Terre Pruitt's Blog

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

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Posts Tagged ‘Helen Terry’

Maps Can Help Get You Where You Want To Go

Posted by terrepruitt on September 9, 2014

Dance 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, PiYo, Gentle Yoga, Group Ex City of San Jose, San Jose Group Ex classesI am not sure many websites have Site Maps any longer.  Websites now-a-days are so full of bells and whistles not many have site maps.  Not many just have a place where you can go to one page to see a list of everything that is on the site.  I find sometimes when I am on a website, I am just going in circles trying to find the information I want and I think it would be nice if there was that one page . . . that site map . . . that showed me the list of pages so that I could click on the page I want instead of getting dizzy clicking around.  I think I have a lot of information on my site so I know that one might get a little overwhelmed.  I know that some of my pages repeat information on other pages.  I do that because when I am on a website sometimes I don’t see the information if it is only on one page, but the more it is repeated the better chance that I will see it.  But I do have a site map for my site.  I have a lot of information so I wanted to have a list that people can look at in case they wanted an idea of what the whole site contained.

Since I teach at several different places and I have both a FIXED (on-going) schedule and one that changes all the time it can be a bit much for people to keep track of.   In addition to my teaching schedule, I have information regarding Nia on the site because I want to educate people on the classes they can take from me.  So, yeah, there is a lot on there.  So here is what I have created to help.

 

What’s on www.HelpYouWell.com at a glance!  The BOLD indicates the links you see at the left, the others are in the drop down menu if you put your mouse over the links at the left.  And, you can just click the link from this site map. 
• Home
• New to Nia (links to help you navigate site)
• What is Nia?
o Nia Practice
o Nia FreeDance
o Nia 5 Stages
• Contact Terre
• Nia Class Schedule (schedule of regular ON-GOING Classes)
o San Jose Nia Classes (M/W) (details about Wednesday classes)
o Community Center Classes (regular classes with the City of San Jose – T/Th)
– City of San Jose – Nia (Classes SUBBING for the City of San Jose)
o YMCA Silicon Valley Classes
– YMCA Silicon Valley – Sub Dates (Classes SUBBING for the YMCA)
o Present Nia Class Locations (locations at a glance)
o Nia in the Evening
o Nia on Saturday at 10 am
o Nia Schedule at a glance (another way to look at Terre’s Nia schedule)
• Nia Information
o Nia Class Cycles
o Main Benefits of Nia
o Tips for a Pleasurable Nia Experience
o Principles of the Body’s Way
o Nia Tips for Moving with Nia
o Sounding Tips
o Nia’s 52 Moves
o Nia Belt Levels and Focuses
o Indexes for The Nia Technique Book
   Index with Sections
   Index with separate list of subsections
• About Terre Pruitt
• Nia Class Fees (each location has different fees)
• Nia Monthly (information regarding Nia in the current month, sometimes additional info, check it out)
• Nia Jams
• Gentle Yoga
• ZUMBA
o Zumba Fitness Class Schedule
• Pictures and Stuff
• San Medusa (a write-up about a Playshop with Helen Terry.  Link not shown on left.)
• Site Map

Hopefully this helps people navigate the site.  The site map is a list of all the pages on the site with hot links so you can click on the page you want to visit.  What do you think?  Do you ever get “lost” on a website?  It seems as if you are just going in circles?  Do you find many websites with site maps?

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Slow Down, Catch Some Chickens

Posted by terrepruitt on March 28, 2013

Nia is a great dance exercise.  Go to a Nia Class and get a great workout.  It is also a practice.  As with any practice there are workshops.  In one particular workshop produced by Danielle Woermann and led by Helen Terry we were reminded to go slow.  Helen was here teaching us her adaptation of a Nia Routine to a specific album.  Helen is hilarious.  She is down to earth, professional, wonderful to listen to (she has an English accent), and currently living in Texas.  The “currently living in” needs to be mentioned because of one of the stories she shared with us . . . but before I get to that let me tell you something she reminded us of.  She reminded us to go slow.  I know often times I want to rush moves . . . that could mean doing it faster than it needs to be done or not “staying through my enoughs”.  But either way the idea is to slow down.  When I slow down I can be aware of more.  I can pay more attention to a move or even to my class.  There seems to a tendency to rush, could be our lifestyles and/or society, whatever, so the lesson was to slow down and the result could be catching a chicken.

There is one song in particular in her adapted routine that I am severely challenged in slowing down.  It just seems so incredible slow.  I have not yet been able to FEEL/SENSE the music and I have been doing the routine for a month.  Which, with the current way I am structuring my San Jose Nia classes, equates to eleven times, thus far.  I have done it correctly, but only when I am COUNTING.  Yes, I am having to COUNT in order to get it.  For this song I really have to learn to listen, sense, feel, taste, hear, smell, become the music in order to slow down.  I have even announced to the class so I have a better chance of doing it, “We have to go really incredibly slow here.”  Sometimes I have to close my eyes so I don’t see them rushing through and join them.  S L O W.  (Where’s that chicken?)

Dance 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, ZumbaSlow down.  Work the muscles.  Enjoy the song.  Enjoy the movement.  EnJOY.  SLOW.  Geez . . . it seems so difficult to slow down sometimes.  Sigh.  But really often times slowing down in combination with “staying with the enoughs” (as I already mentioned) helps in catching those chickens!  Ah-ha, here we are . . . . at the chicken story . . . (remember this is coming from a person who is currently living in Texas!).

I might not have the details exactly right, but you will get the point.  Helen said that one day her husband and her neighbor were going to work on building a table.  The neighbor says, “Let’s go catch some chickens.”  This sounded very odd to Helen because they were building a table not catching chickens.  So she asked her neighbor what he meant.  He said that when he was young his mother used to send him out to get dinner.  He said that he would go outside to do the task, sometimes he would end up with a handful of feathers and sometimes he would end up with a chicken.  A handful of feathers means not quite getting it.  So catching the chicken is when task is accomplished!    Makes sense!

In dancing this routine all month, I have enough feathers to fill a king sized down comforter!  So . . . see there?  Feathers really aren’t all THAT bad.  Feathers can be useful.  Feathers can be fun.  A handful of feathers does not ruin a Nia class or even the moment, but it is NOT a chicken.  When you hit the mark, the music, the cue just right that is catching a chicken.

Whatever it is, whether it is slowing down or staying with the enoughs, or learning the music really well, it is a great feeling to catch that chicken.  When you attend one of my Nia classes you might hear me sputter and/or you might hear me “bacbac”.  When you do, you will know either I grabbed a handful of feathers and the escaped ones are floating at me causing me to sputter or I caught that chicken!

You know what we’re talking about when we say, “Catch a Chicken”, right?  Isn’t that a great feeling?  Do you ever feel the need to slow down?

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

Stay With Your Enoughs

Posted by terrepruitt on March 26, 2013

One of the things I learned in a Nia workshop at the end of February, 2013 was the phrase “stay with your enoughs”.  Trainer Helen Terry, currently located in Texas, was here in the San Francisco Bay Area to teach us how to dance a Nia Routine that she adapted to an entire album of different music.  When Helen said that, I laughed.  Because there has been so many times when I thought, “this is enough of that move, it MUST be time to move on” and I wasn’t REALLY clued into the music and I went onto the next move and sure “enough” I hadn’t stayed long “enough”.  It was really funny at the time that I took the training because I was doing a Nia routine in which I almost always moved on before I should in accordance with the choreography.  Shortly before the workshop I had just started telling myself (and listening to myself—what a novel idea!) that when I THOUGHT we were done is not when we should be if I were going to match the original choreography.  There was at least one more bar to go through.  And so when teaching that routine, my mind would say, “This is it.  This is enough.”  And my body would say, “Terre, we’ve been through this before.  If you THINK this is it, then you KNOW it is not.  Stay.”  So Helen’s words “Stay with your enoughs” are perfect.

Dance 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, ZumbaNia is so lovely that pretty much most of the time if I lead us into the next sequences of moves before we are actually supposed to go or if we stay longer than the original choreography intended it doesn’t really matter.  We might miss that wonderful “perfect match up” to the music, but it never really feels badly off.  The choreography flows very well with the music so most of the time it doesn’t feel WRONG.  We have the flexibility to stay and go as we please, but when coached to “stay with the enoughs” sometimes it is the perfect idea to help with those troubled spots.

In the workshop that Helen was leading since she was teaching us how to dance a specific Nia Routine to a specific album, there were specific songs and specific examples of where she thought it might feel like as if it is enough.  The idea is to keep the faith and “stay with your enoughs”.  Just stay past the point you think you should be done with that move.  She said one track in particular would “give you a lot of ‘enoughs'”.  Which for me that is not the “enough” song, but that is ok.  She reminded me of the tool so I can apply it to any and all songs where I have enoughs.  I get to relax and stay with them!

There were so many wonderful things presented in the workshop I could probably do a month’s worth of posts.  But for now I’ll say “enough” . . . . until my next post . . . .

Do you stay with your enoughs?

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