Nia Dance Diary Session 2

About my Nia dance diary
This diary tells you the story of my first six weeks of learning the Nia technique. Follow along with me for Session 2 of my Nia dance experience and reflections.

Doing Nia exercise at my own pace
Between dance sessions I had decided to start learning the Nia Moves. There are 52 moves in all, and the first 14 are called Base Moves. They focus on using the feet.

Nia promotes working in bare feet. That suits me just fine. In fact I prefer to walk around bare-footed in the house. Usually I ditch my shoes as soon as I walk in the door, and only wear socks if my feet starting getting cold.

Yesterday was for learning Nia dance moves

Yesterday, rather than dance again and overdo it in the first few days, I decided to learn two basic foot moves. So I turned to the Nia dance instruction book”The Nia Technique” by Debbie Rosas & Carlos Rosas, Broadway Books, New York 2004.

I started with the Heel Lead and Whole Foot. I wasn’t sure how well I was following the instructions, but felt good about becoming aware of my feet and moving consciously.

Today is Dance Session 2
Today it was time to do more dancing.

To my astonishment I found myself in front of the TV at 7.15 this morning, where I danced for about 15 minutes. I was astonished because I am sluggish in the mornings, and prefer to wake early enough to sit in bed with coffee and the newspaper before starting the work day.

After fifteen minutes of dancing I was winded and ready to stop until I came home from work.

But I was exhilarated to find myself moving around to music early in the morning.

Tonight I came home from work, had supper and went back to do more dancing.

Oops
It seems I don’t know how to make the DVD rewind or fast forward. The remotes I have don’t do this, and I suspect I have misplaced the one I should be using.

So I just let the thing play on until the dance part was over, dancing along until the floor session. I skipped that because my bones don’t feel ready to get down on the floor yet. I’m mindful of doing Nia exercise at my own pace.

It worked out fine, because when the DVD played to the part where Debbie and Carlos demonstrate the moves, I saw that this was an easier way to learn them than from the book. And I was exercising as I learned.

I’ll have to figure out the DVD pretty quickly though if I want to select the parts that are right for the Nia exercise session I have in mind for a given day. I console myself with the thought that readers of this diary can probably relate only too well to these little technology issues.

Again I noticed that I was smiling, even grinning at times as I worked along the instructors. Just practicing the moves is dancing.

Tune in for the next Nia Dance Diary article in a couple of days.

Joanie
January 6, 2009

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