Not My Mother's Body

http://www.nianow.com/story/2012/09/dont-stop-dancing


I hope you will click on the video link above and enjoy Debbie Rosas describing the history of Nia (part of it at least) and the rewards of the Nia lifestyle.

As I watched the video, I found myself smiling all over. Debbie said she started Nia because she wanted to "reclaim her body" and move from "thinking to sensation." When I stepped into my Nia class 17 years ago with Joanie Brooks at the Concord Athletic Club, I had no idea what those words meant. I'm serious: I was so far removed from my body that I didn't even know it needed reclaiming. The word sensation was also a question mark. When Joanie said sense your feet, I thought she was speaking in tongues. How? What feet? Do they smell or something?

After that first class, I started going to body school -- learning to connect and to listen and finally I learned to move. Not exercise, as Debbie said, but to move. There's a difference.

Last Monday in class, I caught a glimpse of myself and all my students moving through the room. It was one of those moments when I wasn't sure whose image I was looking at -- until it snapped that I was looking at myself. In that moment, I remembered what my mother looked like at 62. I have my mother's facial expressions but my body is very different. When my mother was 62, she weighed about 180 pounds and suffered from breast cancer. She was a brilliant school teacher -- a strong reader who taught others to read. Her brain was as large as her heart. I am forever indebted to her for making me love to read and to write. But she was very disconnected from sensation and from her body. She died at 63. Not long after her death, I stepped in to my first Nia class. One of the final lessons my mother taught me by example was: Take care of your body.

And thanks to Nia, I learned how to do that. I realized last Monday that I don't have my mother's body and that's a good thing. All these hours of Nia education -- in white, blue, brown and black belt trainings - have helped me reclaim a body I didn't know I had. I love the Nia lifestyle.

Never stop dancing. Ever. I mean it.