Three of the most extraordinary minutes of my life happened in June 2010 at the Charlottesville Pavilion. After weeks of planning and practicing, at the break between bands at Friday’s After Five, our first Charlottesville flash mob broke out.
Hundreds of people, many of whom I’d never met, sprang into movement together to Friday, I’m In Love by The Cure. At that time, I’d been leading movement for a decade but I’d never felt the tsunami of joy I did that day. Still, now, I cannot watch the video without crying happy tears. (We also did Charlottesville Flash Mobs in 2011 and 2012 that were super fun!)
In 1912, French sociologist Émile Durkheim coined the term ‘collective effervescence’ for the euphoric unity generated when humans move together.
In their 2016 Exercising Together Boosts Performance and Forges Friendships, Jacob Taylor, Emma Cohen, and Arran Davis explain that “coordinated group movement – what we call social motion – sets the stage for the changes in brain chemistry often associated with altered perceptions and beliefs.”
The social connection that happens in social motion can provide us with what the researchers call “the buzz necessary to reverse cycles of social and physical inactivity, bringing us closer to one another, and closer to the physical and mental health we require to thrive.”
That day at the Pavilion, we were most certainly thriving.
Charlottesville 2010 Flash Mob!
There is lots of research that bears this out. In her 2020 Scientific American piece, Marta Zaraska writes,
Many group activities boost our sense of belonging, but research shows that doing things synchronously can build even stronger social ties and create a greater sense of well-being.
And the research of Bronwyn Tarr, an Experimental Psychologist at the University of Oxford reports that
...when you synchronise even a small movement, like the tapping of your finger in time with someone else, you feel closer and more trusting of that person than if you had tapped out of time.
...the social closeness humans feel when doing synchronised activities may be because they trigger the release of a cocktail of bonding hormones, including endorphins.
It is such a human thing when we move together. Whether in the realms of religion, dance, or sport, synchronized movement is a way of signaling to our brains and to each other that we are connected. Some researchers speculate that moving together was a way of expanding our “tribe” beyond the handful of people we could connect with directly.
What I find in my work, teaching both in-person and on-line, is that part of what connects us even more is that we are moving together but not the same. Part of what moves me to tears watching these Flash Mobs is that none of us are professional dancers. We’re all just people moving our particular bodies together and in our own way.
The cool thing is that while I’m partial to group movement to music, you can tap into the power of collective effervescence in simple ways. Rock a baby, clap along with a kiddo, sway with your beloved, or simply tap your fingers to a song with a friend. Any movements that you do with someone (including doing them online) will fire up your brain with bonding hormones.
The experience of collective effervescence is the reminder that we all need and want love and belonging...even as we find them in our own way.