Base Move
Open Stance
Say it: “align”
Standing in place, align your feet in the parallel position, hip-width apart. Keep your feet, ankles, knees and hip joints relaxed and spring-loaded. To sustain upright balance, slip into the posture of at-ease and ready, sensing your posture as if falling up towards the sky. When practicing Open Stance, sense the inner and outer arches of your feet connected to the earth; this will help you to avoid collapsing inward or falling outward. Use your core and upper extremities to support you in moving down and up and vice versa. As you lower, point your tailbone backwards, generating the movement from the balls of your hip joints. As you rise, press your feet into the ground. Read More→ |
Archive for teaching
I had another request to teach Girls’ Night Out and because there was a visitor, I decided to just go ahead and do it. I had planned to do DreamWalker and to focus on the Martial Arts energies. I kept the focus, but applied it to GNO.
I found it amazing how well suited to the change of focus the dance was. Nia Technique has 52 basic moves and only some of them are drawn from the martial arts, but you can play with the different energies no matter where the move originates. This is what is so clever about Nia Technique: the way the body of work can be ever-changing and never boring.
- Tai Chi – the slow dance, meditative, grounding, soft edges, smoothness, contemplative.
- Tae Kwon Do – bursts, power, hard edges, energy away from or directed to the center point, reactive, precision, technique.
- Aikido – harmony, spirals, breath, swirling, arcs into circles, circles into spirals, going with the flow.
An example of a move with a change of energy is a front kick. A front kick with Tai Chi inspired energy would resemble more of a lift. A soft raising of your limb. Change that to a Tae Kwon Do energy and the knee leads, followed by the snap of the lower leg – precisely where the kicker means it to go. Heal leads and “lands” exactly. The kick is recoiled in the exact opposite manner. It is crisp and exact. Enter Aikido – the front kick develops from arc, seen best by following the path of the foot. It’s got a mix of strength and flow. The energy flows from your center line along the leg bones, and out through the foot. The ending might be more of a flow back to earth rather than a lowering or recoiling.
One of my newer students said to me, “I am just so intrigued by this. I don’t know what it is about Nia, but something definitely happens to you during class.”
This student is an inspiration to me while we are dancing. She really looks like she’s enjoying herself in the expression and exploration. She is comfortable with sounding and with movement. She likes to dance right up close to me, which I understand. I am the same way in a class. It’s like she doesn’t want to miss a beat.
Nia is never boring. If I ‘stay in my body,’ really listen to the music (even if I already know the music), remain very present with the work, something refreshing happens every time.
Here’s another testimonial from a class a couple weeks ago:
“First of all, I wanted to let you know just how much the class on Monday lifted my mood. You know that I dragged myself in, and I left feeling much better about my body and life in general. I hope that when you are having a hard time getting “up” for teaching that you know that you can have a tremendous positive effect on a student’s mood and outlook. And you’d have no idea that happened. But remember that it does happen – and I think it happens pretty frequently.” M. P. (Arlington, VA)
Yeah. It’s pretty cool to have something that you can count on to bring you Joy. If something makes you feel good, tell the person. It spreads the Joy.
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