You know I started this blog to share things with you. I wanted to share about Nia, exercises, things I think are healthy, and stuff I learn. I don’t think I had thought about posting recipes, but I probably didn’t think I would limit myself from doing so. It is funny that food posts get the most views and even more fun spark the most conversations. (I love the bloggey conversations.) We love our food, huh? It is universal. Everyone eats. Not everyone works out, not everyone dances, not everyone goes to exercise classes, and not everyone does Nia, but everyone eats. Even though we all eat different things it is still something that we all have in common.
As you might have noticed, when I try a new recipe, or just try making something I sometimes like to share. Even if the recipe still needs some adjustments I have to start somewhere. I like to post my recipes because I find myself using my blog when I am going to make something. I can even be at the store and get the idea that I want to make a certain recipe then I think, “Shoot I don’t know what it is in . . . . ahhhh, but I posted it on my blog!” So I use my blog at the store to grocery shop sometimes. Here is a recipe of something that I made that I need to work on.
I haven’t always liked hummus, but once I started eating it. I really liked it. There is a brand that my husband found that is really good. It is smooth and creamy. We used to eat it often. But it has Canola Oil in it. I prefer not to eat Canola oil. I have always wanted to make my own hummus so I thought not eating our favorite brand would inspire me. It did not. My issue was tahini. I don’t think of tahini. So when I go to the store I am not thinking, “Oh yeah, I need tahini.” I know you can make hummus without it. I believe my friend makes hummus all the time and she never used tahini. I haven’t tasted her hummus that I can remember so I don’t know if it is good without tahini or not.
The other day I was online and I actually bought tahini. I decided on wanted to finally make some hummus. There are a lot of recipes out there for hummus so I took some ideas from several of them. I need to work on it.
I used:
2 cups canned garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
3 teaspoons liquid from the beans
1/3 cup tahini
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon garlic flavored olive oil
I put everything in the blender and blended until smooth.
I prefer my hummus a little more smooth and actually creamy, but the blender was making odd noises so I didn’t want to push it too far.
First of all I think it is too salty. Next time I am going to use less salt and less tahini. I am also going to use less lemon juice. I am also going to use fresh garlic. I used some we have from a jar.
Not too bad for my first try, but not so great. But sometimes I just need to get in there and do it — make the recipe — so I can see it is easy to do so then I can play with it and make adjustments.
We move our hips A LOT in Nia. With all the hip movements we do I say we have juicy hips. Not only do we shake and shimmy our hips we take time to stretch and open our hips. Hip flexors are a group of muscles that move the thigh towards the chest. These muscles can get short and tight, especially from sitting. Office jobs usually mean sitting in a chair all day while at work. Add the commute time to the sitting on the job and many people end up sitting over eight hours a day. Sometimes the hip flexors can become so short and tight they can keep an individual from standing up straight. In addition, the origin of one of the muscles in the hip flexor group is in the lower back, if this set of muscles is short and tight it can sometimes result in lower back pain. For many individuals stretching and lengthening these muscles can bring relief from back pain and help individuals stand up straighter.
There are a lot of stretches that can help lengthen this group of muscles. The yoga Pigeon Pose comes to mind. This is a great pose because the leg that is straight out towards the back get the lengthening benefit and sensation, while the bent leg assist in opening the groin area and stretching those muscles. The butterfly stretch really stretches the groin area, too. The closer you can get your feet to your pelvis the bigger the stretch, and the close the knees to the ground the bigger the stretch. This is a great stretch you will definitely feel in the inner thighs. The spinal twist both supine and seated can bring great relief. So whether you are laying down and allowing your legs to be on one side of you or whether you are sitting up with one leg out and hugging one bent knee, you still get a nice stretch for the pair of muscles whose origins starts in the lower back.
One stretch I love to do is somewhat like a spinal twist in that you let the legs twist to one side, but instead of bringing them over to one side as a pair you let one leg start its journey to the other side of your body and the other one follows in its own time. Think of your legs as pages in a book.** One leg goes then the other leg flips (as a page) slowly. No rush. Also if you allow one leg to fall to one side while the other is on the first side (think open book) it is similar to the butterfly stretch but with hips completely open. Then “close the book” having your legs end up on one side while gently twisting to the other, you get the nice gentle stretch in your back. In Nia our floorplay cycle often includes many of these.
Swinging your leg from front to back either in a standing position or lying down on your side can stretch the muscles. Let the leg swing as far to the front as comfortable and then as far back as is comfortable. In both the standing and lying position you want to keep you back straight. Don’t let it get into the swing of things, just let your leg swing.
Some exercises can assist in stretching the muscles too. The lunge, especially a long lunge, helps stretch and lengthen the muscles and open the hips a bit. The leg that is stretch back with get the stretch in the front. You can either do the lunge stepping forward or back, but the longer the step the bigger the stretch.
These are just some simple stretches that might help loosen up your hips if you have tight hip flexors. If you tend to sit at a desk that could be something that is happening. Make your hips juicy and happy by stretching them a bit. It might even help you walk taller and with more ease.
**This image I learned from Debbie Rosas at my Nia White Belt Intensive. I use it all the time in class.
Do you ever sit so long when you stand up you kind of are bent over at the hips?
I have a friend on FB who works really hard to feed her family healthy things. I think there are food allergies and intolerances involved so she has to be very particular with what she feeds her family. Often times she posts some pretty creative cooking ideas. One thing she is always asking about is greens. How do you cook your greens? She usually states which green she is working with but she always comes back with, “It is so bitter.” Now some of the greens she says are bitter taste a little bitter to me, but with olive oil, salt, garlic, and onion the flavor is masked. Some of them she claims are bitter aren’t bitter to me. I really think that the bitter taste has less to do with which vegetable than with our genes.
Back in 1931 a chemist (Arthur Fox) was pouring a powdered chemical (PTC) and some of its dust got in the air. His assistant said the dust tasted bitter, while he couldn’t taste anything. The chemist proceeded to experiment with PTC and the taste on his friends and family. Some could taste a strong bitter taste, while some could taste a mild bitter taste, while some could taste nothing at all. Seventy-two years later in 2003 the gene that is responsible for this was discovered. They call it the PTC gene or TAS2R38. This gene has seven forms, five of which are rare, and two of which are common. The two common forms are the ones that allow for tasting bitter and one that does not. Since all genes come in pairs we can end up with both being the tasting gene, or both being the non-tasting gene, or one of each.
If an individual ends up with both of the genes that allow for them to taste PTC then they will be able to taste bitter things more strongly than others. If an individual has the genes that are the “non-tasting” genes then they don’t taste bitter. Then there are the individuals that have one of each. It has been found that there is a familial link, if some family members can taste the PTC than other can too.
I would imagine that if an individual has a set of bitter-taste genes then it would be almost impossible to cover up the bitter taste of many vegetables. I am thinking that my friend and her family must have a set of those genes because she says she has cooked some veggies a multitude of ways and her comment is still, “It is so bitter.” Probably the only way to deal with the bitter is to cover it up entirely in a sauce but then that would somewhat defeat the purpose of trying to eat a nice green healthy vegetable. Plus I would bet that most of the sauces contain ingredients she is trying to avoid. She is determined though. She knows that the bitter vegetables have really good stuff in them so she keeps trying. In the meantime her family is still getting the nutrients even though it is bitter and doesn’t taste good.
There are test strips that can be purchased to see which gene you have. I found some on Amazon. Interesting, huh?
Do you have a good sense of taste? Do you taste bitter really strongly?
After teaching Nia a couple of weeks ago I realized I had a knot in my back. It was one of those things that felt fine while I was moving. So in my Nia class I didn’t notice it. When I was moving about the house I didn’t notice. When I stopped moving is when it starting hurting. It was one of those body issues that is so uncomfortable it is painful. I mean no matter which position I sat in, stood in, lied in, it was there. It was painfully annoying. I believe I tend to hold my stress there. I have posted about this “spot” before. I tried using a ball to rub it out. I asked my husband to massage it. Both helped but it came back the next day. It even kept me awake the next morning. I just wanted a few more minutes of sleep but my muscle was saying, no.
I had noticed when my husband was trying to work out the knot I had the strangest sensation. The spot of the pain was right beneath my shoulder blade but when he was pressing on it a tingling poking kind of sensation travelled up my entire shoulder blade. I thought that was very odd. I thought the muscle must contain a lot of nerves that run along the scapula. I thought it was odd that I had this disbursing sensation over my shoulder blade.
That was over the weekend and after Nia class on Monday one of my Nia students, a physical therapist, said she would look at it. She found the knot – as it was easy to feel and she began working on it. She said it was fascia! Ahhhhh! That explains why when my husband was trying to rub it out think it was a knot in the muscle I was sensing it all over my shoulder blade. (Wiki: “A fascia is a structure of connective tissue that surrounds muscles, groups of muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, binding some structures together, while permitting others to slide smoothly over each other.”) She pressed on both ends of it and was able to work it out. The next day it was sore, but I used the ball and it has been fine since. Fascia is fascinating. Fascia is the yellow stuff that is sometime still connected to chicken breast. And I am sure if you work with whole chickens you can see it too.
Here is a video about “fuzzy” fascia. Below the video on YouTube, Gil Hedley has noted that since the video was made in 2005 he has somewhat changed his ideas a little bit. But the video itself is still fascinating as it shows you the fascia in the body.
WARNING this video is of a cadaver. Mr. Hedley is using it to show what fascia is. He stated in his updated write up “ . . . it is normal for there to be “fuzzy” tissue between “individual muscles” within the muscle layer. As with all tissues of the body, all the matter of which it consists is transitioning at various paces, some quicker, some more slowly. “Fuzzy” tissues indeed cycle more quickly then some more dense tissues.”
As we know it is not just keeping our fascia mobile as the reason for moving, but it is interesting to see another part of our bodies that benefit from movement. I knew about fascia before discovering Nia, but I was introduced to Gil Hedley via Nia. Nia often makes the scientific connections in our continued education. There is a lot of continuing education material that deal with anatomy. Moving our fascia is just one reason why we dance.
The past two Thursdays have been pretty cold here and since I don’t teach Nia on Thursdays evenings I have been cooking soup. One Thursday I had it planned so I actually did go to the store after my Nia class on Wednesday to buy the ingredients I needed, but yesterday it was cold so I just decided to use what I had, which was not much. While I think that a bowl or two of soup can easily be a meal, I like to serve something else with it. When I looked in my fridge I saw the eggplant I had bought. Yay! Perfect. I saw a recipe on icancookstuff that sounded interesting. While I do not eat spicy hot food I thought I could use the garlic and the cummin. But it turns out I don’t have any cummin. So I decided to use ginger and turmeric. I have them in powdered form so I got the bottles out of the cupboard and set them on the counter. Then I put the eggplant in the oven to bake it.
The recipe said to bake it at 200 degrees for 45 minutes.** I didn’t think I had 45 minute so I put the temperature up to 300 and left it on for 30 minutes. I didn’t feel that the eggplant was cooked enough so I turned the convection oven on and set the timer for 30 more minutes. I turned it four times because it was getting flat on the pan side.
In the meantime I was cooking my soup. I only had one bunch of baby bok choy, a bunch of kale, and some broccoli. I swore I wasn’t going to put broccoli in a soup again, but . . . I didn’t think the rest would make it. So while I was trying to fake making soup I wasn’t really paying attention to the eggplant. My soup finished before the eggplant.
By the time I finally thought the eggplant was cooked enough to split I split it. I was thinking that I would make one half for me and one half for my husband. I salted it, I put a bit of garlic on it, I put a little bit of parmesan cheese on it. Then I looked over and I saw the onions I had chopped to put on it. And the kale. So I decided to put the onions and kale on one half and hubby and I would just get a half of each half making a whole half.
I put it back in the oven and let it bake for a bit more. Half way through the end of baking portion I saw the ginger and turmeric on the counter. Snap! I forgot to put it on. So I sprinkled a little turmeric on both halves. I put the broiler on for about 10 minutes.
Here is the result.
From the time I thought to cook the eggplant to the time I put it in the oven to finish baking I had thought of three different ways to flavor it. I had originally thought to use garlic, turmeric, and ginger, then I thought of garlic, onions, and kale, then I thought of garlic, and cheese. That really is not a big deal the big deal is that I forgot one each time I thought of the new one. Geez! What I ended up with was ok. I think it needed a little bit more flavor. I will work on that. I don’t even think I tasted the turmeric.
I like cooking eggplant this way because it is much less time-consuming than turn the slices all the time. But I think I like the roasted slices better. But I will continue to experiment with this. I might try slicing it into three pieces next time. Although a baked eggplant is not easy to slice.
**It just dawned on me that the 200 degrees was probably Celsius and not Fahrenheit. So it would actually be about 400 degrees F. Ha!
I can’t wait to try this again!
What do you think of this way of cooking eggplant? What would you put on the eggplant?
Nia has a different closed stance than some other dances and exercises I know. In Pilates the stance is heels touching and toes apart. I’ve heard it called a Pilates V. The Pilates V is done in more positions than standing. Sometimes there are exercises done while on the reformer where we will place our feet in Pilates V. It is nice to have positions that are specific. It helps a lot. I as a teacher can just say, “Closed stance.” and the Nia students will know what that means. Instead of forming a V as in the Pilates stance we form more of a rectangle. A basic closed stance is simple. It is stable. Nia’s closed stance is the side of the big toes touching and heels apart. It is as if all four corners of a rectangle are in contact with the edge of the foot. This allows for a very stable base. In the basic closed stance the arms hang. The back is straight, we are standing tall, lengthening the spine. Knees are relaxed as well was the feet. Weight is balanced evenly on both feet. Simple closed stance.
Closed stance is one of the six stances in the Nia 52 Moves. There is Closed Stance, Open Stance, A Stance, Sumo (or Riding) Stance, Bow Stance, and Cat Stance. I believe that in its basic form closed stance is the easiest. But when other elements are added that might not hold true.
We can practice our agility by walking quickly then stopping in closed stance. We might choose to be in closed stance while we allow just our arms to be agile . . . moving around in a starting and stopping fashion. We could just let our closed stance be stable as our arms are mobile. We could do an entire body dance . . . close stance dance. For some this is a challenge, even though our feet are formed into a rectangle and the idea is of a stable base it is still a practice in balance to have your feet secured to the earth while the rest of your body moves around. As I said, what we do with a close stance might not be so simple.
Practicing walking and stopping in closed stance is a good check to make certain you are not landing in “toes in“. The heels shouldn’t be that far apart as if you are doing toes in. Yet the toes should be touching. Coming from other stances to closed is good for conditioning the legs. Moving from Sumo to closed, or from at to closed is something to practice. Again we don’t want our heels to land too far apart making us pigeon toed.
I know of several routines that have us going through the stances. We start out in closed, then go to open stance, then go to A stance, then go to sumo. In some routines we work back through the stances, but in some we do move right into closed from sumo. I can’t think of one where we go from closed to sumo, but I bet there is one and I just can’t put my finger on it. Nia loves to mix up the moves to get the most out of the workout.
Can you sense the stability in the Nia Closed Stance?
At this point you might have noticed that I only have a post for 9 of the 52 Moves of Nia. I am going to work on that. I have a Nia friend who is posting about the 52 Moves of Nia on her blog and she has inspired me to continue on. I have the list of the moves on my website. I link the blog post from there so people on my site can click to see a description and possibly a picture. With only 9 post I only have 9 links. This is ten and moving forward.
Nia is a unique cardio dance exercise that combines nine movement forms into a fun and energizing workout. Nia has moves we call the 52 Moves. Many of them are common to other dances. I am posting here about Toes In, Out, and Parallel. I know I have seen these moves in other dances if not done together at least done separately.
To do the move as one move you start with your feet parallel to each other. They can be hip (joint) width apart. Then turn your toes in to face each other. Turn them in as far as you comfortably can. Then swivel your feet out so the toes are pointing in opposite directions. Again, only do it as far as you can — comfortably.
This is the whole move. There is a routine where we are in A Stance and I have the participants dance toes in then toes out. Which I consider a lot of fun. You can play with this move by trying to walk with toes facing in, then with toes facing out.
I like to play with the move by doing one foot toes in and out. Sometimes just letting one foot do a dance all of its own; in, out, in, out, tapping my toe to the ground with each twist of my leg. I also like to do this move with varying stances. My instructions here say to start in open stance, but it can easily be done in A Stance (as I mentioned I do in my Nia class). You’ll notice that different muscles are used when you change the width of your stance.
Moving the feet in this manner allows for all the bones in the leg to rotate which gets the thigh bones moving in the hip socket. Movement is a way to keep the joints health. Movement helps fluid into the joints. I say “juicy joints.” We move to have juicy joints.
In addition to helping the hip joint this move helps keep the ankles mobile and the knees flexible.
With healthy hip joints, ankle joints, and knee joints the enables walking and moving in general to be done with ease. So even though this is one of the moves we use in our dance exercise routines that does not mean the use of it is limited to that.
You can decide to walk with toes in for a bit during your day, then with toes out. While standing you can stand with toes in, then out, then parallel. It is an easy exercise to play with and incorporate into your day. And it really does help with the health of your joints.
Are you gonna do it? On your trip from your desk to the coffee pot? While you are going about your day with the kids? Which on in your favorite, in or out?
When I first discovered Nia I bought The Nia Technique Book to see if I would be able to do it. I don’t mean do it as in do the moves and participate in a class, I mean do it as in “get into it”, as in understand it. It sounded a bit “woo-woo” to me. Listening to your body, voices of the body, energy this, moving energy that. I wasn’t sure I could sync it up with my beliefs. But as I studied it more I realized that it is based on science. It involves human kinetics. Most of the moves, although called the 52 Nia moves are quite common and are seen in many other types of exercises and workouts. The ones that I consider unique are probably part of some other dance I am not familiar with. And the “woo-woo” part, well, I realized that it is woo-woo – at least that is how many people think of certain things like energy, chakras, mind-body, and body-mind practices. I mean look at yoga, when I was young that was one of the “woo-wooest” things around and now people have embraced it. There are so many types of yoga it is difficult to keep track. For some they just ignore the woo-woo while others embrace it because they realize it makes sense. I mean cultures have been using “woo-woo” stuff for centuries. There is meditation, herbs, chanting, drumming — all types of other things that some people think of woo-woo. The woo-woo must not be too far off base though because it seems to work. Recently my posts have been about healing sounds and making sounds, this post is about the vowel sounds related to the chakras and I am sure to some people it sounds a little, or maybe even a lot, “woo-woo”. But I like to imagine that if you are reading this you are somewhat open to new things — even woo-woo things. So you might be willing to try the healing sounds or even the vowel sounds of the chakras.
The vowel sounds related to the chakras are as follows:
CROWN CHAKRA: EEE as in “me”
BROW/THIRD EYE CHAKRA: AAA* as in “say”
THROAT CHAKRA: EYE as in “my”
HEART CHAKRA: AH as in “ma”
SOLAR PLEXUS CHAKRA: OH as in “go”
PELVIC CHAKRA: OOO as in “you”
ROOT CHAKRA: UH as in “cup”
The idea is to say these sounds in a specific note. If you have a keyboard or a phone with an app that has a keyboard or an app that can give you examples of the notes it might help you. Or you might be musical and know what the notes sound like.
EEE is to be made in the B note AAA is to be made in the A note EYE is to be made in the G note AH is to be made in the F note OH is to be made in the E note OOO is to be made in the D note
And UH is to be made in the C note
These sounds are to help open and heal the chakras. Or to keep them balanced, all depends on your needs and your practice.
As with everything there is a wealth of information out there on how to “do” the vowels. The commonalities I am seeing is to sit comfortable with a lengthened spine. Be relaxed. Use a normal breath. Repeat each sound seven times.
I have used these sounds in my Nia classes when we are using a chakra as a focus. I am going to take this list and use the vowels sounds just as I did the healing sounds. The focus can be the chakra vowel sounds and we can create an intent from there. Yay! I love thinking of things to use as focuses in my classes. I also think that sitting down to make these sounds as a specific exercise is a good idea. What do you think about chakra vowels? Might you try the exercise?
*Many places note this as “AYE” but to me that is AYE, as in what a pirate says. So I noted it as AAA, like Fonzie would say. 🙂
I’ve post about the Healings Sounds. I’ve posted about how we used the Healing Sounds in our Nia class. I’ve stated that making noise is a great way for people to know that you are breathing. There are other reasons to sound, one being it helps stabilize your core. In Nia or in other dance exercise classes there are times when you are moving and playing with balance so having a stable core can assist in proper balance. With the effort to stay stable there is also strengthening. On the exhale the abdomen is tightened.
In Nia we do a lot of movement where core stabilization is key. Some of the moves we do that require a stable core are punches, blocks, and kicks. In order to punch and/or block with strength and authority the spine needs to be straight, the ribs squeezing, and the abs tight. All of this can be accomplished with one loud sound, any sound can do it. Kicking is the same thing, even if you are doing a side kick where your body might be leaning, the spine is still straight and the torso needs to be tight. A joyful “HA!” can take care of all that!
Another reason to sound is release. We are often taught to be quiet. It could be as deep and as damaging as we were taught our opinions don’t matter. It could be more of a social “norm” where we were taught to respectfully keep one’s opinion to oneself or respectfully not sing, shout, or cry out loud because it would be inappropriate even though that is what we really want to do. All of these social confines can lead to blocked energies. Having to behave can lead to us feeling bad, so sounding in a Nia Class is a huge release. We can experience a release. Healing sounds aren’t the only ones to be made, anything will do.
Often times for me I am busy with listening to the music, thinking of the next move, getting ready to cue, dancing, and breathing I don’t THINK about sound it just comes out. Sometimes a move makes its own sound. Also depends on the move. I did a routine recently where the moves were very quiet for me. It was odd. It was as if the moves had no sound. I am wondering if that is because it was so new. I am looking forward to doing it again to see if sounds reveal themselves.
In addition to breath, stabilization, strength, and release sounding is fun. Children are expected to shout, laugh out loud, and be joyfully noisy, but adults not so much. Kids can run and scream on a playground, adult aren’t often afforded such a luxury, but in Nia we can. It really is fun. It is fun to make noise. It is fun to HA, HOO, FOO, SHOO, HI-YA, WAHOO, WHOOO, and SHHHHH to the top of your voice. It is fun to play with the volume and the tone of the noises. All of this playfulness adds to the joy. We can whoop it up as we did when we were young. The vibrations of sound heal the body. The fun heal the spirit and the soul.
I often wonder how people are able to keep quiet in a Nia class. I believe they have not yet experienced the good it will do for them. There is the breath, the added stabilization, the strengthening, the emotional release, and the fun that it brings all good for the body, mind, spirit, and soul.
While I am saying we do sounding in Nia class, don’t think it is restricted to that. So while you are exercising don’t forget to breath. Try making some noise. If you are in a class that doesn’t allow for it find a Nia class and whoop it up there!
A post ago I posted about Healing Sounds. In Nia classes participants are encouraged to make noise or what we call sound. One reason to sound is to let the teacher of the class know you are breathing. This holds true for many exercise classes. Wanting students/participants to be breathing holds true for all teachers. There are a lot of reasons to sound, it does not have to be for healing or feeling better. But as I stated in that post, I just happened to come across that information and those sounds so I thought it would be fun to bring the list to class and use them as a focus.
The first time we used the Healing Sounds in a Nia Class, I had written each sound down on a separate piece of paper and I taped them to the mirror. Before class I verbally reviewed each sound. Our focus was the Healing Sounds with an intent of bringing some healing. I invited the participants to make these noises during class. The general invitation was to make them any way; they could breath in and make the noise on one long exhale, they could make them quick and staccato, they could make the tone high or low. Whatever they wanted. Whatever they felt. As with most focuses I do bring them into play specifically at times so when we were punching or kicking I might have encouraged them to make loud and forceful sounds. I encouraged them at one point to try each sound. I also had them play with saying a sound at least six times as was mentioned in the information I had found. For my own practice I know that I used the sounds in a pattern and as with many things when one person does it others follow. So we did a lot of lead and follow with sound as each person thought of different ways to use the sounds. It was very fun.
After the class I read to them what the sounds were related to and what they assisted with. It was very fascinating. Some commented that they had been drawn to a particular sound and they could see how that would be an area in which assistance would be appreciated. Some had fun doing a good job of using all the sounds. Some admitted that some sounds were more fun to make than others.
The most recent time that I used the healing sounds I again taped up the papers with each sound written on it. But this time I read the information before class. So the participants were aware of what each sound was prior to dancing. The focus and intent were the same, but with the knowledge of what each sound assisted with some Nia students decided to focus on the specific sounds they felt would help them. Again we had the freedom of how to make the sound and when to make it. It is so exhilarating to hear my students weave sounding into the dance and to hear them make the sounds in their own way.
This second time around it was rewarding to hear my students say, “Yay! I was just thinking about the healing sounds and hoping you would do them again soon.” So they enjoyed it the first time and were looking forward to it.
I think I just decided today that with each routine I teach, with each round, I am going to do at least one class at each location (Willow Glen San Jose, Campbell, and Blossom Hill San Jose) where the focus is the healing sounds. Whether the belief is that they actually heal or not we all have a lot of fun with it. And they are sounds that my class actually make!
You don’t have to be in a Nia class to experiment with the sounds. Have you used them?
As you might have noticed, when I try a new recipe, or just try making something I sometimes like to share. Even if the recipe still needs some adjustments I have to start somewhere. I like to post my recipes because I find myself using my blog when I am going to make something. I can even be at the store and get the idea that I want to make a certain recipe then I think, “Shoot I don’t know what it is in . . . . ahhhh, but I posted it on my blog!” So I use my blog at the store to grocery shop sometimes. Here is a recipe of something that I made that I need to work on.
I used:
Terre Pruitt's Blog 