NiaDivas

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!