Video Exploration · Inside the Tango Laboratory · 3 min
The Whole Path in Every Step
with Valeria Zolotco
Psychoanalyst & Founder of Psychology of Movement
About
I entered the competition with one year of tango behind me. Around me were dancers with far more experience. Their experience was real. The idea that it made me less worthy of being there was something I wanted to challenge.
Achievement becomes a trap when we make our worth depend on the outcome. Someone else’s progress starts to sound like an accusation: why are you not there yet?
We rush past our own progress. Wherever we are begins to feel like somewhere we should already have left behind. Self-respect becomes another reward we are not yet entitled to claim.
The third portal of The Energy of Change: The Whole Path in Every Step, the Chariot, explores what happens when we put our energy into action and expose ourselves to the possibility of failure. Can we step forward, take a risk and stand beside someone more accomplished without surrendering our dignity?
Through kung fu, Shaolin and the ascent of the heavenly stairway in China, the heroine comes to a central insight: the whole path is present in each step. How she takes it reveals how she relates to herself. Does she drive herself through shame, or build the inner support that allows her to continue?
Through a Jungian lens, this raises a question about the ego’s wish to prove itself and the movement towards the Self, towards a more integrated life. Ambition can have a place in that life without becoming the measure of our right to exist.