position now,
sitting at this very moment, so we can share our hearts,
or to put into practice the actions you intend to.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
I’m very happy to be here,
really happy to be here.
Do you know that kind of happiness we can’t hold inside ourselves?
If everything goes well, you will feel that too.
Can you see that I am very happy?
Because if you can,
this happiness will have fulfilled its role for me and for you too.
If there is something I believe and love is empathy.
We are made to interact.
Our whole body is made out of sensors that allow us to feel
what other people are feeling, or felt, and enable us to relate to them.
Small children do that really well, don’t they?
Why is it then that we end up forgetting this as we become adults?
Maybe because we get stiff.
I have always been passionate about the body and its potential.
On the other hand, I was very lucky to have been born in a family of artists.
I am the daughter of a poet, my father, and of a painter, my mother.
I usually joke saying that when I decided to be an engineer, I was almost disowned.
But I kept my connection to art, dance
and having ideas related to body and this potential art.
What I want to do here is show you
how you can use this artistic vision,
this artistic view,
to become more intelligent.
More emotionally intelligent, of course, but also rationally.
Nowadays, it has been proven that we don’t do only one thing.
It’s not just one side of the brain, they both interact.
So we are going to follow a path now.
The first thing I need is that you all realize,
and agree with me, that everyone in this room
has the potential to become better.
Do you agree?
Audience: Yes.
Everyone!
Everyone in this room has the potential
to be better than they are at this very minute.
And your body is your operator in this world, right?
When I started teaching
— my family is also a family of teachers —
I used to see some people like this.
And I’d say, “Does this person realize that being that stiff
will make their learning more difficult?”
But sometimes they don’t.
I saw people saying, “I am not angry!”
(Laughter)
We all have more possibilities in our body
than we are used to noticing or thinking.
And in these liquid modern days,
whenever we have time to ourselves,
sometimes our mind seems to be somewhere else, right?
How often have I practiced a ballet step while waiting for the elevator?
I looked like a crazy person.
Isn’t it weird to be considered crazy when you do something you feel like doing?
I am not hurting anybody.
If I decide to walk like this, “Oh, I’m so happy!”,
people will judge me as crazy.
But you heard today that being crazy must be good.
(Laughter)
Why would I let others restrict me like this
if I am not hurting anyone by doing that?
The fact is that we have more potential in our body than we imagine.
Have you ever noticed that there are five different ways to clap your hands?
You have clapped your hands many times today.
There are five ways to clap hands and one of them
is considered sacred in many parts of the world.
There are some people who clap like this.
Do you want to see how you do it?
This is the usual way; these are not for me, OK?
It’s just an exercise, you can try.
Many people do it like this.
Some do it like this.
Some do it using just two fingers.
Some people use the back of their hand; I’ve always found this intriguing.
And the sacred one – let’s see if I can do it now – is called Catira.
It’s like stretching the palm of your hand like leather from a tambourine.
And then…
(Applause)
Can you hear the sound like a small crack?
You all have that.
If you have to say, “I’m the man!”,
where would you tap on your body?
That’s right, on your chest.
But why the chest?
It’s the biggest acoustic box in your body.
Have you ever thought about it?
And you look bigger too.
We have another box in our mouth.
I know I cannot tap to this side because of the microphone.
Here we have a very good acoustic box.
We have another unknown and very cool acoustic box
when we snap our fingers.
Some people cannot do it,
but those who can, probably trained hard when they were kids.
You form an acoustic box here.
Without this acoustic box no sound would be made.
We do that and don’t even notice we are creating acoustic boxes.
I was a fussy eater as a child.
My mom is here and can testify to that.
Some people in the family still brag about being able to feed me.
(Laughter)
I used to – and still do –
roll a small bean in my mouth from side to side…
what a delicious thing!
Is is so smooth.
And when you bite it,
it explodes in your mouth, so creamy; I’ve always loved this sensation.
And why can’t I be left alone to have fun with my senses?
I am doing no harm.
I am not forcing the person in front of me to do it.
But it’s delicious!
When you are really thirsty, my suggestion is that you
instead of drinking the water without thinking about it…
The water going in when you are thirsty
is one of the most delicious sensations one can have.
William Reich, who was a disciple of Freud’s,
although they quarreled and he was even expelled from the Academy,
conducted a lot of research about the body.
Reich was asked what the body meant to him.
Can you guess what his answer was? “The body is a party.”
And it is! And I am not even talking about dating.
It’s a party in itself if you allow yourself to try.
And the coolest thing about this party is that it can include others.
If you are aware of your body as well,
to the extent that becoming smarter has to do with self-knowledge.
Sometimes we forget some of our body parts.
Some people cannot separate their toes anymore.
They can only raise four of them together.
Blink one eye at a time.
Play with their eyelid.
It’s very appealing when it brushes against the skin.
I propose you use your idle time at the line in the bank, for example,
when you have to wait,
to choose one small body part at a time.
Left-ear day.
Today I am going to focus on my left ear.
Today I’ll focus on my knee, the thin skin behind it.
Why?
Because whenever we pay more attention to a body part
and understand it better, we create neural connections in order to use that part.
Actually, we also get the possibility
to use what we learned with our body to different areas of our lives.
I have a curious story about that because I have always danced.
I love ballroom dancing and I try a different rhythm each time
to challenge myself.
Once a friend invited me to watch her jujutsu practice.
I went to see her and thought it was cool and I decided to try it…
I fell in love with it!
I started to practice jujutsu and when told people
that I found it very similar to ballroom dancing,
they called me crazy, which we already know is good.
(Laughter)
Why did the two seem similar to me?
Because ballroom dancing gives me the ability to understand
what my partner wants me to do,
and then quickly respond, preferably with some flair.
If, in ballroom dancing, my partner is there to help me,
in jujutsu it is the same thing,
I have to quickly read my opponent,
but he is there to finish me.
And the more flexible I am in both, the better it is for me.
So, isn’t this an exercise in empathy?
I am not reading just my own body, but the other person’s body too.
Research shows it’s quicker for us to read other people’s body
than to rationalize about them.
I want you all to try a small exercise with me.
Please just raise your hand like this.
And now, please raise your thumb.
And now look around you and see who has really raised their thumb,
instead of the index finger, as I asked.
(Laughter)
This works every time.
Since we are kids we learn to mirror others,
and to feel, in our own body, what the other is feeling.
It’s this mirroring that will guarantee we have empathy.
And mirroring occurs faster than reasoning.
So if I can learn to intuitively use my mirroring abilities,
I get one more decision tool, which is really important.
But I can only get it if I pay attention
to the body attitude of the other with some degree of subtlety.
We are humans.
There is a TV show called “Lie to Me,” maybe you have seen it,
very interesting, based on the work of the psychiatrist Paul Ekman.
And he talks about human expressions,
how everyone widens their eyes when they are surprised.
Why do we do it?
Do you know?
Because we need to see things better. Think about it.
If I am surprised, it’s because I could not accurately see that situation
and now I need to have a better look.
And art?
Art is one of the best tools that exists
for us to gain new possibilities.
The philosopher Alain de Botton recently published the book
“Art as Therapy,”
proposing seven ways in which art can help us to be better.
An English author, Guy Claxton, published “Intelligence is in the Flesh.”
It doesn’t mean that we have a big boss at the top of our heads
ordering our bodies around.
Our body knows how to do things, but when we are undecided, we access the brain.
I know it’s different from what we believe,
but doesn’t your body know how to do things by itself?
Sometimes you don’t remember a phone number,
but your fingers know how to dial it.
I remember sometimes playing the piano, and, in the end, I thought,
“How could I have played that if I don’t remember what I did?”
So it was not my brain thinking about it anymore.
Our body has great possibilities it has already learned how to use.
This is great on one hand, but a problem on the other,
because I can only do it differently
if I challenge my body
and provide it with new experiences, so it creates new circuits,
I need to experience new things.
Do you want to hear a simple experiment?
The eating process I mentioned, to enjoy doing that.
It’s very difficult for a lot of people.
Even when people love what they’re eating, they chew it just twice and swallow.
Try to chew it fifteen times.
I doubt you can.
Because the process tends to be so automatic
that you will find it hard to keep the food being tasted in your mouth.
Try it.
And this is my invitation to you: find the artistic view.
The artistic view is this possibility to see the world with beauty.
To see the world even better than it is. Every day.
I was here at Barra da Tijuca the other day,
a lot of things going on in my head, noise and traffic everywhere.
Then there was a piece of lawn being mowed.
What a great smell, that of wet grass.
That smell made my day; I could remember it and that sensation.
The tool I suggest you use
to enhance your experience in the body you reside in,
is to search for beauty.
Do you know what the exercise is?
At the end of the day, try to remember ten beautiful things.
Ten.
The best antidote that I can offer you, based on my experience,
against this pessimism that sometimes catches us,
is to see beauty.
It’s to notice that there are a lot of people trying to make it better,
even if these same people also have bad days.
If I can see beauty,
and I know that I am looking for it,
my whole body responds to that.
Because it knows how to do that, it’s just a matter of adjusting the look.
And since I know that my goal is to reach the tenth finger – guess what.
I spend the day like this,
“I’m not good today, still around the third or fourth finger,
I need to see more beauty.”
And I might decide to call a friend who has a pleasant voice,
or to put some music on.
If you can look towards beauty in your life
you will have a better body,
a lighter body,
and this usually attracts lightness and better opportunities as well.
When I defended my PhD.,
I was nervous so my parents gave me a painting,
which I didn’t even remember having painted myself when I was 17,
with the message,
“So you always remember that art is what matters in life.”
I am grateful… oh, I got emotional…
(Laughter)
I am grateful for this possibility
to bring that regard to life.
I was recently in LA for a conference.
And curiously, or not,
I was there to perform a didactic technique
using body percussion…
that I had developed to teach
behavior improvement to my students.
They liked it, I got invited to participate in a research group
in the University of Liverpool,
the technique was replicated in Norway, it’s going to be published in a book.
Look how nice and curious that is, with art!
I went to present my findings a year later,
I called a cab using an app
(Laughter)
and I asked to visit places, since I only had a day.
I chose to visit the most famous beach.
I got in the car, the driver asked: “Are you going to that beach?”
It was a lady.
I thought her name curious because it had to do with Yoga
and I have been practicing it for a while.
And she continued, “But you like art.”
She had never seen me before.
My profile on the app says nothing about me.
“You like art. Why don’t you go visit the LA Art Museum? It’s great.”
I stared at her for a while, “That’s a good idea.”
She told me it’d be wonderful and talked about the collections.
Some time ago I’d have been worried, and thought she was crazy.
Nowadays I think, “That’s nice, for some reason or intuition,
or because of something she saw in me, she thought I’d be passionate about art.
And it’s true. I was going to be much better off in an Art Museum.”
So I ended up inviting her to have lunch with me there.
So we did it, and she told me many stories.
Then I visited the museum, and when I finished, she said,
“I’m nearby and I can pick you up, if you want.”
Then she took me to Café Gratitude,
that serves vegetarian food of the best quality.
If this is not empathy, I don’t know what could be,
because she is still my friend,
and I think she keeps rooting for me.
She said, “As soon as your talk is subtitled, please let me know.”
(Laughter)
And I hope that she, and you as well,
notice and receive the power of empathy.
I cannot do anything more than leave my heart with you here.
And I hope you feel it too,
and that you notice, in your body, what this feeling is like.
For example, I wonder if you are in the best position now,
sitting at this very moment, so we can share our hearts,
or to put into practice the actions you intend to.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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