I started dancing ballet when I was young, maybe 5. I was always moving, I was the kid who could not sit still, ever. My mom watched Jane Fonda workouts on the new VCR early before school and work. She took me to her step classes and I loved how people came together to love their bodies, guided by the beat of the music moving in a synchronized way. It felt unifying. As I became a young woman, I took ballet, modern and jazz classes. I preformed and enjoyed moving my body. As I grew I sometimes felt the awkwardness of becoming a woman. As I picked up the societal subliminal messages I worked with the self consciousness I felt. It felt like work to keep a positive body image. When I started college I tried an aerobics class and was just about over the competitive, comparative culture of the mostly women in these classes. I wanted to strive towards my goals of fitness and at the same time I just no longer could handle the no pain no gain, comparative mind set the instructors were regurgitating. 

My friends were taking a NIA class and they kept telling me how fun it was. They had a hard time explaining it, and kept calling it a practice. They said we move like the water, and the wind and the trees, and we do it together. My first NIA teacher went by Syraya. I went to a class with her at the University of Idaho Gymnasium… and it was packed. There were about 80 students, we were watching each other as we would get glimpses of her thru the crowded room. There were women and men even football players together with us, who eagerly waited to see her next move as Dead Can Dance was hypnotically playing. We were undulating and moving thru poses, dance moves that had a unique signature. Each move was so different then anything I had ever experienced, even with my dance education. NIA contained elements of many other movement forms. We relied upon the moment, the music and we played together in that magic. What I loved was how in her body our teacher was, she was showing us by example thru her awareness and presence was demonstrated by how connected she was to her body, the music and the technique she was sharing. It was as if time slowed and frame by frame could be perceived. Each move was consciously crafted and intentionally moving energy. The sensate experience I felt was different than anything I had known. I was taller, more fluid and had a greater sense of space in my body. I was getting fit and playing at the same time. And 25 years later, I am still as enamored, by NIA.

My grandmother gave me a thousand dollars to attend my first White Belt intensive training in Portland at the NIA Dance studio. My Grandmother Alicia Bonner had dated Gene Kelly when she danced in a company as a young woman. I felt her, seeing herself in me. Her encouragement was the support that I needed. I knew I wanted to teach people how to be in their bodies and as the true fanatic I am I moved to Portland and began taking classes 2x a day with the creators of NIA Debbie and Carlos Rosas. I dreamed and danced NIA and taught NIA where ever I went. I began to study the movement forms that NIA integrates. I moved out to Kauai, Hawaii and taught there for a number of years. At the height I was teaching 12 classes a week. When I got pregnant I moved back to Portland where I had my two children and raised my family.

I only taught a few classes and didn’t teach much while raising my children. I didn’t think I had the energy to put into creating the classes and workshops. For the 10 years I lived in Portland I continued to study and practice at the NIA, had my own private inquiries and I took classes at the NIA HQ headquarters. In my personal practice I always came back to the pleasure and joy of movement. Nia’s founding principles.

I love NIA because it is part of me. I integrate Nia into my personal and professional life. As a Brown belt I know this body of work at a core level. I specialize in bodywork and care for clients with injuries. I have personally seen people transformed by Nia. As our living journals, our bodies carry us throughout our life time. Our bodies deserve our attention, deep reflection and purposeful movement. Nia is a practice that not only acknowledges our emotional, mental and spiritual realms we also incorporate them into the practice. And so our wholeness is celebrated and exercised.

I have been involved in the ecstatic dance community since 1999. I have a great time on this kind of dance floor, I religiously attended Soul Motion, Sweat Your Prayers and Gabrielle Roth’s Five Rhythms, back in the 90’s and 2000’s. (before everybody was a dj, much respect to all the dj’s.) I love to go ecstatic dance and find a big difference between these two. In ecstatic dance everyone is free to dance however they feel, choose and are moved. The exchange of people’s movements becomes a language. The idea sometimes can feel restrictive to move how someone else is informing you to move. And yet there is a vocabulary, a unique combination of muscles and bones that aligns in a certain way that cultivates and directs energy chi movement flow in the body. If you limit yourself to your free movement you will miss out on the focus and discipline, the practice to cultivate something new and different. (Which as a bodyworker is exactly what you need for your posture, alignment and psychosomatic health.)

We Love FreeDance in Nia, an element where expressive movement is free and anything goes. This may last for a song, be a couple or several songs, and could be a whole class by design. Learning the body’s way and studying forms of movement you advance and learn something new to you. There is an exploration, and challenge in that. You are asking your body to change on a beat every eight counts or, more or less. It’s challenging on purpose. So that you can be agile like a ninja and change your posture and alignment to a specific place in space and time.

Form & Freedom: is a principle of NIA. In Nia we explore the synergy that is created by whole body systemic movement that becomes like a marriage between the two. So that form: the specific alignment of bones/muscles that holds a unique energy signature can symbiotically coincide with freedom: your own unique organic expression; in the same move. Studying movement forms challenges your neurological pathways to alter and expand your movement patterns and habits.

NIA stands for Neuromuscular Integrative Action, we use martial arts, dance arts and healing arts. You can learn something new every time.

I taught a class on Kauai called NIA Level One. I taught some basic moves that helped people find ease in their daily movements. I would teach NIA at a slower pace.

I had an elder woman in her 80’s who came to work with me one on one. She had severe kyphosis, which means her shoulders rounded over her heart. She had a hunch back. As we walked together in a slow motion and did the heal lead, where the heal of your foot leads the walk and the ankle gets it’s full range of motion as the bottom of your foot is rolled out like dough to the ball then toes. Many people tend to walk on their toes. A heal lead helps to free the pelvis and to engage the spine to gently undulate.

As we walked I guided her into her felt sense, because her ribcage was caged. The undulation of her spinal movement seemed to stop right around her heart. She had larger breasts and we wondered if the weight of carrying them may contribute to her sunken chest. As the music took us we danced Nia and embarked on a journey.

She had memories surface of her childhood. When she had gotten breasts she had felt ashamed. She didn’t like attention from others, and she had taken on some beliefs about her own body from what she perceived from the world around her. She did her best to hide from the attention she was given, and she found it safer in the position of rounding her shoulders around her breasts. This safe position she took as a child had stayed in her body’s consciousness for her entire life.

With the Presence Centered Awareness Therapy I learned from Lee Joseph, we were able to contact her little girl, the one who was still hiding. She worked with her little girl, with her awareness she was able to help her evolve and heal. With her higher self, she showed her that she was now safe, and that she no longer needed to hide. She started to feel proud of her body and comfortable with her breasts in a way she had not felt her whole life. She reclaimed her heart’s true, right position and she centered in her chest and her shoulders rolled back. She began demonstrating mobility in her ribcage and better movement in her chest and head.

A few months later I saw her at the grocery store and… she no longer had kyphosis. She said she used the NIA movements in her waking hours and was standing inches taller, looking comfortable in her body, with her tits out. She was comfortable, she was happy and she was proud.

It is always possible to shift your body into greater levels of ease and comfort.

You deserve to feel good and comfortable in your body.

You can evolve and change your beliefs, thoughts and neural pathways with presence.

Your body is a living journal of all your experiences.

It takes courage and a safe space -free of judgement to heal with your presence and awareness.

Feel it.

To heal it.

Therapy and Bodywork at the same time.

I am here for you. When you are ready.

Your Body is beautiful exactly as it is right now. In this time it is especially important to feed yourself this fundamental truth. You are love, you are your essence self, your every cell deserves to be celebrated and acknowledged. You have come so far, you have done many things. You right now have a delicious available moment, this one, to observe and be present for you. Cease this day. Your time is now. Your truth is ever presence and each of your cells spin best with your very own unique, love story. How you love yourself is key, how do you show devotion to you? You are essential, your nature, the real you, and the conditioned. Center yourself. Find Center in your seat, find it in the way you relate to gravity. Root, Find Center in the Rise Find your attention your movement and the stillness of your today. Be interested in your creative inspirations, be your muse today, and remember You are sooooooo sacred and beautiful, as you are.

All are welcome. This is a judgement free zone in which all bodies are accepted, it is not a competition. It is a body positive space in which the fabric and underlying culture is one where all beings are loved, respected and accepted.

I am planning and ready to teach movement, NIA and GaiaDance in deep reverence for your physical wellbeing. Come love yourself with me. I am looking at and intend on booking a space as we speak. I will be teaching a Level One NIA class for those rehabilitating their bodies and wanting a class to learn how to improve the gate, gain balance and strength while working with chronic or acute injuries. I will follow with a class in which we will do more classic NIA. I will align with the timing and let you know soon.

Angela Rose is a Myofascial Release Therapist and an Injury Specialist. She treats clients in Grass Valley at Sol Bodyworks. Her clients find relief from chronic conditions so they can get back to an active pain free life doing what they love.