A fine dessert from the hands of Will

I’m back after a whirlwind visit from my wonderful older son, Will!

Will visited last week, after hitting the pavement in New York City, where he will work as a chef.  I admit, I felt only a fleeting pang of guilt for the blog and forgot it immediately upon seeing his smile in the Albuquerque airport terminal.

I did teach class all last week, amid a very heavy work schedule.  By Friday, when Will left, I felt a volcano of emotion, grief, pride, joy, more grief at the end of our all too brief visit.

Saturday, 12:15 PM at Midtown Sports and Wellness marked the conclusion of my first stint as a Nia event producer.  The Nia Jam Blast was a great success –  more than 45 people attended – we happily raffled off a great Sports & Wellness T-Shirt, a NiaSounds Zensation CD and a Chair Massage from Alix Seldon, the great Matrix Energetics therapist.  We had danced to an incredible collection of summer faves (Pump It from the Black Eyed Peas is one of my all time favorites). Potential conflicts between two members of our Sports & Wellness Nia teachers were avoided and things ran very smoothly.

 I had to go back to work right after, but only for 3 hours and then caught up with my fellow Studio Sway LLC owners to continue hashing out our various guidelines and plans for the Studio.

Today in the Tuesday Morning class at Sway we worked on using the Spirit realm to excite our bodies into deep, energetic, cathartic movement. When we hit the group song, Carnival by Wyclef Jean, I felt as if someone had switched the sun on inside my body.  Aha!

Friday night jam at Midtown Sports & Wellness

In a perfect world, everyBody would work out on Friday nights.  If you picture it, it’s the perfect pre-party for your body.

Here in Albuquerque, it is unusual to see a crowd of people working out.  People are usually ready for happy hour. With our Nia community, however, any excuse to dance and get that high from group energy, will get us going!

Comments, anybody?  Please feel free to write something, or ask a question.

I just completed the playlist for the Nia Jam Blast happening at the Midtown location of New Mexico  Sports & Wellness, where many of us teach. It’s a kick-ass compilation of songs that evoke the summer.

In January we introduced all the Sports & Wellness Nia teachers and did the classic Nia routine Sanjana. This time participating students will get to see the creative side of Nia, since all of us will choreograph the steps to the songs we are teaching.  Fun! Of course, getting everyBody to choose their songs in a timely fashion was no mean feat, but, as always, the songs cover a nice variety of styles, and genres, old and new.  We will be raffling off some great freebies as well.

This afternoon, Drs. Pam Arenella and Arti Prasad and I met to review our UNM HRRC IRB application for our upcoming Nia study.  Pam was very thorough and the application will be complete, signed and ready to submit by next Thursday.  It will take 6 weeks to get approval, and two more for us to receive the official approval letter.  We can then begin recruiting participants.  Keep an eye on the blog in November if you or any friends and acquaintances might be interested in taking Nia classes 3 times a week as part of a scientific study.  I will be posting the study recruitment information including the qualification criteria as soon as the IRB application approval is finalized.

Back to the music.  One aspect of Nia I really love is all the wonderful world music we dance to in our routines. Music is a powerful energetic resonance tool we can use to stay healthy. Sound vibrations have been shown to increase calcium, build bones and even heal gum disease.  Cool, huh?

Here’s our playlist:

Studio Sway

This is Studio Sway, our dance space in Albuquerque, NM as seen through the wrought iron door at the back entrance.

Today I arrived at 9:00 AM to sub for Judy Green, who teaches a wonderful barefoot class called Mindful Movement, a combination of Pilates and Yoga developed in Santa Fe.  When I put my keys to the door, I discovered I had the wrong set!  I could not get in! Much to my chagrin, my cell phone was also not cooperating.  I could not get it to type phone numbers, even though the keypad was unlocked. 

Fortunately, I found a good friend and sometime Sway renter’s phone number in my address book.  She had a spare key, and quickly came and let me in.  Only one student showed up for class.  Her name was Gail, and she was ready to dance!

We did AO, Alpha Omega, another great routine choreographed by Carlos Rosas. For students new to Nia, this is a perfect routine in it’s simplicity.  It’s focus is Mobility and Stability, two of the 5 sensations in Nia. Each of these two sensations feed each other, and just like the chicken and the egg, we cannot always distinguish where one begins and one ends. Gail was delighted with AO and its gorgeous music, Bob Holroyd’s concept album, “A Different Space.” This was Holroyd’s third full-length album and can be classified as Asian-fusion – an incredible collage of African, Indian sounds, both synthetic and live, with great vocals and instrumentals.

The day was action packed with meetings and IRB work (more on this tomorrow), and I finished by putting together a 1st draft of our playlist for the Midtown Sports & Wellness Nia Jam Blast happening on August 29th during my 11:00 AM class.  The musical  flow is shaping up nicely. I am still short about 10 minutes of music – about 2 or 3 songs worth.  I should have the list solidified tomorrow.  The playlist is a summertime theme, with songs that range from pop to jazz, latin, hip-hop, fusion and new-age. It’s going to rock the gym!

Tomorrow I meet with Dr. Pam Arenella and Dr. Arti Prasad about the Nia grant.  We will review the UNM IRB application together before Pam submits it for review. We’ll have about two months before we can begin recruiting patients.  During the long wait, I will pin down the pedometers we will need (60), that can measure heart rate and BP as well as count steps.  I must also nail down T-shirts for both the intervention group and the walking group. Two months should be plenty of time.

When I practice Nia, my sensations are heightened in all four realms – body, mind, emotions and spirit. Throughout each passing day, I am surrounded by a river that cascades past me as swiftly as the waters of the Rio Grande during the June run-off from the high snows of Taos. Many objects rush by in the torrent of the day, some are familiar, and some are totally unexpected. My heightened sensory awareness and Nia conditioning give me the equanimity to tackle this daily barrage with 6th dimensional multi-tasking (hai-yaah!).

Today in class dancing to Girls Night Out, we noticed that each song featured a different aspect of the body.  Joints were warmed up, tail-bones were swung like the point of a pendulum, arms scooped chi, feet stepped, body parts made shapes with “attitude”, we worked the core. We cooked all four sides of our bodies. And we cooked the inside by making sounds. We had soul-la-la. I was struck by the safety and trust that Nia gives me.  In this class, my students and I understand we can laugh and play, test movements with no fear or embarassment. We can be brave.

I arrived at Studio Sway today for my noon class to find a stranger waiting at the door. Dressed in jeans and a red white and blue Nike basketball jersey, he didn’t look like a lover of barefoot movement.  With a shy smile, he shook my hand and said he was waiting for his sister and niece – they wanted to try my class.

They never came and he eventually left, 20 minutes into Clarity, a wonderful routine developed by Carlos Rosas, a co-founder of The Nia Technique®.  

The focus of Clarity is steps and stances, the intention, using steps and stances to explore the 5 sensations of Nia, agility, mobility, stability, flexibility and strength.Today, I asked the students to use this focus and intention and pay particular attention to their bodies’ base, namely the feet and legs. Six students and I moved through the 7 cycles of a Nia workout: focus, step in, warm up, get moving, cool down, floorplay and step out.

At the end we felt sweaty, but completely refreshed. My son Sandy, recently returned from Japan, came to the class.  It is the first time he has done a Nia class.  He danced close to me and I could sense the brush of his energy. 

The energy brush of individuals in the group is a great sensation – it can enhance and add to the intensity of the workout, in all four realms. EveryBody felt great as they left the class.

Tomorrow I will see these students again at 9:30 for a completely new and equally refreshing Nia experience.

As for Johnny, the man who showed up before class, he and his sister and niece remind me of many potential students who hear of Nia, think it would be fun, and then wait months or years before actually trying a class. It makes me wonder who will sign up as participants for our Nia clinical study at the Center for Life.  As I get ready for sleep my mind asks just how intense will the recruitment process be to get 64 students?

Nia from a dog’s point of view.

I am recalling last year when I attended the Nia Blue Belt Intensive at Nia Headquarters in Portand, Oregon, observing Debbie Rosas’ (co-founder of The Nia Technique® and The Body’s Way™) tiny white dog as it tossed my big fluffy sock into the air.  The sock was nearly as big as the dog, yet it lifted the sock into the air, shook that sock with a mighty wiggle, and ran after the sock across the polished studio dance floor. Debbie commented that we all wanted to become like the dog.

It’s sooo true.  Especially after cleaning house, walking my own dog and tending to my family, my body has moments when it craves that spontaneous, fluid, animal sensation of easy, natural movement.  I get it in my Nia classes, from preparing and dancing the classes as well as from the group energy.  When I take or teach a Nia class, I come out feeling energized and completely refreshed.  My body always feels newer –  my mind feels relaxed and refreshed.

Today, I took my own dog, Bodger, to Petsmart’s obedience class and observed him happily doing his own version of “downward dog” and then rolling onto his back for a belly rub. He’s a 50 lb. white English Bull Terrier, a rescue bull that I adopted in April.  He’s 15 months old, and a bundle of wacky, wonderful, goat-boy, huckle-bucking energy.  He watches me as I practice new routines, moving with me when I travel laterally, or step cross-front-cha-cha-cha.

When I look at Bodger and he grins at me, I think of my 11:00 AM class at Midtown Sports & Wellness yesterday.  32 students came and we had fun shaking our tails and moving to the wonderful, smooth saxophone music of Candi Dulfer.  The routine I chose – Girls Night Out.  GNO is a routine crafted by Carlos Rosas, the other founder of Nia. Carlos has a delightful sense of playfulness which is always present in his routines.  Our focus: Principle 1 of the White Belt – The Joy of Movement. Our intention: a deeper sensory connection with our bodies.  Joy of Movement speaks to something other than emotional Joy, although that is certainly a part of Nia.  Joy of Movement means joint ease and body comfort.  While doing Nia moves during class if we sense in our bodies the innate quality of ease, the natural animal moving, we can increase the intensity of the workout and then deepen the JOM.

Looking at Bodger today, his high-energy spontaneous puppy sparkle makes me happy.  I’m looking forward to the first week of the new me, a la Nia.