Cross-Training Body Mind Emotions Spirit | Rachael R. Resch

The focus of today’s class was “Acceptance.” As promised, here is the etymology of acceptance: Latin accipere, to receive From ad + capere ad, toward, near, to add capere, to take, to capture “Receive” is from the same Latin root, recipere, from re + capere, to take again. We can take in the moment again and […]

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April is National Poetry Month, and today, April 29th, is Poem In Your Pocket Day.  In honor of this, each student chose a poem at random from the basket.  Our focus for class was the cross-pollination of the first line of each person’s poem, read aloud: Wage peace with your breath. The same stream of […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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” […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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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 […]

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