Sacred Body: Biology and Soul

For the last two weeks, we have been engaged in “Passion: The Practice of Form and Freedom.”

During week one — The Practice of Freedom — we have danced to the music of the Nia routine Passion, using Nia’s eight stages of FreeDance.
During week two — The Practice of Form , starting on Thursday, February 4 – we [...]

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The focus of today’s Nia practice, chosen at random from the basket of cards, was “Loving Movement.”
Loving movement – as in “I love to move!”

Loving movement – as in a gesture of love or an offering to a person or to the Holy.

Loving movement – as in a chapter, an episode, a section of music [...]

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The focus of our Nia practice today, chosen at random from the cards for 2010, was “commitment.”
Whenever we see a word with the prefix, “com-” we know we’re in the field of relationship.  ”Com-” is from the Latin, cum, meaning “with.”  We are in relationship with . . . everything.
The suffix of “commitment” is from [...]

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“I accept my brilliance.”
This was the focus of our Nia practice today, the first class of 2010.
Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is your brilliance.

Accept the wild brilliance of  your body — with all its 75 trillion cells shimmering like stars, metabolizing and burning bright in the universe of your flesh and [...]

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Happy New Year!
. . . Whatever that means.
It might mean another holy every day opportunity to be here now and celebrate together the preciousness of what is happening.  ”Happy” and “happen” are from  Middle English hap, meaning “happen,” as well as “good luck.”  So “happiness” means “happen-ness” and “lucky.”  It’s the fortunate state of being present [...]

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This is one of my favorite poems to say, to hear, to feel the echo of spiraling through the past and the future and the present.  We heard it at the end of the Nia New Year’s class this morning.
I Live My Life
I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things [...]

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Today we chose the focus from the basket of 2009 focus cards for almost the last time this year.
The focus of our Nia practice today was “moving forward.”
As we move forward toward 2010, we find ourselves in the seven day period between what we call Christmas and what we call the New Year.  This is [...]

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Suppleness was the focus of class today.
“Supple” is from the Latin sub + plicare, meaning “to fold under.”  It’s related to ”pliable,”  as in the ballet movement, plié, which in French literally  means “folded”or “bending” to describe how the knees bend.
The word “suppleness” even sounds supple.  The sound of lippy “p”s rolling into the tongue-y “l” [...]

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I bow to Nia.
I bow to Nia as a path of body consciousness.  There are many paths of body consciousnes – thank God! —  and the one I’ve been practicing for the last 14 years is Nia.
One way I understand why I got sick and went back into asthma, which I hadn’t had in years but [...]

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I’m back!
After being away in New Mexico studying with Martín Prechtel and then unexpectedly plunging into a healing journey, today I taught my Nia class for the first time in over a month!
I am embryonic.  Everything is new.  Everything is new, strange and beautiful.  I am in a never-before-seen or experienced world.
We lit candles.  We [...]

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