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Dance Your Way to Radiant Health with Nia...
the Anti-aging Movement Form!
"My doctor said he didn't know what I was doing to improve my osteoporosis, but whatever it was, keep doing it. I told him it was Nia!"
"My neck and shoulders were hurting before we did the class; now they feel great. Thank you!"
"When I take aerobics classes, I can't wait for the class to be over. When I take Nia, I never want the class to end."
These are the kinds of comments I hear from my students, virtually every time I finish teaching a Nia class. After ten years of teaching between ten and fifteen classes per week, these kinds of results are the very reasons I love being a teacher. Comments like these never cease to thrill me. They are tangible evidence of the healing properties of Nia, and the reason why I am in love with what I do.
So what is it about Nia that is so different from other forms of exercise? Quite a few aspects of Nia cause this unique movement form to stand apart from the crowd.
For one thing, Nia is a combination of nine movement forms. From the Martial Arts, there's Tai Chi, Taekwondo, and Aikido. From Dance Arts, we get Jazz, Modern, and Duncan Dance. From the Healing Arts, we incorporate Yoga, Feldenkrais, and Alexander Technique. Each of these movement forms teaches movement the Body's Way (as opposed to overriding the body's way, which can result in injury).... the way the body was designed to move. When we move the way we were designed to, we experience sensations, or physical ,feelings of joy and aliveness. We feel youthful again!
For another, Nia doesn't just stop at exercising the muscles. Nia movement also soothes and lubricates the 13 major joints (ankles, knees, hips, spine and neck, shoulders, elbows, and wrists), works tendons and ligaments, AND massages inner organs. Nia movement "milks" the joints and moves them in ways that flush out calcium deposits, thereby counteracting any development of arthritis.
Nia leads students into a joyful, experiential, and ongoing relationship with their own bodies, via the Five Sensations of Nia. Coincidentally, in developing and working with these five sensations, students are also developing five attributes which increase health and well being and which are markers which define our level of youthfulness or aging.
- Flexibility: the sensation caused when we move energy OUT, such as stretching muscles along the bones. Flexibility is also defined as the range and ease of movement we experience as we open and close our joints.
- Agility: the ability to start and stop at will. Agility is a combination of speed and strength. Example: Taekwondo kicks, blocks, and punches. Agility creates a unique sensation in the body which we can track with our awareness.
- Mobility: the sensation we get when we put the body in motion and keep it in motion for an entire hour. the motion can vary in range and rhythm as the moves and the music change. But the exhilarating sensation of staying in motion creates a sensation of aliveness and joy that contributes to our overall state of health and well being.
- Strength: the sensation of squeezing and condensing our muscles as we sink into the earth, push ourselves away from the earth, or push and pull with the arms and torso in isometric ways. When we experience this empowering sensation, we are strengthening our bone and increasing bone density as a direct result of lifting and moving our own body weight.
- Stability: the sensation of energy moving down our body and legs and into the earth, giving us a feeling of solidity and security, no matter how we choose to stand.... whether it be in one of the many stances of Nia, balancing on one leg, or combining one-leg and two-leg stances with movement and dance. Many older people lose the awareness of what their feet and legs are doing, causing instability and leading to falls. Nia re-energizes our connection to the earth through our feet, our center of balance (called our "hara" or Tan Tien), and promotes a feeling of confidence as we move through life.
As we learn to connect to these sensations in Nia movement, we also gain the ability to heal ourselves through movement. How? As we experience these sensations and learn how they each feel to us, we are learning to listen inwardly to our body. We are then able to take advantage of the special wisdom held within our cells, a wisdom that can only speak to us through the language of sensation.
Utilizing sensation, we then employ Nia's 5 Stages of Healing to listen to our bodies, then move in ways that make us feel better... and better.... and better. The 5 stages are Embryonic, Creeping, Crawling, Standing, and Walking. These can be used literally, in movement on the floor, to open joints and improve overall body conditioning. The stages can also be used figuratively to give us a way to determine where we are as an individual with regard to healing any aspect of our body or our movement. In fact, Nia's definition of self-healing is, making on ongoing series of small choices for self-kindness in the ways we move.
In Nia, that's just what we do. We use an entire hour to learn how to choose ways of moving that are kind to ourselves, and that make us feel better. As a result, we re-awaken flexibility, agility, mobility, strength, and stability. We establish a more loving relationship with our physical selves. We feel younger, more vibrant, more integrated, happier.
Through movement, we find health.
In Nia, dancing is not just what we do when the music comes on. It is any movement our bodies make. Ultimately, dancing is not even something we do; it is what we are. This ubiquitous dance of life cannot be confined to any specific place. It requires the largest possible stage: life itself.
Dancing Through Life is movement as pleasure. It is Nia's prescription for enjoying life in a human body. It ctively integrates healthy movements into every aspect of living, from the mundane activities to the sublime. It can consist of washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, or making love. It doesn't matter what you do, but how you feel when you do it. It is also a waltz of movement and stillness, silence and sound. It's a method for finding meaning, beauty, and connection -magic!-in a world that may once have seemed dross and pointless. - Debbie and Carlos Rosas
For information on Nia Technique at the international level, click here: www.nianow.com
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