Started working with Principle 2 of Blue Belt yesterday with a 52 Moves Class.  My theme was to be in a communicative relationship with each of Nia’s moves.  Each move has some story or information that can be useful to the dancer.  As it says in the Blue Belt Manual, start with the heel lead and as you step in, let your heel (and body) transmit and receive information.  “The floor is cold, my balance is good, my whole foot is in contact with the floor…” By paying attention to each move, as if the move is a being – relating to me – I can listen to its message.  I tell my body (transmit) what to do and then I listen (receive) the messages it sends back to me.  I am in relationship to my body, the 52 moves, the music, the body of work of Nia, my clothes, the air, the space, my mood, etc…  There is lots of information going out and coming in. Read More→

In class, based on Principle 2, we danced to seek out our movement form personality.  I contended that we all have shades of all the movement forms in our personalities and that some are more dominant than others and that can shift depending on where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing (as well as how much sleep you get, how long it’s been since you last had sex, if you are in a loving relationship, if your kids are around, how old you are, what you’ve eaten, etc…etc…etc…).

The 9 movement forms of Nia form a pretty well rounded list of attributes. I am pretty much a Tae Kwon Do/Jazz/Feldenkreis person.  Not a whole lot of Thai Chi in me, but wait… There are lots of times, more recently that the slow dance is playing a bigger role in my dance through life.  I like to dance to find myself, so I invited my students to do the same and then use that information (what’s dominant, and what’s slight in presence) to make choices in their life that temper or boost their movement personality into more balance.

We danced Zensation.  It made the exploration fairly easy since the movement forms are more purely showcased by the 9 songs of the routine.

My pearls were the pearls listed in The Nia Technique White Belt Learn book, page 46. hdsis

This week we are focusing on the combination of principle 1 from White, Blue, and Brown Belts.I combine The Joy of Movement~Sensing Universal Joy, The Joy of Being in Relationship~The power of Two, and The Joy of Movement in the Zone~Expanding Awareness.

As we danced, I suggested that each person tap into sensing Joy in their body as pleasure.  If it wasn’t present, tweak as necessary and then when Joy in the form of physical pleasure was found, sustain.  Once sustained, try to increase the sensation or expand it in some way.  Again, if pleasure was not there, the suggestion was to tweak again and again until the tweaking, increasing, and sustaining were all fluid, simultaneous, etc… This takes practice.  More and more I realize that dancing all out crazy will not get me to Joy.  It often provides me with pain messages and the initial charge that I get from movement to music is eclipsed by that. Read More→

On ENERGY WEEK of my Nia study, I had a Jam at The Mindfulness Center.  The theme was Back-To-School and it was great.  I had had a really awful day at school, the worst ever I think and my energy for the theme was not too great even though I was very happy to be dancing on a Friday night with my Nia ladies in Bethesda.  My energy changed as soon as I got to TMC and the Jam turned out to be the best I produced yet.  There were 10 people, three of which were official teachers and the rest, dancers.  During my teaching stint, I ran four school-based themes.  The first song (warm up from Dreamwalker) I did with the students perfectly lined up in columns and rows.  The intent was to dance and stay in your assigned place, just like in school.  Read More→

This week’s classes focused on Principle # 1 of the Brown Belt, The Joy of Movement in the Zone  ~ Expanding Awareness. Brown Belt is about Energy and how we use, abuse, increase, save, utilize, circulate, fritter, conserve, keep or spend, etc…ENERGY.  The Zone is difficult to understand unless you go there.  It is the place where I am energetically self-contained and comfortable but at the same time I am connected with everything else.  It is a feeling of rest and support.  It is slower than regular/ordinary life.  It is quiet and unhassled.  Really, if I could stay in the zone at all times, I would.  As it is, I can slip into the zone when I realize that I am not in it.  Usually, I step into the zone energy when I step into Nia class, but there are other times when I am in the zone without realizing it.  Knowing that I am in the zone is the better deal than allowing it to slip my attention.  I can change the way I feel if I change the way I behave.  I can change my quality of life if I desire to do so, by saying, thinking and doing with the awareness of what I want.  

So, the work of the first principle in brown belt is expanding awareness.  This is knowing what you are doing and knowing what you aren’t doing. Avoiding not knowing what you are doing and not knowing what you aren’t doing. This might sound complex, and it is, but it is easy to sense when you consciously choose awareness of energy and stay in that awareness. Read More→