Terre Pruitt's Blog

In the realm of health, wellness, fitness, and the like, or whatever inspires me.

  • I teach Nia! FIVE group classes a week!

    Mon, Tues, and Wed 9 am

    Tues at 6 pm

    Thurs at 7 pm

    Zumba Fitness Classes too!

    Please see my website for details! I sub for the City of San Jose so check my subbing calendar!

    I am also available for private Nia and/or Personal Training!

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 81 other followers

  • My Bloggey Past

Posts Tagged ‘cardio dance workout’

Form & Freedom, Yin & Yang

Posted by terrepruitt on January 17, 2013

I participated in a Nia Blue Belt Intensive in the beginning of November 2012.  Nia trainings are accurately named as intensive because they are intense.  They are intense because it is 50 plus hours of moving and thinking and learning and listening and exploring, etc.  It is a lot.  Nia is a great cardio dance workout, but if you want, it is a lot more.  The way things are connected is pretty amazing.  I am writing posts somewhat off the top of my head as to what my initial thoughts are in regards to the 13 Nia Blue Belt Principles.  After I get through all 13, I want to go back and write more as I read about each one and live with each one.  I also want to review the 13 Nia White Belt Principles.  At this time, I am on Nia Blue Belt Principle #9.  The principle is Form & Freedom.  The tagline is The Yin and Yang of Nia.  As I have stated in my other posts about the principles there is a lot more to them than I am writing about.  Nia is deep.  This is just off the top.

There are forms in Nia.  Some of the forms are:

-The 52 Nia Moves
-The Nia Routines
-The Seven Cycles of a Nia Workout
-All the PrinciplesDance Exercise, Nia, Nia at the City of San Jose, Nia classes in the South Bay, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, Nia, Zumba
-All the Triads
-The music
-The movement forms
-The Nia 5 Sensations

Some of the freedoms are:

-The energy variety
-Personal creativity
-Silence
-FreeDance
-Natural Time
-Adapting the Choreography
-Movement variety
-Mixing routines
-Transubstantiation

We have a lot of things that give us form.  We have a lot of things in which we have freedom.  There is yin and yang.  The form and the freedom can be separate . . . we could just dance a song entirely FreeDance with no form at all.  Just everyone dance their own way, no choreographed steps, no guidance, no form.  Or we can marry the two.  I love that.  I love sharing with my Nia class that we are free in our form to do what we want.  We can think about what we are doing and the moves we are doing or just let the music dictate to us.

Right now the routine I am doing is full of places to have the form and the freedom.  There are many places in the routine where our feet have a specific form.  The moves, according to Carlos AyaRosas (FKA Carlos Rosas), are precise.  Our feet have a specific place, but our arms are free to move.  While our arms are moving when the concentration is on the feet you can sense the form, the structure, the precision.  But when the concentration is on the arms . . . .even if you are just letting them dance on their own to the music . . . you sense the freedom.  You can sense your spirit.  When you’ve had enough practice you can do both, have the form and the freedom.

The form is what many of us are accustomed to having, it is what we were trained to have in an exercise class. The freedom is what helps Nia be unique.  With the Nia Blue Belt Principle #9 – Form & Freedom -The Yin and Yang of Nia we get to play and it makes the possibilities endless.

Have you ever played with form and freedom?  Why don’t you try it?  Put on some music you like to dance to and get your feet moving in a specific pattern.  After a few rounds of the pattern just allow your arms to go.  Let them move freely.  Can you see how that can add up to an amazing workout?

Posted in Blue Belt, Nia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Human Body Fantastic

Posted by terrepruitt on October 25, 2011

Nia is a body centered practice. Nia came about partly because at that time, in the 80′s, popular exercise classes were very hard on the body and the industry in which the creators of Nia worked produced a lot of injuries. The couple that brought us Nia spent a lot of time examining many different forms of movement which in turn shaped Nia into a body-centered movement practice. Nia is a cardio dance workout that moves the body as it was designed to move. Debbie Rosas-Stewart, one of the creators of Nia, wanted to be a doctor, she has always been interested in the human body. Nia’s training material often refers to the science of the body. The body is fascinating and fantastic. I believe that Debbie’s love of medicine and the human body is evident in Nia. Here are some facts that I found interesting. They are facts easily found on the internet so they might not be new to you. Even if you have heard them before I hope you marvel at the human body as I do.

  • There are 10 human body parts having only three letters.  (Can you name all 10 human body parts having only 3 letters?)
  • Food is moved through the digestive tract by muscular contractions.
  • The pressure created from the human heart can squirt blood 30 feet.
  • Hydrochloric acid found in the stomach can dissolve certain metals.
  • The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.
  • Half of our taste buds are gone for most of us, by the time we are 60 years old.
  • The human brain is capable of storing everything it is exposed to, but it is the ability to recall the information that might be the challenge.
  • We are shorter at the end of the day due to cartilage being compressed throughout the day.
  • Kneecaps aren’t developed in a human until the child is between 2-6 years old.
  • The longer the finger the faster the nail grows.
  • Hair and nails do not continue to grow after death, but it appears as if they do since the skin shrinks and recedes as the moisture dries up.
  • The skin of a human body contains 45 miles of nerves.
  • The average human will breathe 23,040 times in a 24 hour period.
  • People with dark hair have less hair than blondes.
  • The stomach produces a new layer of mucus every 14 days in order to keep from digesting itself.
  • The “funny bone” is actually the ulnar nerve.
  • About 8% of the human body weight is blood.
  • A human snore can be a loud as a jack hammer.
  • Starvation takes a few weeks, but a total lack of sleep would cause death in roughly 10 days.
  • A human sneeze has been measured to exceed 100 miles per hour, whereas the average cough is only 60 miles per hour.
  • “Veins in the skin appear blue for a variety of reasons only weakly dependent on the color of the blood. Light scattering in the skin, and the visual processing of color play roles as well.” **

The 10 human body parts with only three letters: eye, ear, lip, gum, jaw, arm, rib, hip, leg, and toe.

Aside from what was **copied directly from Wiki, the above information was gleaned from the following sites:

The Nurse Nut, Yes, ICantSeeYou, Mawlana Faizani International, and ESZlinger.  I have seen many sites contain the same information and more.  I just found these ones particularly fascinating.  I think the body is fantastic.

Posted in Just stuff, Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Changing Up my Turbo Jam

Posted by terrepruitt on October 8, 2011

I teach Nia.  Nia is a cardio dance workout done in bare feet.  It is no impact (or very low – I tend to hop a bit because I am having so much fun!) but allows for high intensity.  Impact and intensity are different.  I love Nia, but I also love other types of workouts.  When I do other types of workouts they usually require shoes because often times the workouts get their intensity from impact.  You might already know all of this because I have shared it before.  You might also know — because I have shared this before — that I also love Turbo Jam.  That is the exercise program designed for home use, as in DVDs, by the incredibly cute and bubbly Chalene Johnson.  You have probably read me say before, “No matter how many times I do Chalene’s DVDs she makes me smile.”  Her energy is infectious.  Well, I’ve done the DVDs I have a lot over the years so today I decided to do them a little different.  I decided to combine two things I love.  I wore my MBTs while doing Turbo Jam.

dance exercise, Turbo Jam workout, Nia Teacher, MBTs, Nia Class, Nia workout, Nia San Jose, San Jose NiaBecause of my toe/foot situation I had not been doing Turbo Jam a lot, but I am starting to do it again.  I do it regular tennis shoes, just some cross trainers, and I sometimes have to think a lot to not move my foot in a toe position that hurts.  When you do any type of workout in which you wear shoes you have to think about it a bit more when you are on carpet.  Carpet tends to make it a little more difficult to twist on your toes and things, so sometimes it is better to not do that so much in order to 1) save the carpet and 2) save your knees.  Even though I have always wanted to do a Turbo Jam workout in my MBTs I thought it would be more strenuous on my recovering foot.  But it wasn’t really.  It was fine.  It was fun.  MBTs really have the body using different muscles because the way the sole is engineered.  So it was really fun to do a workout I have done at least a hundred times and have it feel different.

The MBTs really made me concentrate on what I was doing.  When I do my Turbo Jam DVDs I have a tendency to think about other things.  I just follow the moves and think or sing, I am not always concentrating on what I am doing.  The Masai Barefoot Technology footwear really had me thinking about balancing properly and not just throwing my limb out.  When I threw it out too far without being aware then I somewhat got off balance.  Not just off balance in a way that the shoe is designed to make you be unbalanced, but my foot was positioned incorrectly in the MBT so I had to be aware of how I was extending.  It was really nice.  As I said it was nice to experience the workout in a very new way even though I have done it at least a hundred times.  It was nice to have to really think about the muscles that enable balance.  It was nice to have to think about balance in order to make certain my alignment was not off.

Now that my foot is so much better and I have confirmed that using my MBTs to do my cardio workouts that require shoes will not bother my foot, I plan to use them all the time.  That is really one of the reasons I bought them.  But I was not ready until now  because I thought it would challenge my foot too much.  It actually made toe movements easier because of the curve of the sole.  The curve allows for easy almost automatic ball of foot or on the toe movements.

Yay!  Newness in an old-but-beloved workout!  Do you workout to DVDs?  If you do, what is your favorite?  Have you done them enough that you are ready to change ‘em up a bit?

Posted in Just stuff, Working Out | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

Teaching What You Sense

Posted by terrepruitt on September 29, 2011

Nia White Belts focus on the body.  The body is what we can use to teach.  It is fascinating.  By the time we teach a routine in front of a class we should know the music and the choreography so well we don’t have to think about it.  I know I have shared before about how there is a point where I can’t learn any more without taking it to the class.  That is not necessarily the way we were trained to do it, but that is how I do it.  I have worked on learning a routine, got as far as I felt I could go, taken it to class and only done it for one class before I go back and work on learning it some more.  With that one class I was able to get past the learning plateau.  But for the most part we know the music and the routine well by the time we share it with our Nia students.  This allows us to concentrate on what we are sensing.  This is White Belt Principle #13, Teaching What You Sense.

One of the Nia White Belt Manuals says:

While Nia impacts every aspect of our lives, it is first and foremost a somatic practice rooted in physical sensation.

© 2010 Nia Technique, Inc. | NiaNow.com Principle 13 Lesson Plan | 1

Teaching what we sense, what we are experiencing in our own bodies allows us to connect with what is going on in our students’ bodies.  When I feel the stretch in my side, I can say, “Everybody sense your side.”  This allows each participant, each individual body to sense what is going on in his or her own body.  It could be a stretch.  It could be a twinge which might be a signal to tweak the movement.  Whatever is sensed belongs to the individual.  I am not saying, “You SHOULD feel . . “  I don’t know exactly what they should sense.  Each person is different.  Nia teachers invite Nia students to SENSE parts of the body so each person can get the workout their body needs.

While we are dancing the moves we are showing the Nia students the Nia choreography, we are also guiding them with our words.  In addition to guiding them through the Nia routine’s choreography we are guiding them through a somatic workout.  A workout that is rooted in the Body’s Way.  By teaching what my body is sensing participants learn what THEIR bodies are sensing and in turn we all learn our our own individual’s body’s way.

Learning all of this in a cardio dance workout class might seem like a lot, but it is something that happens over time.  It might also sound different than other exercise classes, and that is because it is different.  It is unique.  Each class brings new awareness.  When students desire to they can take what we touch upon in class out into their lives.  Being aware of the body’s sensation as we live and go about our everyday chores and pleasures.  We could call it “Noticing what we sense.”  But for me, as a Nia teacher/student I am encouraged to teach what I sense and it makes a world of difference in the workout you receive.

Posted in Nia, Nia White Belt Principles | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

“The Science of Social Media” – hosted by HubSpot, presented by Dan Zarrella

Posted by terrepruitt on August 23, 2011

I have stated before that I joined the world of social media to promote my Nia business.  Nia has been around for almost 30 years, but not a lot of people know about it.  It did not have the marketing push of Zumba.  Nia is a fitness/wellness practice that includes a cardio dance workout.  I grudgingly joined FaceBook, Twitter, Wellsphere, Merchant Circle, Yelp, Youtube, and many more to share things about health and wellness, and yes primarily Nia.  What happened, of course, was I found friends on FB both new and ones I had lost touch with.  I made friends through my blog and other people’s blogs.  I connected with many people on Twitter.  With all of these real friend connections I often get distracted with conversations on these social media sites.  But then again, I don’t really think of them as distractions because these are my friends now.  They might be people I may never meet face-to-face, but I care about them and — lucky me — they care about me.  But I do still have to try to learn things.  Today I listened to a Guinness World Record-breaking webinar hosted by HubSpot and presented by Dan Zarrella .  It was really interesting.  He shared how a lot of things you might hear are myths.

The presentation was labelled “The Science of Social Media”.  I guess the “science” came in because Mr. Zarrella compiled a bunch of figures from research.  I am gonna share some of the things he stated that I found interesting. Ok – really I am stating interesting facts off the slides because he talked so fast I missed a lot of what he said.  AND they had an earthquake in Virgina before the webinar and it was felt where the presentation was taking place.  They said the audio was having issues because of the earthquake.  But when Mr. Z slowed down, it was fine.

He had a lot of charts graphs and all types of things explaining how he came to these conclusions and these were the times when his rate of speech doubled so I think he was very excited about how he came up with this info but it also made it very hard to understand.  But . . . this provides a great opportunity for me to let you know that Hubspot is going to post the webinar so you can listen to it yourself.  I am just pointing out some highlights and what I got out of it.  It is always better to listen to the source when you have the opportunity.

Here are three myths:

– Engaging in the conversation is the most important thing.

From what I understood, he was saying this is not true IF you were trying to get huge exposure.  We are all on social networks for our own reasons.  So this MIGHT be a true fact for you, but in Mr. Z’s context he was saying it is NOT the most important thing when you are trying to get exposure.

– Don’t call yourself a guru.

His research showed people calling themselves gurus had HUGE followings.  So as long as you follow up your “guru” claim with good/valuable info you can call yourself that.

– Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are bad days to publish.

He said he found this not to be true.  He explained people can spend much more time on things (posts, links, e-mail, etc) because there is less traffic on those days.  So it sounds as if so many people believe this to be true so they don’t publish on those day which actually makes it false.

Additional points:

– Highly followed accounts tweet a lot of links.
Well, for me as a follower, if that is all that I see in a twitter stream I usually don’t bother following.  So, as I said, we all use social media for our own purposes so not all of his information applies to everyone.  He was sharing what his research showed by the numbers he studied.

– Don’t tweet “over” yourself. 
If you tweet out a link or information, let it set a bit. Give people time to see it before you tweet more information.  Some of this I think you just learn as you go.

– Don’t talk about yourself too much and
– Positive tweets and posts are what people want to read
These two points I thought were funny because I think of them as obvious as the sky.  But maybe it was stated for people living under a rock.  And there is a fine line, which was not actually addressed.  I think the fine line would be more educational.  I mean, people DO want to hear about you as a person, but how much is the question.  And people also don’t care to read false positives.  I mean life does have some negative aspects and sometimes it is ok to share them.  Again, the question is: how much?

– Write to the 5th grade level.
Regardless of what your audience’s education level may be this is a widely used level.

– Asking for a retweet works.
He said when you ask nicely for followers to retweet or share they do.

These are highlights of what I found most interesting.  There was a lot of information to support the busting of each myth, but that information you can hear when you listen to the webinar yourself.  You’ll will want to, if you have time and you are interested in learning more about social media.  HubSpot is a great tool for learning about social media.  They often have free webinars and downloads.  You might want to visit their site to see all they have to offer.  Thanks again, HubSpot and Mr. Dan Zarrella, as always I received some great info from you!

Here is the link to the webinar, http://www.hubspot.com/science-of-social-media-thanks/

Posted in Misc, Twitter | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Nia is teaching Me

Posted by terrepruitt on July 12, 2011

Nia is a cardio dance workout. We turn on music and we dance. We have Nia routines that we do to certain music or we can put the patterns to different music.  We are not limited to these two choices this is just an example.  We dance to music, we have fun, we don’t even realize we are exercising.  To me, it is “like” Zumba in that way.  But Nia is a practice. Nia has different levels and each level has principles.  If you choose to experience the different levels you can, but even if not the principles of Nia can be applied to the workout and to life. To me, Nia is like Yoga because of the fact that some of the “stuff” you do in a workout can be applied to life. Since the ideas and principles of Nia can be applied to life they are not necessarily “new”, most of it is not made up by the creators of Nia. Some of it you might recognize and have heard elsewhere. It is the way it is applied and put together. I have stated this before . . . that things are not new, so you aren’t imaging that.  I do like to repeat it because a lot of people have not heard of Nia so they might think it is something new and “way out there”, but it is not, it is based on science and things you know.  Some of the things I am learning are things that I have to continue to “practice”.  :-)

Here are a few of the things, in no particular order:

–It is ok not to be perfect. That is not really the way we state it when we talk about it, but I have started many posts with what we really say and maybe one day I will post one, but I am not ready to deal with the spam and odd comments I might receive from our actually verbiage of this same idea.  But basically we don’t have to do things perfectly. Which is really great because there really is no such thing.

–The Four Engery Allies are always something I am having to practice. (Speak with impeccability / Don’t assume anything / Don’t take anything personally / Always do your best)

–Even silence is music. We actually practice listening for the silences in our music. A lot can happen in a silence, it could be a birthing place for something spectacular. Or it could just be a place of rest and calm. Either way it is sometimes something to look forward to.

–Natural Time is a gift. Moving and living in ones own natural time and not having to do everything by the clock that society runs on, is not always possible. There are some things you just have to do, so when there is an opportunity to move and live in natural time I take advantage of it and I consider it a treasured gift.

–Live in the moment. I am always doing one thing and thinking another. We live in a society of multi-tasking. It is celebrated and even rewarded, but it is not joyful nor rewarding. Sometimes I forget why I walked into a room because I started walking there to do something and then after the first two steps my brain has already jumped to the next task. So I arrive in the room thinking, “What am I doing here? I know what I want to do when I am done with why I came in here, but I don’t know why I am here.” So this is something I am always having to practice.

All of these things are things we learn in our Nia workout.  We don’t have to dance perfect, we have our energy allies when we dance, silence can be part of our movement, we move in our own natural time, and we move in the moment and dance to the music.  All of these things work in and off the dance floor.  So Nia teaches me a lot and it continues to teach me.

Posted in Nia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Salsa, Tango, and Nia

Posted by terrepruitt on January 4, 2011

When I first started teaching my Nia classes I was doing it three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the studio in Willow Glen. Not every class had many students. I remember talking to different people about the low numbers. Some of them suggested not having that many classes in a week, not having that many dance lessons a week. Understandable. Most people didn’t know what Nia was. Since it is dance many people thought of it as a dance that you learn. But Nia is not like Salsa or Tango where you are shown steps, then asked to mimic them, then instructed to practice, then allowed to practice to music. Nia is not a dance lesson type of dance.

Even though Nia incorporates nine different movement forms, Nia is more comparable to Zumba or Jazzercise where the music is playing and the participants follow the lead of the teacher. No experience in or with any of the movement forms is required. Nia is a cardio dance workout, it is exercise so it is GREAT to do it three times a week. It is recommended to participate in a form of cardio exercise at least three times a week to maintain heart health. Depending upon your individual needs and goals cardio more often might even be in order. So Nia three times a week is great.

When I had the opportunity to hold a third class in a week that is exactly what many of my Monday and Wednesday students said, “Nia three times a week is great!”  Now I have a third Nia class on Fridays in Los Gatos.  (I know I have said that before, but I am excited.  Plus I need to get the word out!)

Another point about Salsa and Tango is a partner is needed. Nia does not require a partner so it is often easier to actually do it three times a week since you are not trying to coordinate with another person to meet and dance three times a week.

Participating in Nia with any regularity participants will learn, but it might not be dance steps. There are many things to learn when participating in Nia, but it is not taught as steps and or patterns are taught in a dance lesson.  Instead of Nia being a dance lesson, you will learn lessons as you dance Nia.  :-)

Posted in Nia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »