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

“Judge not thy precious self.”

These words have been my guide over the last two weeks.  

They were chosen at random from the focus basket for the last Nia class I taught before my recent trip to New Mexico with my husband to study with our teacher, Martín Prechtel, at his school, Bolad’s Kitchen.

These words became my personal focus for the practice of dancing though life, for the practice of wrestling the demons of shame who push us into narrow places, hungry to fill their bellies, casting their all-or-nothing spell again and again in an attempt to deflect attention from their own broken heartedness.  

These words became the ballast for the boat of my wanderings in the wide and deep sea of the holy.  

They became the light of the stars, shining in their constellations, circling overhead, circling underfoot and circling inside my chest, keeping rhythms of time so much vaster than my worries and insecurities, sustaining a view so grand I can see what I love illuminated before me, bioluminescent in the water, splashing, wriggling, calling, so loved and so in love that what eats at me falls in love, too.

In the Nia practice of FreeDance, Stage 6, is called, “Witness — Observe, Do Not Judge, Interfere or Manipulate.”  We witness what is happening in the body in motion. 

My hope is that, now that I’m back home, I can sustain this focus, “Judge not thy precious self,” for my ongoing practice of dancing through life, witnessing ebb and flow, narrow and spacious, pleasure and pain, the strange, beautiful and precious gift of living life in a body.