You might have seen my post Are You Happy – It’s Your Choice that used the “poster” created by Alex Kopblin. It is a flow chart asking if you are happy with simple instructions on how to stay or become happy. Well, I just connected that to Nia. More accurately to two Nia Principles. I was looking through my Blue Belt Book of Alchemy and it dawned on me that the triad for Principle #1 is kind of like Alex’s flow chart. He asks the question “Are you happy?” whereas in Nia we choose it. His flow chart goes through simple steps to get to happy, whereas the Nia triad leads us to sensation and guides us to “tweak” in order to “sustain” or “increase” our Universal Joy. While I have been thinking about choosing “happy” and joy, I hadn’t thought about either of these ideals/posters. Even though I have Alex’s on my wall, directly in my face. And I certainly hadn’t thought about how they are slightly connected/the same, until right now.
I often feel that Nia and its principles apply to life. That is why it is a practice and not just a cardio dance workout. As I have said many times . . . it IS a cardio dance workout, and if that is all you want to get out of it . . . GREAT. You will get a GREAT workout. But if you want to learn more about it and see how it applies to life you will find things like this.
You will find that Nia and its principle align up with a lot of memes out there on Facebook The information aligns up with so many things because it is body center and it makes sense. Nia is not necessarily the creator of many of these things, but they do have an amazing way of packaging it up. One way they package it up so well is to relate it to movement. There we are back to the cardio dance workout.
Anyway . . . I was a bit surprised to realize both of these ideas pretty much matched up. But then after my initial, “Oh wow!” I realized, as I stated above, Nia connects to a lot of things. While happy and Joy – as in the Universal Joy might not be the same thing, both of these things (the poster and Nia’s principle) are telling us that we are in control. We are in control of our happiness and we are in control of connecting to the Universal Joy. Neither is always easy at all times . . . but they are both always available to us.
I also believe that sometimes we do not choose emotions, sometimes they just happen. There are times in life when we might need to just let them be and experience them. But that might not be where we want to stay and be all the time.
There are many ways to experience the emotion of happiness and there are many ways to connect to the Joy. What is really amazing is that the ways to do so might not be the same for every one . . . everyBODY is different.
What do you think? I am just thinking out loud and marveling at the Nia connection to things. As I wonder – at times – about my choice of Joy.
How are you about finding your own happiness? What do you do to experience your “happy”? What do you do to connect to Joy?
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