Dancing with Belief: Illuminating Paths through the Power of Belief | Sunil Sunkara | TEDxMDIGurgaon

and I've given more than 400 performances I have recently been awarded the Bismillah Academy which is the highest highest honor for an artist to go to the age of 40 as she mentioned and we launched the delicate that the world for art and culture under the ages of the Art of Living Foundation which reaches out to more than 180 countries if I told you I started

not in India in the USA from Peruvian teacher so I sign up with that just because believing that I would be a better dancer one day was not something that I ever thought of I always thought I would be in a university much like the campus that you are in teaching technical engineering but life and Destiny had some other plans for me and this is where

I come to the first aspect of when we think of the power of believing as an artist and even as a student and as spoke about failure as an artist many times things don't go as declined like together might did not start as planned but there are worse failures that happen on stage and these failures teach you that how you can come back to the stage

I used to initially get very upset oh my goodness this performance did not go well what is the entire Community going to think about me always that was like a like a dagger hanging over me that I have to prove myself at any point that this engineer Can Dance but my mom said listen those famous foreign that yes you can go back and be successful again

this I think applies to every field that there could be a bad examination that could be a bad interview a bad performance but we can go back and and it is that belief that yes I can do it that is what takes you forward the next incident that happened in my journey is that I had multiple injuries a spine injury multiple ligament test and an injury

in migraine so the doctor said and especially whose doctor was our family friend he said you better go back to chemical engineering you were at the top of your class why do you want to continue and be a dancer I think it's it's not going to happen with your body but at that point again I did not give up and I feel that is the second

power of believing the second strength that comes is that you can heal yourself just by believing our body it responds to what we believe and believing that yes I can overcome this the physical Obstacle of what my body cannot do and get back to what we want to do that was another lesson that I had in that Journey during that Journeys when my spiritual world this

morning and the beliefs that he had that yes this is the part because when I went to him as an engineer he said I know you better focus on Catholic and that belief and that Faith helped my own belief and so that's what I feel that whenever our beliefs somewhat you know when it shakes a little bit at that point latch onto someone it could be

your friend it for your parents it could be a book it could be a spiritual Guru but that belief will help you amplify and believe in your belief that you can heal then you can get better so that was about my life Journey but what I want to speak to you today is not about the power of believing but about the power of make will and

that is what we do as an artist we come on to a stage and the connection between the audience and the artist has to establish something that is in jail when we think of the science of Art we go back to the 90 chapter is a living tradition in India for more than 7 500 years but its written tradition dates back 2000 years so you can

imagine this country always believed in the power as well as the science of Art and there's one word that who is the author he gives us you may or may not have heard this word before but you must have heard the word sentiment and how to interpret it I'm sure many of you have been to movies to a horror movie where you enjoyed being horrified and

screaming in that theater you went just for their experience you know none of that is real if it happened in your own house you wouldn't be enjoyed it when people enjoy it because you want to that is the power of make dreams and the power of enjoying a sentiment that he's talking about but how do you create that in your own self is that something we

can apply to our own lives yes and here uh where dance can apply to everybody is through the use of body language we also know dance music of poses that are done since let's take a simple thing just adjust towards someone this can see a lot hello why are you late idea the same gesture but what changes is the body language that goes along with it

so while these of you are sitting here there is different body language that is happening someone is listening someone is not but you can interpret your audience and each other during the body language that you learned and connecting with the belief that the body what it says is actually a lot more than what you see interpreting somebody's body language to dance that is the power of

Make Believe today in this campus as I was walking by with such a riot of beautiful spring colors I'm jealous of all of you and I was wondering why do people sit in a room and listen to us when they can be outside enjoying that beautiful nature so I know you're like here I'll never let us imagine that actually we are outside and there are beautiful

class blooming degrees and this beautiful Breeze that is blowing the fragrance the fragrance makes you feel as if it is spring and [Music] um foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] but the power of breathing can also take you into the world of different characters and let us imagine now we have this beautiful red carpet that is that is the symbol I think of FedEx stocks the speakers are

supposed to stay on it and that is like it'd be hot seat that we have to be on now let us imagine that what is red tell us to tell that stock using the color red other than on the red carpet when we see it especially a red circle it's always stock you know let us change that let us imagine this to be a safe Zone

very nice ground there's nothing wrong with this and what is on the rest of the ground let us go to a Battlefield a Battlefield not of this era but back to the time of the kurukshetra on this battlefield at the end of the 18 days lie the bodies of hundreds of followers and at that time you can imagine writing large scale patterns it's not possible to

take away each body that body is being taken up by Nature the vultures the Flesh and the masses mixing with the ground so you see it's becoming Arena from Spring we are going into the sightings and now we have a character the character is the mother of the followers she doesn't believe that the one whom she blessed with a diamond body has actually been killed she

says I will put check for myself and she goes on to the battlefield who has forever shatter eyes agitation in her mind she goes towards the battlefield [Music] She searches for the bodies of the children she can't understand what it is the softer achanic Ally [Music] all she can see is skeletons all around her could you see them I sure could see them and that is

when made beef becomes a part of a dancer's life but why am I talking to you about making when we think of our body the body is a stool sharing on the physical body of bone flesh Mars our hair and then we go into the suks machine that is our psychosomatic inner self that we all connect with our personality the second stage and the third stage

is where we think of the car and Australia or what many of us call as self innocent Atma this morning we saw a plus b equal to C self-awareness Plus self belief we need to self-confidence so that self when we experience an emotion I'm sure some of you would have come across uh regular maybe some of your friends be very afraid of dogs all lizards or

a final or a cockroaches blank why were you born sometimes it is afraid of something what is it like this impression that is carried within the corona stranger that is how what we think of as emotion and emotion can transcend from our body into a psychosomatic self into the inner self and that impression which we carry within us is what can be hidden within our subconscious

also so as a dancer or as an artist we reverse Earth we take the emotion and from inside we bring it out to the outer body through a narrative and that is when the discharge happens of emotions come within some of you may have experienced it is there anyone here who is a bathroom dancer bathroom singer yes there are some bathroom dancers out there so when

we think about Shiva the nataraja you know now that you know what we ask the word nut comes from the word natraja meaning the one who dances so when we go there Shiva Nama invites you to come watching Dance he's dancing in the cosmos he's dancing there all by himself if you go there he would be very angry but Krishna says come let us dress up

let us wear beautiful outfits let us come together in connection and dance together just like we don't invite anyone into a bathroom to watch us dance but we'll be very happy doing that in a club in a party in a disco in a wedding Sunday wherever it is that you dance a stage of proceeding so disconnect of an emotion Within manifesting outside yourself manifesting out outside

your body that is the connection going from that Raja to network Krishna that is why we have these two dancing gods in India and each time you feel an emotion in your life I think awareness is where you can connect with what is that emotion doing to your body once you start understanding how your body reacts to an emotion that is a great Sutra for you

to have because then you would be able to understand your own body language your own subconscious and be able to see what is it that I said you are not noticing in uh things that you do not notice so we have to begin noticing with what our body is telling us that is what the dance of Make Believe teaches us and that is when I come

to my third and last point of the power of believing that is in the power sometimes of Make Believe of the inner story within you of the inner Dream Within you of that imagination because that is more powerful than you give it credit to because it is in that make believe that believes original and within that beautiful narratives of life [Applause]