The Complete Yoga Community

As with the basic foundation of Yoga, Nia is based on the ability to focus all your attention on one area while staying alert, calm and relaxed, as you witness your own body, mind, emotions and spirit.  Nia has even been referred to by some as “Yoga with a beat”. In Nia we learn to be continually in a state of “living meditation”. Which is the process of including stillness in every moment, in order to bring balance and harmony to life.

BRINGING IN THE YOGA PRINCIPAL TO NIA

In a Nia class the Instructor will encourage students to :

• Move and sense the loving relationship between your bones and joints.
• Move and create healthy posture in motion and in stillness
• Move and be connected to your body, mind and spirit
• Move to self heal.

The above can be achieved by taking time to sense alignment, stretch and breath evenly, correcting the moves by seeking pleasure and comfort and  giving as much attention and care to moving out of a position as when moving into it.

There are 13 Nia Principals that focus on the physical body. The 5^th principal, Awareness, teaches how the mind and spirit can assist the student to be more present in the body.  The acronym RAW explains the Body Mind Spirit Connection:

* The “R” stands for Relaxed , which relates to a relaxed body , i.e. a body free of tension with the core aligned and upright

* The “A” stands for Alert, which relates to the mind, i.e. a mind free of distractions and thoughts that clutter the mind and prevent you from being fully present

* The “W” stands for Waiting , which relates the spirit or attitude, i.e. an attitude of curiosity and waiting to see what arises, rather than judgement of the music, steps etc.

The music used in a Nia class is carefully selected. A balanced body reflects a balance of Yin (feminine) and Yang (masculine), and the movement choices reflect this. The music is chosen to tweak the Yin-soft “ female” inward-directed energy and will encourage smooth almost melodic movements. Music is also chosen to tweak the Yang-harder, “male”, outward directed energy and will encourage more explosive, rhythmic movements.

Yoga is, in theory, a beautiful healing system that balances Yin and Yang energies within the body. In actuality, however, many Americans who practice yoga become overly Yang in their movements, due to a highly physical, do-more atmosphere says Debbie Rosa, founder of Nia dance, in her book The Nia Technique. “Often, when people begin to practice Nia after they’ve received training in Americanised yoga, we need to remind them to balance their Yin and Yang and to take what they’ve learned from their yoga out onto the street. Nia teaches the ability to adapt to the variety of rhythms and movements in real life.”

HOW NIA HEALS

In Nia, we use the body to heal the mind and spirit by joining muscular movement with introspection, intention, visualisation, imagery and expressiveness. Body language and verbal expression are used to help bring forgotten feelings-pleasant and unpleasant-to the foreground of consciousness. Thus Nia is commonly employed to relieve and reverse depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders, substance addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorders and abusive behaviours. And of course it is also used to help people who already feel good to feel even better.

By Susan Sloan – Black Belt Nia Instuctor

For more information on Nia in South Africa visit www.niagp.co.za