Tensional Selves at the Festival

Allostasis, Perception, and Preparation for Action

A mother watches her daughter perform. A judge observes technical execution. A dancer recognizes the difficulty of a jump. A teacher looks for pedagogical choices. A tourist, unfamiliar with the codes of that dance form, allows themselves to be guided by the music, the lighting, and the audience’s reactions.

They are all watching the same choreography, but they are not necessarily perceiving the same event.

Each person arrives at the Joinville Dance Festival carrying different expectations, bonds, memories, responsibilities, and bodily states. These configurations may modulate attention, breathing, muscle tone, heart rate, and the perception of risk.

The question guiding this blog is:

How does the active Tensional Self modify what each person is able to perceive, feel, and do in response to dance?

What Is a Tensional Self?

The Tensional Self is a BrainLatam hypothesis used to describe the bodily, affective, cognitive, and relational configuration that emerges in a meaningful situation.

It is not a fixed personality, a diagnosis, or an isolated emotion. It is a temporary state formed through the relationship between:

• the body’s current condition;

• memories and previous experiences;

• expectations about what may happen;

• bonds with the people present;

• social roles;

• perceived possibilities for action.

A mother may begin the performance feeling apprehensive and end it feeling relieved. A judge may temporarily leave technical analysis behind and be surprised by the work. A dancer may feel their own body anticipate a movement they are merely observing.

In BrainLatam’s formulation, Tensional Selves are continuously reorganized as body, environment, language, and belonging transform the field of experience. The concept is presented as a first-person research hypothesis, not as an already proven brain structure.

Homeostasis and Allostasis

Homeostasis refers to the maintenance of bodily conditions compatible with life. Temperature, hydration, energy availability, and oxygenation need to remain within certain ranges.

Allostasis expands this understanding by showing that the organism does not merely correct imbalances. It also anticipates needs.

Before a decisive movement occurs, the body may already be preparing.

The mother knows the sequence and anticipates the landing.
The judge searches for technical criteria.
The dancer recognizes the necessary motor preparation.
The teacher looks for elements that could be taught.
The tourist tries to interpret the scene through the reactions of the people around them.

Latin American researchers led by Joaquín Migeot describe allostasis as predictive regulation produced through the relationship between brain, body, and environment. Their work also shows that social, cultural, and environmental conditions participate in shaping bodily responses throughout life.

This adds an essential dimension to the concept of the Tensional Self: perception does not begin when a person enters the theater. They bring a bodily history with them.

To Perceive Is Also to Prepare for Action

Perception is not merely the registration of sounds, images, and movements. It also organizes possibilities for action.

Someone who believes they need to protect another person looks for signs of risk. Someone who must evaluate looks for precision. Someone who wants to learn follows technical details. Someone attending for the first time may primarily perceive rhythm, intensity, beauty, or strangeness.

In a study on the anticipation of social rejection, Migeot and colleagues observed relationships between socially meaningful expectations, interoception, and allostatic preparation. The research was not conducted at a dance festival, but it contributes to the understanding that the body may anticipate events before their outcome is known.

The same jump may therefore appear as:

• risk to a mother;

• an evaluation criterion to a judge;

• a motor challenge to a dancer;

• a pedagogical possibility to a teacher;

• an aesthetic surprise to a tourist.

The movement has its own material reality, but what becomes relevant depends on the active configuration of the Body-Territory.

Rock–Paper–Scissors

At BrainLatam, Rock–Paper–Scissors is a playful metaphor for investigating different ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting.

It engages with the distinction between fast and slow thinking popularized by Daniel Kahneman, but adds a third movement: Paper.

These are not three types of people or three brain regions operating independently. They are functional modes that may alternate quickly within the same experience.

Rock: Speed, Habit, and Execution

Rock represents the fast, automatic, sensorimotor mode.

It appears when someone immediately recognizes a pattern, performs something already learned, or reacts before carrying out a detailed analysis.

At the Festival, Rock may appear when:

• a mother holds her breath before a fall;

• a dancer instantly recognizes an error in weight support;

• the audience begins applauding together;

• someone adjusts their own posture while watching a jump.

Rock is not inferior. It enables speed, skill, and efficiency. The risk appears when it becomes autopilot and prevents the Body-Territory from perceiving new possibilities.

Scissors: Analysis, Selection, and Planning

Scissors represents the slower, deliberate, analytical mode.

It cuts experience into parts, compares information, classifies, and organizes decisions.

A judge may use Scissors to observe alignment, rhythm, and execution. A teacher may compare teaching strategies. A dancer may analyze how a transition was constructed.

Scissors makes method and critical thinking possible. Its risk appears when the act of dividing becomes so rigid that the person loses sight of the experience as a whole.

Brazilian researcher Samuel Bellini-Leite proposes an updated interpretation of dual-process theories, relating fast processes to embodied and predictive cognition and deliberate processes to symbolic processing.

This reference adds scientific rigor to the dialogue with Kahneman and helps avoid treating fast and slow thinking as two completely separate brain “buttons.”

Paper: Enjoyment and Metacognition

Paper is BrainLatam’s expansion of the model.

It represents broader attention, enjoyment, creativity, bodily perception, and metacognition: the ability to notice one’s own state while the experience is taking place.

In Paper mode:

• the mother may recognize her apprehension without being controlled by it;

• the judge may preserve technical criteria without losing the power of the work as a whole;

• the dancer may notice their own bodily response;

• the tourist may welcome the unfamiliar without needing to classify it immediately.

Paper does not mean passivity or positive thinking. It means creating space to ask:

What is my body doing right now?
Which expectation is organizing my attention?
Am I merely repeating a familiar response?
Has another perception or action become possible?

Mexican psychologist Rogelio Puente-Díaz shows that metacognitive feelings participate in the evaluation and selection of ideas during creative processes.

His work does not directly validate the BrainLatam model, but it helps explain how noticing one’s own process may guide creativity, evaluation, and decision-making.

BrainLatam summarizes the three modes as follows:

Rock executes.
Scissors analyzes.
Paper perceives, integrates, and transforms.

The richness of the game lies in alternation. No mode always wins, and none is sufficient for every situation.

Listening with the Body

Brazilian anthropologist Erica Giesbrecht, in her research on a belly dance scene in São Paulo, shows that musical listening involves the whole body. Sensitivity develops through practice and within specific cultural territories.

This contribution expands the understanding of the Tensional Self: perceiving dance is not merely processing sounds and images. It involves mobilizing embodied knowledge that has been learned over time.

A trained dancer may perceive weight distribution before a jump. A teacher may recognize technical preparation. An untrained spectator may not identify those details, but may perceive intensity, proximity, beauty, or discomfort.

There is no single correct way to be affected by dance.

The Body Is Also Historical and Territorial

Argentine archaeologist Mariana Fabra and her colleagues studied a burial approximately four thousand years old through an osteobiographical perspective. Rather than understanding the body solely as a biological structure, the study connected biological, social, and political dimensions.

This reference contributes the principle that no body exists outside its relationships, material conditions, and histories.

Brazilian Indigenous intellectual Ailton Krenak also questions the separation between humanity, territory, and other forms of life. In Ancestral Future, the body appears integrated with places, communities, rivers, memories, and collective rhythms.

Krenak should not be reduced to a neurobiological explanation. His philosophical and territorial contribution has its own autonomy and reminds science that the Body-Territory is larger than what a sensor can record.

How Could Tensional Selves Be Studied at the Festival?

A study of Tensional Selves could combine context, bodily measurements, and first-person experience.

Before the performance, researchers could investigate:

• the person’s relationship with the artists;

• their familiarity with the dance form;

• their expectations;

• their level of fatigue or discomfort;

• the role they occupy at that moment.

During the performance, with informed consent, researchers could observe changes in breathing, heart rate, posture, gaze direction, and micromovements.

After the performance, each participant could report:

• what captured their attention;

• when they felt most mobilized;

• which memories emerged;

• whether they felt an urge to move;

• which moments seemed risky, beautiful, or familiar.

Physiological data should not be used as emotion detectors.

An accelerated heart rate does not necessarily mean fear. It may accompany excitement, attention, affective attachment, or preparation for action. Breathing, muscle tone, and heart rate need to be interpreted together with context and the person’s own account.

The trajectory under investigation would be:

context → prediction → bodily change → perception → choice

When the Tensional Self Encounters Dance

The Tensional Self modifies perception because it organizes priorities. However, it may also be transformed by the work.

The mother may regain confidence.
The judge may be surprised beyond technical criteria.
The dancer may discover a new motor possibility.
The teacher may reconsider a practice.
The tourist may find belonging in an unfamiliar language.

During a single performance, the same person may alternate between Rock, Scissors, and Paper: reacting quickly, analyzing the movement, and then noticing how the experience is reorganizing their Body-Territory.

The choreography does not happen only on stage. It encounters bodies prepared by different histories and modifies what each person perceives, feels, and believes they are able to do.

Perhaps it is in this encounter that watching ceases to be merely observing.

References and Their Contribution to the Blog

BELLINI-LEITE, Samuel C. Dual Process Theory: Embodied and Predictive; Symbolic and Classical. Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 13, 2022. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.805386.
Contribution: Updates the debate on fast and slow thinking and avoids treating them as completely separate brain systems. It supports a dynamic, embodied, and predictive interpretation of Rock and Scissors.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Neuro Epigenetics in Vital Convolution — A Comparison of the Scissors and Rock Connectomes with Daniel Kahneman’s Fast and Slow Thinking. 2024.
Contribution: Presents the initial connection between the Rock–Paper–Scissors metaphor and fast and deliberate processes, placing the model within BrainLatam’s pedagogical framework.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. Joinville Dance Festival — When the Body Dances, the Spirit Reconfigures. 2025.
Contribution: Connects the Festival, the Body-Territory, and Tensional Selves, providing a BrainLatam conceptual basis for investigating how language, belonging, and bodily experience are reorganized through dance.

BRAINLATAM; CIONEK, Jackson. What Is Your Question? — Referential Neuroscientific Avatars. 2026.
Contribution: Presents the most recent formulation of the model: Rock as rapid execution, Scissors as deliberate analysis, and Paper as enjoyment with metacognition.

FABRA, Mariana et al. A Human Body, a Necklace, a Pestle, and a Stone Axe: An Osteobiographical Perspective of a 4,000-Year-Old Burial in Calamuchita Valley, Córdoba, Argentina. Latin American Antiquity, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 349–365, 2023. DOI: 10.1017/laq.2022.39.
Contribution: Demonstrates how archaeology may understand the body through the integration of biological, social, material, and political dimensions.

GIESBRECHT, Erica. Listening with the Body: Sensitivity, Music, and the Body in a Local Belly Dance Scene. Revista de Antropologia, vol. 65, no. 2, 2023. DOI: 10.11606/1678-9857.ra.2022.198224.
Contribution: Grounds musical perception as a bodily, culturally learned experience situated within a specific territory.

KRENAK, Ailton. Ancestral Future. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2022.
Contribution: Expands the notion of Body-Territory by questioning the separation between the individual, community, environment, and other forms of life.

MIGEOT, Joaquín et al. Allostatic-Interoceptive Anticipation of Social Rejection. NeuroImage, vol. 276, 2023. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120200.
Contribution: Provides a basis for understanding how socially meaningful expectations may mobilize bodily and interoceptive anticipation.

MIGEOT, Joaquín et al. Allostasis, Health, and Development in Latin America. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 162, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105697.
Contribution: Supports the discussion of allostasis and demonstrates why brain, body, environment, development, and social conditions need to be studied together.

PUENTE-DÍAZ, Rogelio. Metacognitive Feelings as a Source of Information for the Creative Process: A Conceptual Exploration. Journal of Intelligence, vol. 11, no. 3, 2023.
Contribution: Helps connect Paper mode with the perception and regulation of one’s own creative processes, without claiming that the article directly proves the BrainLatam model.

Conceptual Reference Published Before 2021

KAHNEMAN, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow.
Contribution: Provides the conceptual antecedent used by BrainLatam to associate Rock with fast thinking and Scissors with deliberate thinking. Paper is the playful and metacognitive expansion proposed by BrainLatam.

The terminology can also be adapted to a more academic English register or a more accessible international blog style.