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

Yesterday I went to Nia for the first time in three and half weeks!  (Who’s counting?)  Woohoo!

I took the first 15 minutes of Judy Newton’s class that she was teaching for me at The DanceSpace.

It was astonishingly beautiful to see all the big hearts shining out through people’s faces as I entered the studio.  I was deeply moved to be held in the space of Nia, the space of the joy of movement — ever our foundation — the space of community, the space of healing, the space of the holy body.

I felt tentative and wide-eyed, like a newborn in a big, new world.

I felt worried about how little I might actually be able to do.  I worried my breath could be as restricted as it was in 1995 when I first found Nia, when, due to the immense depth of asthma at that time, I was limited to the tiniest micromovements.

What a blessing to find it not so!

What a blessing to feel freedom in my body — just as it is.

My Nia practice during those 15 minutes was necessarily contained and careful.

I moved in natural time.  I went slowly.  I let myself be guided by my breath and the voices of my body.  I sensed and chose my level of intensity.  I didn’t compare myself to anyone else.  I asked my body if she was experiencing the joy of movement.  When she said, “Yes,” I sustained what I was doing.  When she said, “No,” I tweaked what I was doing until I felt the distinct sensation of my body relaxing and saying, “Yes.”

What a relief to feel my fears and assumptions fall away.  What a relief to be in the present, in the realm of the body — just as it is.

The focus of class was centering.  As I moved, I felt aware of the great and grave import of centering.  Through centering we also become grounded.  We ground by doing what gravity does.  We ground by dropping our body center so that it connects to the center of the Earth.

As in gravity and the ground reaction forces in physics, there is an ongoing energetic wave between my body center and the center of the Earth that I can ride and be exquisitely supported by.

The Earth is big.  The Earth is the biggest ally we have in the physical realm and the biological realm.  When I connect my little center with the center of the great, big, beautiful, spinning, holy Earth, I have so much more available for navigating this strange, confusing, wondrous, big, mysterious life in my body — just as it is.

(Seventh in a series about healing pneumonia and asthma.)