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?
Funny, I was about to type that I post mostly about Nia since I am primarily focused on teaching Nia, but right now I looked at my Categories and I have 111 post under Nia and 111 post under Misc. Funny. This post will fall under Misc. This post is about some of the search terms I see. Sometimes I see people using a question as a search term. I always wish I could contact that person via e-mail to answer their question. I have thought about posting replies, but I haven’t done that. I am often surprised and sometimes shocked at some of the things people search for. I am laughing right now at the most popular search term since I have been blogging. It is funny because WHO thinks of these things? Why would anyone actually be searching for it? I am actually very happy — now that I think about it — that I posted about it because apparently people want to know. Do you? Have you ever wondered about a puppy that is purple? Seriously “purple puppy” is the biggest search on my blog. Hilarious, don’t you think?
It is especially funny since I just happened upon the purple puppy and her pink sister and I thought it was so oddly cute that I decided to post about it Makes me laugh that other people are curious about purple puppies. Makes me wonder why people are curious about purple puppies.
The next biggest search term is relevé. See, that makes sense to me. I under stand people wanting to know what it is or how to do it. Or just wanting more information about it. There are people who dance that might have heard that term but not being a ballerina, might not know what it is. Or someone wanting to be a ballerina might want some hints and tricks. That one makes sense to me.
The next one is Voss Water. I am somewhat surprised that Voss water isn’t higher on the list. Seems as if for a long time I had been seeing that come up again and again and again. But it is number three.
Number four is Carlos AyaRosas. That is nice. Carlos is the co-creator of Nia. His name was Carlos Rosas, but near the end of his career with Nia he changed it to Carlos AyaRosas. I love that people are searching for information on him. I imagine they are people who love Nia and they are wondering where he is and how he is doing. I believe he is in Texas with his new wife. And I have faith they are doing wonderfully.
I am not sure about you, but I was surprised by number five. Are you ready? Purple puppies. Plural. So not only do people search for purple puppY, they search for purple puppIES. I wonder what they want to know? I wonder if my post gives them any information they want to know. As I scroll through the entire list of search terms I see even more searches for the purple puppies just phrased differently.
The next popular search is optical illusion. That one is big. I see that one comes up a lot with the plural version search and all of the elements of the optical illusion; horses, babies, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein. Funny. That post gets a lot of hits. I can understand that, who doesn’t love an optical illusion. They are so cool. Tricks of the eyes and brain.
Well, I was just looking at the search terms and they often make me laugh, although today there were not any funny searches, but I think the next time there are I will write a post. Maybe you can help me figure out what some of them mean. Or maybe we can just have a chuckle. I am still laughing about the purple puppies.
Nia’s training, the Nia Intensives are something that anyone can take. If you are not planning on teaching you can still attend the intensives. Nia is a practice that can be applied to life without ever having to teach it. Nia has several different ways of helping with continued education both for the livelihood member and for teachers. First for a person that is planning on teaching, #12 of the White Belt principles is continued education. There are instructions and ideas on how to learn Nia routines.
There are three stages to learning a routine. When I took my White Belt Carlos was very adamant about not skipping any of these steps. I am glad I have decided to post this because I am being reminded that there are a few steps in each stage that I could be better about doing. In the first stage we are reminded to just simply do the DVD. With each routine we have a DVD and we are instructed to just do it. Do it as if we are taking a Nia class. Do it as you would do any exercise DVD. Move, listen, and enjoy the workout. This is obviously one step that can be done several times.
Another step is to listen to the music all the time. Listen and allow it to seep into the body. Then we are encouraged to FreeDance to the music. We are instructed to dance six of the eight stages. Keep in mind this can be over the course of days or weeks, whatever it takes. Then they advise us to just WATCH the DVD without working out to it. The last step in Stage 1 is to do the bars.
Stage 2 is where we watch the DVD and note the separate portions of the body’s choreography. Three separate steps, first we watch and note the legs, then the core, then the arms.
Stage 3 of learning a Nia Routine is where we start to go deeper into the routine by starting to have an awareness of the musical cues that signal a change in movement. By now, with having danced the routine to the Nia DVD as a student, listened to the music, mapped out the music, noted the choreography, and become aware of the sounds that tell us when there is a movement change coming we are ready to pretend. We call that teaching or dancing with your bears. It is the example used when you are at a point in the learning process where you are ready to do the workout and pretend there are students. During my Nia White Belt Intensive Carlos said something like set up stuff bears or spoons or pillows, just set up something so you can have a focus. I think the bear scenario is used in all intensives because we all call it “teaching/dancing with your bears”. Step 3 of stage 3 is to even go deeper into the music. It is amazing how the music will sound different after you have taught your bears. I might realize I need to pick a different music cue because while I am moving the one I originally chose gets lost, or I hear a better one. Sometimes I stop and don’t move at all to make sure I am hearing the music correctly. More advice includes being the student, doing the routine again, but as the student and not the teacher and getting more technical with the moves. Once you have the basic choreography down it is time to get technical and make certain you have all the levels of intensity familiarized in your body. The Nia Routine training DVD also has many other tools on it to help us learn the routine. They have a portion where they talk about the energy that goes with each move and more about the technical aspect of each move. One of the last steps is the recommendation to dance the routine with a different focus. That is a great way to learn a routine because it becomes practically brand new and you discover so much. The last stage encourages us to change the music. Because we have mapped out music and know the count of it we can pick songs that match and put the choreography to different music.
In addition to these great stages and steps they have mapped out for us to assist us in learning a routine, Nia’s continue education includes articles and telecourses. They also film classes that they hold at Nia HQ so that people can watch and learn about more ideas that delve into Nia. In 2010 the course of study was the 13 Nia White Belt Principles. The course of study for 2011 is “Becoming A Sensation Scientist”, learning about senses of the body. I am not sure of what the course of study’s name is for 2012, but it looks as if it has to do with the body itself with title such as, “Awareness of Muscles” and “Awareness of Ligaments and Tendons.” So this is part of what I mean when I say Nia is so much more than a workout.
YES, Nia is a cardio dance workout where you can go to a class and move your body to music get sweaty and get exercise for your body. But if you want, it can be a practice, where you learn more about your body. Even if you are not a teacher or a livelihood member Nia does a monthly telecourse call where everyBODY can listen, I would like to encourage you to check it out. Go to the main website for Nia and see all the education they have to offer. You might be just amazed as I always am.
There is a book about Nia. The Nia Technique Book authored by Debbie Rosas* and Carlos Rosas**. When I first thought of teaching Nia I bought it. I think I have said before that I thought Nia was a little too “woo-woo”. When I read the book it helped me see that Nia is based on the science and the design of the body. I often refer to my book. I have little tabs stuck on almost every page and that gets bothersome.
While the book has a table of contents it is sparse and it does not have an index. I always find myself searching and flipping and going back and forth in the pages because I can’t find what I want and I know it is there. Last week when planning the Nia Playshop I just flipped back and forth one too many times. So I created an index.I created an index of all the things I want to look up and arranged in alphabetically. I also arranged it so that there are subsections within the index. But then that seemed so long so I did an index with just the main sections and a separate index below of the subsections. So, yes, I have the index arranged three different ways so that you can have a choice on how to look at it. It’s on my site HelpYouWell.com.
One of the “bothers”, cat eating tabs.
If you would like a copy of the Excel format just let me know.
*now known as Debbie Rosas Stewart
**now known as Carlos AyaRosas
In my Nia class tomorrow the focus is going to be the second chakra. The routine I am doing has a lot of opportunity for us to focus on it. Chakras are areas of the body with specific energies. The second chakra is the sacral chakra, the hara, or the pelvic chakra. This chakra is located in the pelvis area.
The routine has a lot of hip movements; side to side, up and down, folding, circles, and just dancing them however the body senses the music. There are times when we might not be moving them at all but focusing on the area enables us to be aware of where we are directing its energy even when it is not in motion. While we are doing a rib isolation the hips stay still but they should be facing the front with the energy directed to the area in front of us.
This chakra is located in the first lumbar area so movement of it stimulates the spleen, bladder, lower back, sex organs, areas of the intestines, and all liquids in the body. The sacral chakra is also associated with emotions. According to The Nia Technique* “move this chakra to develop a strong connection between your male and female sexual energy and to stimulate your powers of creation.”
The color orange is associated with this chakra.
As with any focus the intent can be changed to whatever you would like. I think tomorrow we will start out with the intent of being aware of the sacral chakras energy and being aware of where we are focusing the energy of the hara.
*A book written by Debbie Rosas and Carlos Rosas, NKA Carlos AyaRosas
So today (July 31, 2010) was the Nia Jam and it was the third one that I have taught in. Cool. It was awesome. I just have to say, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” I know many of you feel this way because I see you post it in blogs, on Facebook, and in tweets. Just “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” When you are with people doing what you love and they are doing it too! The Nia Jam was so beautiful and awesome. There were teachers from all over and we just danced—-and our students let us and they followed along. It was magical.
One of the creators of Nia is retiring at the end of this year. I must admit that I don’t really believe it (yes, probably denial). I mean, I believe he is leaving and I understand that, but I don’t believe that he will not be pulled back—by his own heart—into being involved somehow. I can understand that he is ready to move away from the day-to-day and all that it must involve, but I have hope that he will be doing it somehow. I picture him teaching in the city to which he is moving. I guess I will see.
The focus of the Nia Jam today was a celebration of Carlos AyaRosas. We did a jam using katas from his routines. Our intent was a thank you and a gathering of “Carlos” energy. I felt that we did a great job. I felt that our hearts were alive with gratitude for the dances he has created for us and for Nia. I felt there was a lot of “Carlos” energy! I have a feeling that he would have been honored and he would have been proud of us for sharing our love of Nia using his katas.
A Nia Jam is a great way to experience Nia. Teachers gather to co-teach. Once the music starts we just go. There is a trick sometimes to doing the microphone handoff, but it all works out in the end. Today is was joy, it was magic, it was fun, it was Nia. It was exactly what a jam should be. I like to think it is what Carlos had in mind when he created the katas we danced today.
Thank you, my Fabulous Nia Teachers. And thank you, Carlos for all that you have given to Nia.
Here is one song, this is not an example of Carlos’ choeography, because it is a Free Dance. I didn’t want to miss one minute of his dances. I could only bring myself to record a Free Dance. 🙂
Using the whole foot is another one of Nia’s 52 Moves. The whole foot is used for secure stability. It is a powerful base.
Moving on the whole foot or just standing on the whole foot–either on both feet or just one foot allows for the bones in the feet to act as support for the entire body. Stepping or standing on the whole foot can bring rest to either the heel or the ball of the foot. The whole foot stance or movement calls different muscles in the foot and the leg into play. If you are accustomed to standing and/or walking on the balls of your feet, this technique might be a challenge to your leg muscles.
Stepping onto the whole foot encourages a gentle flex in the knee so as to help absorb any shock that might be felt as the whole foot touches the ground.
There are times in a Nia class when we actually dance on the whole foot—you might recognize the whole foot dancing as what Carlos (Rosas now known as AyaRosas) called micro dancing. We use the whole foot to gently slap the earth. Moving around the space. We might stomp, bringing the foot to rest gently on the ground.
The whole foot is the middle of a stride in the heel lead walk. We sometimes will step onto the whole foot instead of the heel or the ball, this as I mentioned, can be a restful for the heel or ball if you normally step on it either. The whole foot can be used in all of the stances.
While you move through your day, be aware of your feet. Notice when you are on your whole foot. Take a moment to shift your weight from foot to foot. Sense the stability and power in your base, in your whole foot.
This information is taken directly from The Nia Technique Book. Usually I use my own words from my own experiences and from what others have shared with me, I thought this time I would share with you a portion directly from the book. I am hoping that this information and the information that I have shared will interest you enough so that you will purchase the book for yourself.
—Classic Nia is for everyone—from neophyte to dancer to athlete.
—Classic Nia is a learning experience, with an emphasis on gaining new knowledge about your body and the best ways to move.
—In Classic Nia, it is reasonable and acceptable not to expect perfection in your movements.
—Classic Nia is noncompetitive, meaning you grow and change in your own time and in your own way.
—Classic Nia teaches you to play, have fun and express yourself.
—In Classic Nia teaches you to play, to have fun, and express yourself.
—In Classic Nia, you focus at least as much on your Body’s Way as you do on the Body’s Way.
This is information taken from pages 168 and 169 of the Nia Technique Book written by Debbie Rosas (presently Debbie Rosas Stewart) and Carlos Rosas (presently Carlos AyaRosas).
Please let me know if you have any questions. I love both questions and comments.
In Nia we refer to FAMSS. We practice FAMSS. We can use it for all types of things. It stands for:
Flexibility
Agility Mobility
Strength
Stability
And by “use” it I mean, it is often incorporated into each kata of a routine. Or a kata might concentrate on just flexibility, the next one agility, the next one mobility, and so on. Or we could use FAMSS as a focus OR an intention of a Nia class. Either all of them (Flexibility AND Agility AND Mobility AND Strength AND Stability) or just one (Flexibility OR Agility OR Mobility OR Strength OR Stability).
But whatever we do with it or them, they are highly regarded as abilities needed to ensure one’s (high) quality of life. So in Nia we honor them all. In a Nia class we weave them into the workout. In this post I am just referring to FAMSS in the physical. They can certainly be applied to more than just our physical bodies, but that can be another post just by itself.
For now, I am just talking about our physical bodies needing to be flexible, agile, mobile, strong, and stable. Just to move around in daily life these five things are very important. In Nia we can bend down in a forward fold as in the familiar pose one might do in a yoga class, allowing our flexibility to be enhanced. The music might encourage us to run, stop, run, stop, run, stop or move us to play the drums calling upon our bodies to display agility in legs, in arms, in our bodies as a whole. We can move our bodies as if they are grass in a field or seaweed in the ocean, moving each part, each section, each muscle, and all major joints to help ensure their mobility. We could crouch in a bow stance moving up and down exercising the strength in our legs. Then we can we stretch, reaching to the sky as we look up, this can be stability practice, either on flat foot, on the ball of our feet, or in releve. This could be one song in which all of this FAMSS is going on or it could be spread out over the entire routine.
Just tonight in my San Carlos class a woman told me that after her first class last week her hip felt better. She said that after her hip felt better on that first night it encouraged her to do a few of the moves at home that we had done in class. So she started working on her FAMSS in the first class, she was encouraged that movement was working to increase her FAMSS so she moved more. With movement she felt more comfort and less pain. FAMSS is necessary for a high quality of life. Her ever day movements were better not because she did it once, but because she kept doing it. Nia honors Flexibility and Agility and Mobility and Strength and Stability, so in Nia we practice it.
I hope one day you will attend one of my classes (I have two in San Jose and one in San Carlos*) to see how we can improve your FAMSS.
*Please see my website for my CURRENT class schedule. Thank you!
If you are going to get deeper into Nia–taking it further than a workout and even further than a practice, if you are going to attend a Nia Intensive, you will be introduced to the triads. Nia has a method of grouping things together in threes to assist in the learning of the information. I think that it is a pretty good tool to use. It helps organize things into little manageable packets.
Each principle in the Nia White Belt has a triad. Some triads have three additional triads to help further explain the principle. It is all packaged so wonderfully I just love it.
Now, honestly, participating in a Nia Intensive is so delicious I don’t want to take away from all that you will be experiencing so this does not have all the information that you would see if you were to attend an intensive. With the principles and points on a triad there are usually catch phrases and other things to assist you in learning. This is just an somewhat striped down version so that you can have an idea of what I am talking about.
Also, with all of my talk and posts and tweets and pages about Nia, I am wanting to share with you a glimpse of the richness that is Nia. There is a lot of knowledge that Debbie and Carlos want to share and they have created or commissioned to be created some wonderful and beautiful tools in order for anyone who wants to learn can use.
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