The Grand Bridging Analogy

The Grand Bridging analogy is a way to parse difference of perspective. This was invented for Neurodivergence but also has application across the board including Partner Dance, Politics, Communication, as well as perspective broadening.

The fundamental analogy works like this:

1. Everyone is Different. Each person has a barrier to connect/communicate with anyone else.
2. We describe this barrier as the ocean on a vast globe. Each person has their own island of comfort where they naturally connect.
3. Some Islands are closer to others.
4. If you know where someone is comfortable you can build a bridge for your island towards theirs. This takes energy as it moves away from your defaults.
5. Building a bridge half way is doable. Building a bridge from your island 100% of the way is quite hard.
6. If you notice someone building a bridge to you its easy to do you half of the work bridging to them. That way you meet in the middle and don’t have to build a bridge all the way back down to them.

Additional Dance Ideas

1. Each dance style has a mainland.
   1. An idea of what is correct form for the dance
2. Fusion has a meeting place at best see: Crossroads Posture.
   1. This makes fusion a fundamentally different perspective on partner dance.
   2. Like a meet and greet, Crossroads Posture creates awareness through direct communication from a shared understanding.
      1. Then you can split off and explore your shared connection outside of a default.
   3. Experienced fusion dancers might visually or connection wise build a bridge strait for their island to meet their partner bypassing the crossroads.
   4. Dancers familiar with each other will know which way to build and thus can bypass crossroads posture
3. Good Bridging Dancers can often dance with non dancers or to dance styles that have no understanding of.
   1. This takes bridging awareness and mechanical understanding
   2. It also takes dance styles that are internally consistent without arbitrary constraints such as: 1.

Additional Mental Health ideas 4. Neurotypical people form a mainland where they either were born or changed themselves to live there 1. Masking/passing is the idea of bridging to the mainland to get along with neurotypicals. 1. This takes varying amounts of energy depending on where your island is. 1. The mainland does not bridge back to you as it is internally validated.