When was the last time you scratched a grizzly bear in an exercise class? For me, it was Monday night.
I had no idea what Nia was when I saw it on the AFC drop-in schedule, nor did I have any intention of finding out until I entered the studio. (OK, I might have cheated and Googled "What shoes do I wear to Nia?" It was hot outside, and I didn't want to put on socks if I didn't have to!) Turns out, Nia is a combination of dance, martial arts and holistic practices that you are supposed to embrace both in and outside the studio to make you more "joyful, expressive and alive," - at least according to the pamphlet my Nia Blue Belt teacher gave me.
Nia is supposed to get you to step out of the everyday hustle and bustle and back to "natural time" so that you listen to your body's movements. You feel each individual breath and physically express - through dance and other movements - your natural flow. To be completely honest with you, I think I was more focused on the fact that everyone else in the studio, though a very friendly bunch, seemed to be on a first-name basis, and I was clearly the only person who had no idea what was about to happen next.
During the next hour, I experienced a whirlwind of "body levels," sounds and analogies to nature. I'd like to think that I'm in decent shape, so it was a little weird for me to really work up a sweat in 20 minutes, finding myself on the floor with my eyes closed and "opening my chest to the heavens."
Nia really is a big melting pot of different types of exercise. The people who founded it were former step aerobic instructors, which you can see during the cardio portion of the class. Elizabeth, our instructor, had us doing "jazzy" kicks one minute and Tai Chi techniques the next. And it all builds on a technique called Duncan dance, which is very playful and childlike - we were running around the studio without any set direction.
The class was all about horizontal and vertical movements, so we were constantly stretching up on our tiptoes and reaching toward the ceiling or bending low and pushing our hands out and across our bodies.
We let different parts of our bodies lead the next move - I must have "followed" my left arm for at least five minutes. As someone who's taken 15 years of ballet, it's sort of hard for me just to let go of all my muscles and let them tell me where to go, but that's what Nia is about - just listening to the world and letting it flow through you.
I have never taken a class in which the instructor repeatedly asks the students to pause and think about where their bodies feel good. Nor have I taken a class that had such a strong emphasis on nature and the space around me: I "scratched" a grizzly bear to feel the space between my fingers; I climbed on a horse to explore the horizontal plane; I was a sumo wrestler bouncing from corner to corner. I put my feet on the earth (read: floor), feeling the space between my toes, and I reached up to the heavens (read: ceiling) embracing the air around me.
And the music! Talk about inspirational: At one point during the class, we were moving to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech set to New Age techno. The sounds in general were so surprising: Elizabeth was constantly emphasizing her breath, giggling or yelling, "Huh!" angrily.
To be honest, I don't know how I feel about Nia. Not that it's a bad class or philosophy or anything - I'm all about different ideas, stopping to smell and enjoy the roses and feeling the world around me. And if I can get a workout while doing it, great! You sweat, you balance, you breathe. But it's almost too much of ... everything. I don't know if I want to randomly "take a walk" and be led across the room by a "feather on my head" after sweating from doing horizontal kicks with jazz hands or sweeping my arms backwards in giant circles while lunging toward the floor after closing my eyes and concentrating on my ribs as a birdcage that protects my heart and lungs.
Everyone there was friendly, and the instructor was wonderful - there's no denying that. But part of me really just wanted to be in the hip-hop class next door.
Leslie's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at l.keena@cavalierdaily.com.
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