a couple notes:

• I heard the concept of "social translucence", which I hadn't heard before. An analogy that explained it for me was a door with a window in it — when a door has a window in it, you feel more comfortable opening it without worrying that you'll hit someone on the other side, since you can see if they are there or not. Email is not very "socially translucent" for me, since I have to say quite a few things before getting any feedback about how the other person is reacting, so it takes a long time to write an email.
• I'm increasingly convinced that one-on-one mentoring is awesome, and a really good way to spread certain kinds of ideas, like ways of thinking about things, that are difficult to express in, say, a book. I felt like my friend was mentoring me about how to express myself, and I feel like I learned much more in that brief interaction than I have in hearing about self expression in general over the course of my life, in large part because it was interactive — I danced — and some of the learning could only happen by engaging in the activity, but with someone there that I could ask questions of in real-time about my concerns, and to say things like "reach as high as you can", and also suggested that we spend some time "screaming", to break down barriers of vocal expression.