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!

In today's Nia, we did the routine, Moodfood.  With the focus on the feet, and all those sensuous sultry lyrics, WOW!  We started with rolling our feet back and forth and "rocking around the clock", we drew our attention to sensing our feet and letting the sensation travel up through our bodies and 13 main joints.  This routine brings us several Nia moves, cross-behind, cross-front, cha-cha-cha, kicks, stances, blocks energized with Tae Kwon Do, Aikido-like harmonizing spirals, soul-based Duncan dance, and shape-based modern dance. 

Along the way, the lyrics to two of the songs vied for our attention!  Rainsong and Spiritual High.  Click Lyrics If you'd like to see the lyrics.   Click Moodfood by the MoodSwings to see more about the music CD. 

More about the moves used during the routine can be found in The Nia Technique book, available for purchase before or after NiaDivas classes at Youngstown Arts Center.EnJoy!  Lesley

As we embark on the New Year, I've begun a new routine. choreographed by Carlos Rosas, entitled Earthsong. The focus (what we are putting our attention on) of for this wonderful routine is the One Point. The Intent (how we want to be in our Nia experience) is to direct all our movements from our body's center of gravity, the One Point.

Today, in Jill's Nia class, Jill led us in Earthsong. WOW! Focusing on the one-point, the center of our body movement and grounding, this routine is one you've got to experience! The one point is slightly below or around or belly button and interior, sometimes referred to as our center point. The music and moves and Jill's teaching of Earthsong led us to play with expanding and compacting from the one point. This gave us the ability to expand the edges of our boundaries 360 degrees in body, mind, emotion, and spirit.

Connected, whole, controlled yet free, free yet stable. The body secure in the one-point moving in and out of its limits effortlessly and with joy. It's as if I could see for miles with senses other than vision as I moved in and out of places known and unknown. Even better, the whole group of us were moving in and out of movement from the one-point. It was palpable and delicous.

Lately, I've been reading a book that my loving husband (Don, Nia Diva's webmaster) gave me, The Intuitive Body, Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice by Wendy Palmer. Aikido is one of the martial arts forms that feeds into Nia, and I'm hungry for all things Nia, all things embodiment! Anyway...in the book, the author talks about the physical center of the body being "the part of us that remembers we belong to the universe." Beautiful, isn't it!

Today was the first time I've done Earthsong, and I'll be back for more!

Sending hugs of harmony,
Lesley