In my last post, I wrote about what I felt was at the Heart of Nia--when you peel away all the other important stuff...what keeps Nia alive.

 This week, I'd like to discuss what I feel makes a Nia class unique. How did I come up with the list. Well I asked myself...if you took this out of Nia, would it still be Nia? For example...dancing barefoot. Nia was designed to be done barefoot. However, wearing shoes doesn't detract from the what Nia is. It's possible to enjoy Nia in shoes.

So here's my brief list. I feel because of these components, Nia is the uniquely beautiful and incredibly effective experience that she is:

1)  Relationship to the Music- Nia music is sensational! A variety of music inspires a variety of body movements, emotional gestures and overall body conditioning. So in Nia, we listen to the music, we let the music and the artist tell us their story, and we dance our interpretation of it. Nia music that comes from Nia headquarters is personally selected and compiled just for Nia teachers.

This weekend Lesley and I enjoyed sharing our New to Nia Workshop to an enthusiastic group of Nia newbies. Preparing for the presentation, we asked ourselves "What is at the heart of Nia?" Whew, that feels like a big question... and Nia is such a deep and broad practice to study. We looked to the Nia's White Belt Principals, the first level of Nia Study, and came up with these points that were essential in our own Nia practice.

At the Heart of Nia (the Technique) there is:

1. Awareness of Sensation (felt in the body). In Nia we are connecting to what we are feeling in our body--in Nia we refer to this as sensation. Becoming aware of sensation cultivates the body-mind relationship. Nia teachers invite their students to become more aware of sensation by saying in class "Every body sense your (body part).........." This is an invitation to practice and cultivate your relationship with your body. "When I'm moving this way, what can I sense in this part of my body". Defining sensations can run the gamut of adjectives beyond just GOOD or BAD. We invite you to begin cultivating your own personal "sensation-glossary"...twingey, fluid, sticky, tight, free, choppy...the list goes on.

 This essay was posted from a Nia Teacher on our Nia Teachers internet forum. It struct a cord with me as I remember about a year ago hearing from a female student who had a heart attack, in her car, right after taking one of my Nia Classes.  Similar to this women, she had the presence of mind to call for help. Even though she didn't know what was happening, she knew the sensations were not normal.

As February reminds us of valentines and love...let it remind us too of our marvelous heart muscle.

A very courageous woman asked me how much longer we were sticking to our current Earthsong routine. After telling her, "for a while longer", she honestly replied she was getting bored with it. And my reaction (in my head) was...you think YOU are bored with it, try teaching it every class of the week. What, a Nia teacher admitting, yup, I was getting bored. Now, I Love Nia...and I love teaching, so I knew there is more to this single element of wistfully feeling "bored". For me, this boredom meant I was stuck in my movement patterns and habits, had stopped really listening to the music with my body, and was lacking creative energy. Having just finished our first Welcome to Nia Class, where Lesley and I discussed how to energize movements, I turned to the 9 Movement Forms to break me out of my movement stigma and reenegize my body's conditioning. Any whew...what a discovery!

In Thursday's evening class, we still used Earthsong. The focus was on Energizing with the 3 Dance Arts: modern dance, duncan dance and jazz dance. WOW! What an entirely different experience allowing ourselves the experience and energy of these unique dance forms. Energizing our moves with modern dance we explored loading our legs with gravity, creating shapes in space and encouraging ourselves to be languid and emotive while connected to our base (legs). While energizing with Duncan dance, I found the upward magnetic energy in fully expanding the area around my heart and muscles in my chest. Allowing my movement to express a more carefree, child-like expression. With the energy of jazz, I found encouraging students to "be more out there" to "look and love it!". Nia movements laced with jazz have a snappy, confident-feel,--expressive and peppy!

Tommorrow is NiaDivas first Welcome to Nia class, hurray! Lesley and I are looking forward to introducing Nia to more folks and also having a little more "talk time" in regards to the Practice of The Nia Technique.

In addition to describing Nia, we will be introducing a handout on the Three Stages of Practice. Nia's three stages of practice will help you learn and embody Nia's 52 moves and 9 movement forms in a more graceful way where there is less pressure to "start out perfect" and instead more time honoring where you are in our learning curve.

The Nia Technique's 3 Stages of Practice: