When I took my first Nia class, I danced, and my body smiled and breathed a huge sigh of relief – to move in a way that felt so natural and sooooo good. After taking ballet, tap and jazz as a girl, I tried ballet again as an adult, but there was no smiling in any part of my body. It seemed forbidden!
So great was the pull of Nia that I always thought in the back of my mind that I would like to share it with others, although I had never had the desire to teach anything before.
In the meantime, I moved to Greenville and struggled to find a Nia class close to home. After my daughter’s first birthday, I realized I needed to do some things for myself, to exercise and have some fun. Finally I had a revelation, I will teach my own classes! I was also trying to find ways to heal some lower back pain and little did I realize that Nia would help me with that. During this time my mother’s cancer reoccurred as well and Nia saved me from going crazy with grief while I was losing my mom. To delve into the teaching of a positive, joy-affirming practice and to share it with others has made such an enormous impact on my life, helping me heal physically, emotionally and spiritually. My hope is that I can help others, even in some tiny way, find healing too.
Focusing on “stability” this week as part of our five week, five sensations of Nia cycle. After studying the sensations, reading about them, rewriting them and then finally making myself a table to get them all straight in my head, I’m happy when something relevant pops into my head during class. I suppose I should not admit this, I should appear all-knowing and confident, but this is part of the journey, this continual learning, one of my favorite things about Nia. Also I’m just so proud of myself to be able to say that we will focus on stability with the intent to be ready for action.
Stability is sensed as a calmness in the muscles combined with a readiness for action. Tennis requires this constantly, a stable base that is ready to spring in any direction. Stability is also sensed as harmony between muscles and joints and is maintained by equalizing muscular contraction & relaxation. Loss of stability results in weakness and loss of balance and support.
So while practicing stability is great for athletes, it is also imperative for us to maintain stability during the aging process in order to stay strong and in balance. Just “moving in directions” is a good practice. Monday night we pretended that we were paired with the worst doubles partner ever, requiring us to constantly travel around the “court”. That was fun. And that’s what it’s all about.
