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.
-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?
Have you ever listened to a song and had a rush of emotion? Have you ever had a song take you somewhere else? The song could transport you back to a place in time or a location. The song could allow you to to be lost in thought, lost in feeling, lost in emotion. All the world around you fades away and you are in another space. Even if it is not such a strong pull that all the world disappears, have you ever had an emotional response to a song? Have you ever stopped to think what the artists meant by the song? Have you ever dissected a song to really try to figure out what emotion the artist was trying to convey? Have you ever had the emotion you experience during a song seem completly different than what you think the artist is transmitting with the song? Say “Happy Birthday to You” brings you to tears because of a sad birthday memory. It is amazing how music can elicit emotion. It is amazing how music can figuratively transport you to a different time, a different place, a different state of mind. On the other hand have you ever been at a club or a party and just danced or bobbed your head to a song, not thinking about a personal emotional response or what the artist was feeling? This is all part of Principle #8 of the Nia Blue Belt. I say “part of” because as with all of the principles there is a lot more than I am posting about. There is a lot more than I even have thought about. This is just a little part. This principle is The Power Of Silence And Sound. Music, Emotion, Expression.
There is power in the music. The music is both the silence and the sound. There is emotion in the music – in the silence, in the sound. The emotion can be expressed. In Nia, for the purpose of this principle we are saying there are three emotional parts of a song. There is the emotion of the artist. What feeling is the artist trying to get across? The next song you hear, think about it. What do you hear? Then there is the emotional part of YOU. What do YOU feel when you hear the song? As I mentioned sometimes what you feel is different from the emotion the artist was putting out there. Sometimes it can be the same, but not always. Sometimes it can be the same emotion but maybe you feel it more strongly, than the artist was. Then there is the emotion that you express. The emotion of the dance, the emotion of a Nia class.
In a class there is the choreography. The moves have their own emotion. In leading a class, in creating a class, in crafting a class a Nia teacher plays with all three. The artist’s emotion, the personal emotion, and the Nia emotion. Because Nia is a body mind dance exercise (to put it simply) and it is body focused the moves in a class do not always match the motion of the music. Sometimes it is an exercise in itself to move slowly to a fast moving beat. Or even to stop when the music begs for motion. Or to move through a portion of silence. But also, because it is Nia, it is fun to match the choreography to the music exactly. It is fun to take the emotion that the artist is throwing out there and match it. With Principle #8 of the Nia Blue Belt Nia teachers have a great tool in which they can learn and study the music. It can be broken down to allow for all types of movements and emotions to erupt from the dance. We get to play with The Power Of Silence And Sound.
If you want to play with The Power Of Silence And Sound, pick a song. Listen to it to decide the emotion of the artist. Then DANCE that emotion. Then play the song again dancing your own emotion. Then play it again and marry the two, the artist’s emotion and yours. Have fun mixing it up!
Off the top of my head, Nia’s Blue Belt Principle #2 – The Power of Two makes me think of Nia’s Energy Allies or the more commonly known four agreements. The tag line for this principle is Communication. The details involve a transmitter and a receiver. So to me it is a perfect connection to the energy allies. To me to be a clear transmitter one must speak with impeccability. One must stay on task of what the idea is that is being communicated. It is the job of the transmitter to be clear so that the receiver can understand what is being conveyed. To add to that the transmitter doesn’t assume the receiver knows what is being said, another reason to be impeccable. To be a pure receiver, the receiver shouldn’t be assuming they know what the transmitter is saying. The receiver shouldn’t be making up stories in his/her head as the transmitter is speaking. The receiver should be quietly listening, with no inner dialog happening. Also there is the added mission of not taking anything personally. This can be more easily accomplished if the third person — the one in the receiver’s head — is quiet. Both the transmitter and the receiver always strive to do their best. That is how I connect Nia’s Energy Allies to Nia’s Blue Belt Principle #2.
Since communication can be thought of as the exchange of energy between two, this principle and its details can easily be applied to everyday life. The exchange of energy can be between people or things. The exchange is a giving and a receiving. It does not have to be verbal, the exchange, the communication, could be a touch, a gesture, or any of the other ways things are communicated. So you might be able to see how within the scope of life it can be applied to more than just communicating with another person.
As a Nia teacher we can apply it to our Nia practice. There is a transmitter and a receiver with our bodies’ movements. There is a transmitter and a receiver with the music. There is a transmitter and a receiver with a Nia routine and the choreography. There is definitely a transmitter and a receiver in a Nia class and the transmitter is not always the teacher.
With the principle being The POWER of TWO, I can’t help but connect it the Nia Energy Allies when thinking of the communication between people. My connecting probably stems from the fact that I truly feel I need to strengthen my relationship with all FOUR allies in order to allow the POWER of two to shine through.
This is just my immediate thoughts on Nia’s Blue Belt Principle #2. As I live with it longer and read the manual and process it, I am certain I will come up with more. My relationship with will become stronger. Nia has a “craft” for working with this principle, but I am still determining my relationship with that idea. We will see if a post ever becomes of their idea.
Are you familiar with Nina’s Energy Allies (or the four agreements)? Can you see how they can be instrumental in communication? Can you see how the Allies could assist in making two powerful?
I recently participated in the intensive that is the second level of training in the Nia practice. Nia trainings are called intensives which is a great thing because it gives you an idea of what the training will be like —– INTENSE! The second level is Blue Belt. Nia borrows from other practices and uses belts and colors to signify levels. The levels are White, Blue, Brown, and Black. There is a Green for teachers that can be taken at anytime after white. Part of the reason the trainings are intense is that they are over 50 hours of instruction. The instruction includes lectures, dancing, participatory exercises, and workout classes. Each level of the practice has its own focus, intent, and principles (except Green). The Blue Belt focus is Communication, Relationship, and Intimacy. While the concentration is on how these things relate to Nia it is probably easy to imagine how lessons involving these three things can be related to everyday life. Since the training CAN be related to life outside of teaching Nia there are many people who take the intensives with no intent of teaching. You might also be able to imagine how the focus can apply to many things in relation to Nia. One way is how a Nia teacher communicates with a class, the teacher’s relationship with the choreography, and intimacy to the music. This is just one little facet of the focus. I am sharing it to give you an idea of what the focus of “Communication, Relationship, and Intimacy” means.
The intent of the focus is to energize personal connection through self-discovery and communication by following The Body’s Way. Since Nia is a body based practice we do our learning through the body. As I mentioned in my I’m Blue, But No Tears Here post we were shown how to use the Nia 5 Stages or the Developmental Anatomy to answer questions about what stage we are in when learning something new. Very amazing. This is the part that I need to practice — really listening to my body and believing what it is telling me. The believing part will take examination time . . . I’ll have to really figure out why my body says I am in one stage where I might THINK I am in another. I might think I am in the beginning stage, embryonic, but my body might say I am in the crawling stage. For me this means I need to pay attention to the details of what I actually know and what I still need to learn. I could know 11 out of 15 things, but since the 15th thing seems to be so big to me, I might think I am just beginning whereas it turns out I know over 73%. All part of the communication, relationship, and intimacy!
Also this training has familiar things you might have heard of in other trainings, for instance: pay attention to what you sense, feel, think, and have within you then communicate accordingly. I know that this type of idea has been taught in corporate trainings as an effective way to communicate. A Nia related example would be: Knowing the choreography and really know how to do the 52 moves, then having an intimate relationship with the music which will allow you to clearly communicate to the Nia participants.
I can almost talk myself into circles because it is all relates so well and ties in together and just connects. The more I type the more things I think of so I really have to concentrate on just a tiny portion so my sharing does not get so confusing. I am trying to share to clarify. I want you to want more. I want to understand that in addition to a great workout, Nia has stellar training and continued education.
Can you see how Communication, Relationship, and Intimacy is important for a teacher?
I wrote a post about a four-point turn, that is what I call one of the turns we do while we are doing Nia. In Nia it is sometimes called an Aikido turn. But it is a turn that is done in many dance exercise classes, including Zumba. I realize that even if you are reading the post while trying to do it, it could be a bit confusing so . . . . . voila! A video.
The first clip is of me facing away and I start with a RIGHT turn, then alternate. Then the second clip is of me facing the camera.
As with my Aikido turn post maybe right and left indications will work better for you. In my other post I decribed the left turn, so here I will write out the right turn. And as stated, the right turn is the first turn I demonstrate. Turn your head/eyes to the right, allow your hand/arm to follow. Move your right foot to “toes out” turning your right thigh bone to the right. Then step on your RIGHT FOOT in a “toes out” position, put your weight on it 100%. As you are stepping all your weight on your RIGHT FOOT, allow your body to turn to the right, in the direction you want to go. Swing your LEFT LEG (free leg) around to what seems like in front of your RIGHT FOOT. Step onto your LEFT FOOT, toes pointing to the back of the room (or what started off as the back of the room), take the weight off the RIGHT FOOT (“toes out” foot). Swing your RIGHT FOOT (free leg) behind to land about in line with the heel of your LEFT FOOT (weighted foot). You will land standing on the RIGHT FOOT, and turn the LEFT FOOT to be parallel with the right foot. . . making that the fourth point or step.
Even though in the first clip on the right turn you can’t see my right foot “toes out”, I do the turn enough times in the video for you to see how the first step is a “toes out” move. Starting the turn with the “toes out” and already turning the direction you want to go will go a long way in enabling you to get all the way around. Even if it takes a lot of practice to get all the way around, starting that first step with the leg in outward rotation will help a lot. I also said in my last post that I think it is easier to do this move fast as opposed to slow. So it might be a good idea to not try it really slow at first because it is not easy slow. Just go. Right toes out, left, right, left. Or left toes out, right left right. Remember we do not spin on our feet. We need to pick the feet up off the ground to avoid blisters and strengthen the leg. Also you might notice that this turn is done on the balls of the feet. You put all your weight on the ball of the foot.
While my fourth “point” or step I am exaggerating and pointing my toe in that might not always be the case. When we are moving to the music the fourth “point” could end up being any number of things depending upon many number of things. The choreography sometimes calls for different things. Plus there is the individual body that is doing it to consider. Sometimes people can’t get all the way around, it could be that the music is really moving and there isn’t enough time to get around and settle into that fourth step or it could be that this is one of those moves that will take practice.
It’s a great move that allows us to use ALL five Nia Sensations. Flexibility on the “toes out” and as we place our feet, mobility in our joints, strength to get us around and stop, agility to stop, and stability to stay stopped. Cool, huh?
Nia is both a dance exercise and a life practice. Kind of like yoga. You can go to a class and get the exercise you want and have it end there or you can learn about its principles and take them into your life. There are levels of the practice. Nia has chosen to use a “belt” system as their levels. Instead of just having numbers or names, they have assigned belt colors to the levels. There are five levels; White Belt, Green Belt, Blue Belt, Brown Belt, and Black Belt. The intensives to gain the belts can be taken and enjoyed by people who aren’t teaching. Each belt has 13 principles, except Green. Green does not have its own set of principles because green is the belt level that is actually designed specifically for teachers and helps them hone their teaching skills. It delves into the 13 principles of the White Belt. The White Belt’s principle #4 is FreeDance. FreeDance as a practice has eight stages. I have posted about eight through two. This post is about stage one. Stage #1 of Nia’s 4th White Belt Principle is Freedance – Anything Goes (movement wise).
While you are dancing any movement is great if it is authentic movement. With Nia there is choreographed moves, but within the patterns of movement there is the ability to freedance. Also with many routines there is sometimes just freedance where we are allowed to dance free to the music without any choreography. Stage one: Freedance, anything goes, allows us the greatest of freedoms. You can dance using the wall, the mirror, a chair, the floor, or a ballet barre that might be in the room. You can dance fast, slow, high, low, or in the middle. Anything that you sense your body wants to do to the music. It is up to you.
The idea with freedance is to just let the body go. Don’t think about it. When you think about it often comes the judgment. Sometimes the judgment can interfere with movement, especially if it is judgment along the lines of, “Oh I must look silly doing this.” “Oh that probably isn’t pretty.” “Oh, I am not graceful enough to spin.” “Oh, I need to do this or that.” This is all inner dialog that clogs up the muscles and their movements.
Freedance also, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, in not club dancing. We are NOT just bouncing or undulating to the beat, we are moving to the music. We are moving our bodies towards as pleasurable sensation of health and well being.
Freedance is also not patterned dancing, we save the patterns for our choreographed movements. Freedance is just free. It is spinning twirling, diving and whirling. It could be hopping or dropping. It really is whatever your body does.
Freedance is not easy. It takes practice. It is not easy to just be on the floor and not think about how you are going to move and just let your body go. It is a challenge. But once you can stop thinking and talking in your head you will find yourself moving to the music. Sometimes you might even notice that you are moving in a way that you didn’t think about and it is really amazing to have that sensation. But don’t think too much, just keep moving.
I would like to invite and encourage you to make some space in your home or if you are so inclined find a space to dance outside . . . find a space turn on some music and just dance. Let yourself go. Let yourself be free. Allow the time, space, frame of mind and spirit to freedance. Remember, anything goes!
Wahoo! I have to add that in the middle of typing this up I secured another class to sub for the City of San Jose. So exciting to be able to share Nia through the city! Yay!
I have posted about Nia FreeDance before. Nia FreeDance is meant to encourage creativity. In Nia routines sometimes we have entire songs that are FreeDance. Not all routines have an entire FreeDance song, but all routines have at least one part as FreeDance. The one part could be that our feet have choreography and our arms and hands are free to move. The creativity is released. As the 4th Principle of the Nia White Belt it can also be used as a tool to help a Nia teacher learn a routine and/or explore his or her practice. The principle has 8 stages. The third stage of FreeDance is Feelings and Emotions with a catch phrase of: Pretend, Fake It, Act As If. This is the stage where you pick an emotion and you act it out. This is not the same as stage 4 where you draw on the real you and you act out a story you have experienced, this stage is pretend.
The idea of stage 3 of Nia FreeDance is to pick an emotion, a feeling and then act it out. Pretend you are feeling that emotion at that moment. This would be practice or play outside of a class setting where you are doing a routine. So when using this tool as a way to grow and create you aren’t even expected to dance. The exercise is to pick an emotion act it out for a bit, then pick another emotion. Acting and explaining the feeling with your body in an exaggerated way. If it helps create a story in order to fake that emotion. It can be somewhat fun because normally when you are angry you probably would not throw yourself down on the floor and kick and scream, but when we are pretending to be angry and acting “as if” you can. You can throw an angry punch. You can run and jump for joy. You can do anything you would like and since it probably wouldn’t be something you would be “allowed” to do in society it tends to spur creativity. And this creativity gets your body moving in news ways. It gets your heart pumping. It gets your blood moving. It gets your joints juicy.
I used this stage not too long ago as the focus of a few of my Nia Classes and it turned out to be very interesting. So within the class setting we actually danced our pretend feelings and emotions. We continued on with the routine we were doing at the time, but we added our “act as if”. So it altered our movements a bit. We allowed ourselves to follow the emotion so as we were dancing steps and hand movements might have been changed, but we still danced. As I said it was interesting because my class did not want to act the “negative emotions”. Some had a difficult time with some of the ones we deem as “negative” or ones that go against one’s normal self. We danced: keeping a secret, letting a secret go, happy, loopy, light, jealous, worry, love, angry, masculine, annoyed, bashful, brave, calm, childlike, guilty, fearless, and more. We tend to assign negative and positive, but they just are . . .I think that we can look at an emotion and or a feeling and it can be neither, but as we live with it it could become one or the other. If we let it affect us in a negative way, then maybe it can be perceived as a negative emotion?
The Embody and Share portion of the Nia White Belt Manual states: “Emotions are energetic responses to our experiences. We must learn to deal with our emotions to keep ourselves free and unblocked.” So my thought process is, that if an emotion “blocks” us or causes us stress then we consider it negative.
People didn’t like the emotions they felt were negative. There was a tendency to not pick them from the list I had displayed. But I think they are good for exploring movement. So it’s fun to play with them all. Remembering it is pretend, we are faking being (whatever the emotion is that we chose), we are pretending.
Well, what do you think? I invite you to make a list of emotions and feelings, then put on some music. Pick an emotion/feeling from your list and move to it. Stay with it until you are ready to move on and then pick another one from your list. Do this for a few songs. You might be surprised at your movements. You will probably be able to create ways to move that you didn’t realize. When you are not thinking of your movements it allows your body to release and —- ahhhh! —- movement creativity. Go ahead, you can do it. Let us know how it goes!
In Nia we have FreeDance. FreeDance allows for so many things. One way we FreeDance is we dance to the music with no choreography. We let our bodies sense the music and allow it to move us. When we let our body move freely without thinking and without judging it is a great workout. Many of the Nia Routines have songs where there is no choreography and we just FreeDance, and many of the routines have choreography in addition to FreeDance. Our feet might have set patterns, but our arms and hands are free. Or our arms and hands might have the pattern and our feet are free. Many combinations of dance, choreography, and body parts. Nia FreeDance also has stages. A Nia teacher can call upon these stages for many things. The stages in FreeDance are used for learning a new routine, they might be used as a focus in a class, they might be used for a playshop, we have many options. In Nia FreeDance the fourth stage is The Creative Source – The Real You.
With this stage during the White Belt Nia Intensive I participated in, we were instructed to remember a situation and tell ourself the story of the situation and allow ourself to feel the emotion of that situation. We all walked around the room telling ourselves a story. Some of us talked out loud, some of us were silent. All of us used the emotion the story evoked to move. Our movements might not have been considered a dance by some, because in this stage we are not necessarily dancing. We are not moving our bodies with the intent of dance, we are allowing the emotion from the story to move our bodies. Depending upon the story it could appear as if our movements were a dance. Yet, since we do “dance through life” in Nia, all of our movements are a dance . . . just not the typical dance. In this stage we are not intent upon dancing.
The purpose of FreeDance is to the purpose of stimulate movement creativity. So we use the stages to assist in that. So using a story and the emotions along with the story can really allow for movement we might not have thought to bring to the dance floor. Some stories we use to practice stage 4 might be happy, some might be sad, some might be filled with anger, whatever the story and the emotion it is what moves us.
In the intensive there was all types of movements when we practiced this stage. There was stomping, jumping, running, rolling, skipping, punching, kicking, screaming, laughing, smiling, frowning . . . . all types as you can imagine would occure with a group of people with many different stories. As stated this is a tool to awaken different movement.
When we dance I think that we have a tendency to move in the same pattern. We might move in different patterns to different types of music or different beats, but there might just be a handful of different patterns. When we are challenged by using the different tools of Nia, when we practice and play with the eight stages of FreeDance we move in different ways. Sometimes muscles that don’t normally get to join us in our dance come alive. They are happy to be allowed to join in on the dance.
Using different muscles than we normally do in our dance fuels the creativity even further. When you let go and FreeDance you will be surprised. Here I invite you to try this fourth stage of FreeDance. I suggest choosing music without lyrics. Sometimes lyrics and interfere with FreeDance when trying to practice specific stages because lyrics can sometimes compel certain movements or emotions. So music without lyrics allows for you tell the story and listen to your body’s response to the emotion.
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?
We exercise our proprioceptive sense in Nia in every workout. Generally proprioception is the sense of body parts in relation to the body. One’s own perception of one’s own body. You may have also heard kinesthesia which is very closely defined, both definitions debated, as the sense of movement. But for now I will tell it as I learned it and explain it as I know it. Proprioception is what we do by knowing where we are in space . . . not outer space, but in space. Knowing how far to reach for something. Our body knows or senses how far our arm has to reach. In our muscles we have proprioceptors that monitor, detect, and inform the rest of the body what needs to be done in order to achieve the goal of reaching the object. Proprioception makes life so much easier!
When you reach for your coffee/juice cup in the morning you probably look at the cup. You look, your brain makes a million calculations, your arm reaches out for it, and you grab it. Then do you look at the mirror to make certain you actually get the cup to your mouth? Probably not. You just know where your mouth is and you bring your cup up to you mouth for a sip of liquid. Yes, there have been times I am sure when we have all “missed our mouth” and poured something down our front, but more often than not we make it to our mouth. Same with eating and brushing our teeth. We know where our mouth is so we are able to get our hand to our face with the proper distance for the utensil.
Walking is the same. We have a sense of where the ground is so we don’t watch every step, we just allow our leg to go out to make contact with the ground and we step. I bet we have all missed a step or thought the ground was either farther away or closer than it actually was. So we might have jarred ourselves a bit. But again, more often than not walking is a smooth habitual action executed with ease.
What about touching your nose or scratching an itch? The same thing. We know where our body parts are so our muscles and our proprioceptors know what it will take to get our hand there to scratch.
This is part of the nervous system. This body function can be trained, it can be practiced, it can be improved. If you like sports such as golf or baseball, you are practicing with precision movements that allow you to use an object to make contact with a ball. You learn how and when to swing. You learn how hard or light to hit in order to get the ball to go not only the distance but where you want it to go. Practicing a choreography dance is training your muscles and your nervous system. Learning the steps and being able to place your feet correctly without looking is great practice. In Nia we use our entire body while dancing so we are able to keep our proprioceptors and our nervous system active. In many of our routines we actively look up while our feet perform specific moves. We encourage our students to allow their feet to dance what they know.
It is very important to practice with and train our proprioceptive sense. Learning new motor skills is a great way to get those muscles and nerves singing. As we age this sense seems to diminish and it could be just from lack of movement. I have seen many elder people stop moving and then become very afraid of the world around them. If we keep our proprioceptive sense then we are aware of where our body is and we are aware of the world around us, this helps us fear less. So keep moving. Keep practicing old skills. Keep learning. Learn new skills. Keep dancing. And keep living. Exercising our proprioception will help ensure a high quality of live and living!
Terre Pruitt's Blog 