Stem Cells That Tango: How Productive Tension Activates Growth

All right, I’ve probably thrown you off balance before you’ve even started reading.

Stem cells don’t tango – or do they?💃🕺

Before I explain why I would even bring that up, let me paint the picture.

I’ve spent the last ten days in Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of the rare pure impact sages in my life, Garnet Morris, asked me to help with an effort involving the Moviglia Method, an advanced regenerative medicine approach developed by one of the world’s pioneering researchers in Argentina. The goal is to bring this work into collaboration with a prominent university in the United States. That’s the kind of person Garnet is, genuinely committed to impact with a pure heart that doesn’t waver.

The deeper I engaged with the research and the conversations surrounding it, the more I realized I was witnessing something genuine. I watched the eyes of some of the top scientists light up with the knowing of pure truth. I saw what this work has actually done for the health of people close in my network. The Moviglias, seeing my engagement and genuine interest, extended a personal invitation for my wife and me to come and have a firsthand experience ourselves.

My wife and I have lived big, full lives. We’ve climbed mountains, raised five sons, and now we’re chasing twelve grandchildren around. We’ve never shied away from living hard and living well. But honestly, after all of that, our cells need a recharge. 🔋 So we said yes.

The science behind what I’ve been learning is mind blowing, research based, deeply technical. I love this stuff. The deeper I’ve gone into understanding what happens at the cellular level, the more fascinating it becomes.

An important caveat first. Regenerative medicine is an evolving field, and some of the approaches being researched and used here remain experimental. I’m certainly not a physician or scientist, and I’m not suggesting that our personal experience proves any particular medical outcome. I’m simply sharing what I’ve been learning and experiencing.

And somewhere in the middle of all this technical sophistication, I found a pretty powerful life lesson.

In order for stem cells to activate, they have to do the tango.

Our own cells were collected and cultured, and yes, they actually grow your own stem cells. Components of our blood and immune system, including lymphocytes, were also collected and prepared. Here’s where it gets interesting. The lymphocytes don’t just sit passively alongside the stem cells. They create inflammation, and that inflammation becomes the trigger. It’s the signal that activates the dance, that guides the stem cells in their replication and repair work. The approach being studied involves this active interplay among stem cells, immune cells and the biological signals they generate together in response to the tissue being targeted. It’s not stem cells doing their work in isolation. It’s stem cells and immune cells in conversation, responding to each other’s presence.

That distinction fascinated me.

Most of us carry a simplistic picture of stem cells in our minds. You inject a bunch of these magical little repair cells into a bad knee, shoulder or heart, and somehow they know exactly what to do. Biology is far more complicated than that. Cells respond to their environment. There are signals. There are immune responses. There are interactions and activation and communication taking place. In other words, there is a dance going on. A cellular tango.

And suddenly I realized that what I was learning in the laboratory had a whole lot to say about life outside the laboratory.

Almost anything significant that grows requires some form of tension. A muscle without resistance atrophies. You don’t build strength by removing the weights. You build strength because the muscle has something pushing against it. Businesses work the same way. Without challenge, questioning and some healthy tension, organizations become complacent. Relationships need it too. A marriage where nobody is ever willing to say the uncomfortable thing doesn’t necessarily become peaceful. It can simply become shallow. My wife and I have been married for forty years, and believe me, you don’t put two independent human beings together for that long without some tension. The trick isn’t eliminating it. The trick is learning what to do with it.

Even our civic and political systems need appropriate civil tension. Ideas should be challenged. Assumptions should be questioned. Different perspectives should be able to push against one another without turning the person on the other side into an enemy.

Yet so much of our lives is spent trying to eliminate tension. We want a marriage without disagreement, a business without problems, children without struggle, faith without questions, muscles without resistance and growth without discomfort. I’m starting to wonder if we’ve got that backward. Maybe tension isn’t always the enemy of growth. Sometimes tension is the very thing that activates it.

Of course, there’s an important distinction here. Not all tension is healthy. Too much resistance tears a muscle. Too much inflammation damages the body. Too much unresolved conflict destroys trust. The answer isn’t more tension. The answer is productive tension. It’s enough resistance to engage us, enough opposition to strengthen us, enough discomfort to wake us up and enough uncertainty to make us reconsider what we thought we knew.

That is what I find so beautiful about the Argentine tango. The dancers don’t eliminate the tension between them. They use it. One advances and the other gives way. One creates pressure and the other responds. Then, almost without noticing it, they change roles. What looks for a moment like opposition becomes movement.

That’s a powerful way to think about the difficult things happening in our own lives. Rather than immediately asking how to make the tension go away, maybe there’s a better question: What is this tension trying to activate in me? What conversation have I been avoiding? What assumption needs challenging? Where have I become too comfortable? What relationship needs attention? What part of me has become dormant because nothing has pushed against it for a while?

I came to Argentina thinking I was going to learn about stem cells, and I certainly have. I’ve had cells extracted and cultured, blood separated, lymphocytes collected and treatments administered. I’ve spent hours listening to doctors and researchers explain cellular biology that stretches my brain in ways I absolutely love.

But somewhere in the middle of all this sophisticated science, I found myself thinking about something much simpler. Maybe we don’t need to spend our lives trying to eliminate every bit of tension. Maybe we need to become better at recognizing the difference between tension that destroys us and tension that develops us. Sometimes the thing pushing against us isn’t there simply to stop us. Sometimes it gives us something to push against so we can move forward. Sometimes opposing forces don’t have to destroy one another. With enough awareness, patience and practice, they can actually create movement.

And after ten days in Buenos Aires, I’m beginning to think the Argentines figured that out a long time ago.

Sometimes you lean into the tension, feel the resistance, listen for the music and tango.

Keep Dancing,

Rich Christiansen

Stem Cells That Tango: Ep 11 | Calm the Chaos with Rich Christiansen

In this episode of Calm The Chaos, I share what happened in Buenos Aires when we watched the Argentine tango and went through the Moviglia Method, why stem cells don’t simply get to work but activate through tension, and why nothing grows without it, not our bodies, our faith or our marriages. Watch Here.