Explored the Joy of Being In Relationship To My Body in Nia class yesterday. 
The routine was a compilation of songs and the focus made the hour fly by. Each song was chosen to draw attention (focus) to sensation in a different joint (set of joints). There were 11 songs, so the last four were focused on body, mind, emotion, spirit. I got a great workout and learned some new things about the choreography, the music, my joints, and the anatomy of movement. When I explore relationship, I am looking at my attitude toward, the difference between, the proximity to, the coordination of, the mobility of or the immobility of, the health of in comparison to another time, the desires of, the voice of, the dominance or subservience to, my knowledge of, familiarity with, etc… etc… The outcome of this exploration was an increased awareness that things are happening all the time with or without my notice. Keying into sensation in my ankles just makes me aware of what is already going on there. My ankles are relating to me, eachother, the past, present and future whether or not I am cognizant of it. Focusing in on one thing at a time gives me the pleasure of feeling what I want rather than letting my body feel what it feels – which is sometimes pain if I am not paying attention. My left foot is a great example of this. My foot has a few problems that are exacerbated by lack of attention. When I pay attention, I am able to heal the ill. Read More→
It was a blustery night and all the activity in the branches of the trees was scary, but very peaceful in a weird way. We experienced gusts and swirls of wind, rather than sustained hurricane force winds and what I saw was the trees take an aikido-like approach to dealing with the wind. The branches twisted and swayed and bend with the wind. They looked relaxed in a way which allowed the wind to push the big branches around, but not break them off the trees. My living room window looks out on some very old big, tall trees with long reaching branches. There was a beautiful cacophony of movement during the night with the branches dancing with the wind. Fantastic way to learn how to deal with conflict and adversity; bend and go with it. The trees looked like they were emphatically conducting an orchestra. 
I was going for the Joy thing. I spoke about choosing sensation and Joy and sustaining and tweaking and all that. It was a decent intro. I reviewed the DVD before class. I really took my time going over a few sequences that I always get stuck on. I believed I was in a great place for delivering the Promise of Joy and Nia. Well….. I sucked. I sucked out loud. I was off my music cues, I was cueing stuff that wasn’t supposed to happen, I stopped one song – tempted to start it over and I just flubbed the whole thing. I am sure that no one else in the room could have possibly been experiencing Joy since the whole thing was incredibly hard to follow and fast and steppy and all the rest. If there was any joy it was when I said step out. What to do about this? I am looking for the lesson. I wonder if there is any gift, small or large to be gleaned from that experience. I suppose I could chalk the determination to be “In Joy” in spite of difficulty and discomfort could be a joy enhancing nugget to take away from this, but somehow I think that is pushing it. I didn’t feel any joy. The routing hurts me. It is complex. The music is great, but matching to the steps to the fractioned music make a mess of my leadership ability. There is a lot of cross back and front cha, cha, chas and that really hurts my foot. I have not (in a year) found decent ownership of this routine and it’s possibilities and I think I will provide myself with some joy by taking it off my play list for a while. 
