Terre Pruitt's Blog

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

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Archive for January, 2012

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Don’t Touch the Cheese

Posted by terrepruitt on January 7, 2012

A while back I did a post about rules of the house.  Ha, as I was typing this I just thought of another one.  My hubby is not allowed to talk to me when I am doing my Nia bars.  If he sees me with my ear buds in and paper in front of me with lines on it he knows I am listening to my Nia music and not to talk to me.  Sometimes there are songs that are just not that easy for me to count and when he interrupts me I have to start over.  So we have reached an agreement there.  Anyway, back to my other post, in that I mentioned not touching the cheese.  One of my friends commented that she was going to come out here and she promised not to touch my cheese.  I was actually waiting for her to come out here to post this, but that scheduled trip got cancelled and I still feel the need to explain.  Her comment had me thinking that she thought I won’t SHARE my cheese.  But that is not it at all.  If I have a good cheese I will gladly share it with a fellow cheese lover because everything taste better when you share it.  I actually mean don’t TOUCH the cheese.

One reason I have been putting off writing this post is I like to post pictures with my posts.  So I was going to take pictures of what I am about to explain, but I really didn’t want to waste the cheese.  I could not — every time since then that I have had a hunk of cheese, I could not bring myself to touch it!  Cheese is made from curdled milk.  In some cases they use bacteria to make the cheese.  Cheese contains living organisms.  With all these facts that make up cheese most cheese tend to mold quite easily and quickly.

It is my experience that the mold begins to grow where the cheese is touched.  Go ahead, see for yourself.  As I said, I will not sacrifice my cheese to show you pictures of this type of experiment.  I know it to be true.  Even though you wash your hands before you touch the cheese, you still have bacteria and things on your hand that apparently help the mold grow.  Again, this is just what I have experienced.  I have found that if the cheese is touched that is where the mold grows.  I have found that if the BAG or wrapper in which the cheese is stored is touched and that area touches the cheese that is where the mold grows.

Of course, if cheese is old enough it starts to grow mold on its own, but wherever it is touched it grows faster.  Have you experienced this to be true?  I have, so that is why there is a “rule” in our house that the cheese cannot be touched.  That includes ALL cheese in all forms.  You cannot put your hand in a bag of shredded cheese.  You can pour a small amount into a bowl (or whatever) and handle it from there using what you want, but hopefully you will end up using all of it.  If not, it gets put in a separate bag or container it does not go back in the bag with the rest of the cheese.  Tubs of cheese . . . . same thing.  Even cream and ricotta, you can’t use a utensil then “double-dip” if the utensil has touched hands or mouth.  Mouth is probably even worse than hands touching the cheese.

So, that is the reason for the “Don’t Touch the Cheese” rule in our house.  It has nothing to do with sharing.  We will gladly share our cheese with you, just don’t HANDLE it!

Are you willing to experiment?  Use two pieces of cheese to see if the one you touch goes bad before the one you don’t touch?  Let us know?  Remember you have to have cheese around your house long enough for this to even happen.  Ha, ha!  (I know how some of you cheese lovers are!)

Posted in Food | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 20 Comments »

Choreography – The Accidental “Click” – FreeDance Stage 7

Posted by terrepruitt on January 5, 2012

The principles of the different belts in Nia provide a foundation for our Nia practice.  There are 13 Principles in the Nia White Belt.  The fourth principle is FreeDance, this principle has eight stages.  Eight things you can focus on that can become a part of FreeDance.  When I attended my Nia White Belt Intensive we danced through these stages when we danced FreeDance.  Dancing through the stages is something that can be done for fun.  It doesn’t have to be because you do Nia.  It can help you express yourself by turning on some music and applying the stages to the music.  Dancing through the stages is also used as a technique for Nia teachers to become better aquainted with the Nia music.  It is a tool that can help in learning a Nia routine.  The seventh stage of FreeDance is Choreography, the tagline is:  The Accidental “Click”.

I mentioned in my post about the eighth stage of FreeDance, Nia Class – Levels 1, 2, 3, that I often skip over dancing the first six stages of FreeDance when learning a Nia routine.  Part of the reason is because I actually forgot about it being a step.  I don’t skip them entirely, I do FreeDance about four of the stages to the music, but I don’t do all of them.  I do believe that doing all six can be a great tool, so as I mentioned, I am working on implementing this action back into my “learning of a Nia routine”.  Today in fact I started employing it with a the next routine I am learning.

Stage 7 of FreeDance, Choreography – The Accidental “Click”, is something that probably happens to all dancers and group fitness teachers alike.  It kind of seems to happen in more than just dance actually, but with dancers the “click” is to the music.  Often with the eight stages of FreeDance you are using more than one stage at a time.  With experiencing the accidental click there is going to be stage two going on.  There is going to be a lot of listening.  The listening is to ALL of the music; the silences, the beat, the tempo, the instruments, the words the vibrations–all of it.  With Nia we are taught to dance to all music, not just the kind that we turn on and can’t help but move too.  We are taught to move to music we might not actually like.  Many people are the type that when you turn music on something on their body starts moving.  A foot might start moving, a head might bob, fingers might tap, this happens often.  There seems to be some songs that EVERYBODY moves to, they just can’t help it.  But then there is music that often clears the dance floor.  The “everybody move to” music is easy to dance to.  But the floor clearing kind sometimes can be difficult to dance to.  In Nia we are taught to dance to it all.  We are taught to listen to it all.

I will be the first to admit that sometimes there are songs I don’t like in a Nia routine.  Sometimes there is just one noise that is to incessant or a beat that feels off, whatever the reason, I don’t like it all.  Sometimes I like the music but not the moves.   Sometimes I just can’t get the choreography and the music to mesh—in my head or in my body, whatever it just doesn’t work.  So I keep doing that kata until it “clicks”.  Eventually it will because Debbie Rosas Stewart and Carlos AyaRosas are great at creating routines, but sometimes it takes me a bit.  The “click” is what state seven is about.

Stage seven is connecting to the sensation of your body.  I think that often times I “don’t like it” (it being either the music or the move or whatever it is that is hanging me up) is all in my head.  So if and when I stop thinking and get into the sensation of the body, I will find that the moves DO go with the music, I was just thinking they didn’t.  Amazing how the thinking gets in the way of moving so often.

Here you have it the seventh stage of Nia FreeDance.  Yes, I am posting about them backwards, from 8 to 1.  It just happened that way.  The days I went to type up a post my eyes fell on “Nia Class – Leve 1, 2, 3 for inspiration.  So now I am going through the stages backwards.  I bet even if you aren’t trying to learn a dance routine you can think of or recognize things in your life that click.  Could be you are trying to remember a way to do something and you do it over and over and keep referring back to the instructions then one day “click”.  In Nia it’s Choreography where we eventually find The Accidental “Click”, but in life it could be with anything.  “Clicks” happen all the time.  Even if you aren’t learning a dance routine, you’re familiar with that click, right?

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

Any 2012 Resolutions or Goals?

Posted by terrepruitt on January 3, 2012

Whew!  For some reason I am feeling pressure about my first post in 2012!  I feel I need to write more about Nia.  Well, more accurately, I would LIKE to write more posts about Nia and my Nia classes, but I don’t have to start out the New Year with a Nia post.  I feel pressure to make some grand announcement about something spectacular I plan to achieve in 2012.  I have been looking at people’s resolutions.  I don’t typically make resolutions.  Some of the resolutions I am seeing kind of strike me as odd to be resolutions, yet, at the same time if people really need to declare these things for a new year, then by all means I hope they succeed.  Yet, I am still somewhat surprised that people need to resolve to smile at strangers, encourage people to do their best, say thank you, tell their loved ones they love them, stop and smell the roses, etc.  I guess we get busy and we forget to do these things, but to me they are just part of life like brushing your teeth so I don’t need to make a new year the time I start to do these.  I was watching TMZ (Yeah, sometimes it is all that is on) and the main guy was saying something along the lines of why make resolutions and do it at the start of a new year when you can just do it at anytime of the year.  Made me laugh.  This year I am going to put some things at the fore front of my life and make sure they come before other things.  So I am going to make two resolutions.  For some of you, you will think the same as I did in thinking about the stuff I just mentioned.  You might think that these are everyday things, and for some they are, but for me I get busy, distracted, lazy, comfortable, don’t-want-to-be-a-bother, or whatever-my-excuse and I don’t always follow through.

My first resolution has to do with my 31 Day Project.  Ugh!  I started out pretty good with that, but then I went out of town for a weekend and that killed my momentum along with the fact that in December the house gets rearranged AND things come into the house.  There are Christmas decorations and gifts and other things to deal with so December was not a smart time for me to start my project.  Although it encouraged me to do a couple of things, I did not get all done that I was thinking.  So while one of my resolutions will not be to get rid of or fix one thing a day in the year, it is to get organized and to do or complete some of the projects I have sitting around.  Some of the projects have been started and some have not, but I am going to get them done this year.  With the completion of some of these projects that will help with the “getting rid of” and the organizing.  Because as you may know if you have any projects to be done you might have the supplies taking up space and as soon as the project is done you will have that space open.  I will do at least one project a month.  I don’t have 12 lying around, but I know I have at least three and there are at least nine more that I would love to do.

Dance Exercise, Nia Teacher, Nia Class, San Jose Nia, Nia San Jose, Nia workout, NiaThe other resolution is to connect with my friends, family, and people in general more.  I am a home body.  Most of the time given a choice between staying at home with my hubby and my cat or getting up, getting ready, fighting the traffic to go out, I am going to stay home.  My couch wins out over putting on makeup and “hard pants” anytime.  My cat and her meditative purring ALWAYS trumps fighting traffic.  Even domestic chores are better to me than traffic.  But when I actually force myself out, I have a great time.  Early Monday morning I was reading a friend’s blog (Zebra Sounds) and she asked her readers what they wished for in 2012 and as I was typing in the comment box that I wanted to connect more, I realized that I had just closed the Facebook page on the event without saying yes because I really wanted to be home with my hubby more than get ready to go out in the cold.  And I realized that it was silly to say “I wish” when it was ME that was in control.  So in the comment I announced I was going back to FB to say yes.  I went, and of course I had a great time.

I realize that visiting face-to-face is not always possible, especially with one of my best friends who just moved away.  So I am allowing phone calls to be part of my “connecting”.  Of course seeing someone in person is often better, but sometimes it is not possible.  And sometimes I forego the phone call because I want an in person visit, but we can’t work our schedules out so then I don’t get anything at all.  Well, I am allowing phone calls to count as connecting because for some of us that is all that we have.  I do understand that sometimes a phone call out of the blue is an interruption so I will not get my feelings hurt when someone can’t talk.  But at least I will have made the effort to connect.

I am going to continue, as I always do, in 2012 to be grateful and thankful for all of my blessings, to be more positive than negative , to smile at strangers, to encourage people, and to tell my loved ones I love them, but I am also going to try to find the top of my desk.  I am also going to try to make room in the corner of my office that is stacked full of stuff.  I am also going to get out more and connect with people.  I am also going to allow phone calls to be considered a good connection and use the phone when I can’t get in a face-to-face visit.  To all of you that succeed at doing these two things, for those of you that consider that them a normal thing, I applaud you.  Maybe you can share with me how you manage to make these things a part of your everyday life and I can learn from your tips.

We all have different life styles so our resolutions really can be very different.  Somethings that are everyday things for some of us are resolutions for others.  Did you make any resolutions?  How about goals?  Did you set any for 2012?

Posted in Misc | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments »

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