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

The focus chosen for class from the basket today was diligence.

A thoughtful discussion ensued.  We spoke of the sensation of a startle response; the sensation of “should” or “have to” or “need to;” the sensation of love, passion, desire; of devotion, dedication; of courage and strength; of being like a seed, willing to sprout and unfold no matter the climate, weather or circumstance because it is living its true nature, not because it should, but because it is simply being itself.

Since no one knew the etymology of diligence, we designated it to be derived from delicious, akin to delicatessen.

Here is the dictionary etymology of diligence:  

From diligere, Latin, to esteem, to love; from di + ligere to select; related to legend, from legere, to gather; from Greek, legein, to gather, to say, logos, speech, word.

Now I am diligent, like the seed diligently being a seed, like my heart, diligently beating inside my chest, like each of my 75 trillion cells diligently singing its own name, like the moment, jumping up and living in this very spot, this very body, according to its nature, such that I may flower again and yet again, devoted, loving, at peace.

Today we had a mirrorless class.  I’m inspired to dance more often with the mirror covered after Nia students talked about their relationship with the mirror this summer.  You can look forward to moving without a mirror on Saturdays about once a month.

For me, there was a sense of more intimacy, with myself, with the group, with the space and with the movements.  Things seemed closer in, cozy.  

As a teacher, sometimes I had the sensation of being disoriented.  For example, when I wanted to see the students, I’d try to look in the mirror but I couldn’t.  Instead, I’d sense behind me energetically, or I’d turn around to look.  I also worried that without the extra visual input it would be difficult for people to follow me, so I put more attention on guiding, verbally, physically and energetically.

At one point, I turned to face the group and found myself looking someone right in the eye.  I felt both engaged and shy.  The sensation was "Wow — we really are all in this together!"  

As a student, the closer in sensation helped me feel more present.  My body felt  full within my own skin.  I was aware of my three dimensionality.  I was more aware than usual of my sweat.  I had the sensation of bathing in a luxurious bath of movements and the music.  

If you were there today, I’m curious what your experience was.  What was the sensation of moving without the mirror?  I’d love it if you’d post a reply and share what your practice was like.

Yesterday was my friend Judyth Hill’s birthday.  Here is the poem she sent out to celebrate.  I read it at the end of class today.

                                                       *     *     *

 This year I am declaring my birthday:
Fall Madly in Love Day!

Sigh deeply!  Remember how great this is?  Go on a wild date!

Be instantly on a fabulous adventure! An exotic vacation!
Why not?  It’s our day!  It’s our life!

Stay Home & Get away!  Spend the day in bed!  In your garden!
Wear something gorgeous!  Velvets!  Silks!  Topless!
Do what you wish!  Sleep!  Lollygag!  Loaf!  Lounge!
Feed Birds!  Swim!  Tango & tangle!  Day dream!
Find yummy hot water & loll joyously about for hours!
Read all day, eating dark chocolate bonbons & moan in pleasure!
Walk into deep woods!  Sing loud!  Dance for the nuthatches!
See 3 movies & eat buttered popcorn!  Procrastinate!
Make Prayers for Peace & and cuddle up close!
Go to Work & Be at Play!  Make Amends!
Go where you’ve always wanted!
Macchu Pichu?  Morocco?  Your back porch?  My room?
Mozambique?  Denali?  Chaco?  Altai?

Have espresso & chocolat biscotti at the café just to the west of San Marcos…dunk and dream…
If your morning is booked,
try a gondola in moonlight, rich, old wine and so many kisses…
Aren’t the Cubs playing somewhere we could go?
A picnic at the Bosque at dawn, kergillion cranes wheeling overhead?  Snowgeese & Merganzers…
Hot chocolate and green chile cheeseburgers after?
Sushi on a balcony overlooking your life,
in gratitude for every blessed second?
A chance to say I love you one more time?
And have it said back?
Say it again and again!  Aren’t our hearts so full!  Whew!
A luxurious nap with a thick blankie, Assam tea with cream?
More Kisses?
Hot bath, scented rose geranium, reading Neruda?  Aloud!
Coltrane and Ella and Billie and Bob Dylan?
Snow in the high country, Waves rolling in on Cabo,
silver bracelets, satiny avocados, tart Margaritas?

You Are Invited!  You are My Guest!
Come to my Party Today!  Maybe Now!
Come as You Are!  How else could you be?
Don’t worry if you are Late – Come as you were!
If you are Early – Come as you will be!
It’s all in my heart for us!  Just be here!  Or there!  Now!
And know I Love you Best, let’s be thrillingly, heartbeating wild in love…with each other and this deliriously good world,
today & today & today & today.

The focus of Saturday’s class was Music, Movement and Magic.  

Music, Movement and Magic is part of White Belt Principle #3, Music and the 8BC System.  The focus arose out of my desire to bring to the class a deeper understanding both somatically and cognitively of sound in the Nia practice.  It also arose out of my desire to rest my voice as I recuperate from a cold.  

After a discussion of the Movement, Music and Magic triad, I led class without speaking.  This allowed us to put more attention on the sensation of music as we moved, and allowing me to teach my body’s way, without straining my throat.

Here’s the Music, Movement and Magic triad:

Many of the Nia principles are based on triads   Every Nia triad is an equilateral triangle.  This tells us that each component of the triad is of equal value.  To be honest, I have often emphasized movement more than music, so I appreciate the opportunity to balance this triad of the Nia practice.

If we look at the triangle and travel from the lower left corner clockwise around to the top, the triad shows us that Music + Movement = Magic.  The art of listening plus the moving your body’s way creates magic we call Nia.  The art of listening is the practice of putting 100% attention on the music — attention both on the sounds of the music and on the silences between the sounds.  

I am finding the practice of teaching without talking and dancing without verbal language to be exquisite.  The sensation is spacious, luxurious and beautifully detailed, like being in a great cathedral.  And indeed, there is a very devotional quality to this practice.

When I am silent, my mental realm quiets and my system opens up in a different way.  In Saturday’s class, I felt like all my 75 trillion cells were resonating inside my body,  a chorus of 75 trillion ecstatically joining the music from within.  Interestingly, it was a very similar sensation to doing the routine, Sounding, where we are toning and singing with the music as we move.

I’m back home in Ashland.  I will be back at The DanceSpace teaching Tuesday morning, February 5th.  I hope that this blog has been useful to you in getting a flavor of my Nia intensive training experience and of the greater Nia practice and presence available to us all, each in our own body’s way

It feels good to be home in my colorful little house with my sweetheart, Richard, and my life.  As I write, I sense my sits bones on the wooden chair, a stretch and little strain in my left shoulder blade, some pain in my SI, and a tired happiness.  Happy to be home, to have had a great White Belt #2, and because I spent the week being present in what was happening. Happenness. Happiness.

I will continue to post to the blog regularly, but not as quite as often as during an intensive.  I will be sure to let you when my Blue Belt training comes around in May.  If you want to subscribe to the blog, you will get an email when I have written a new post.  The subscription process has been simplified and hopefully is now easy to use.

Sweet dreams!

A member of the Nia community has asked, “You already have a Brown Belt and you’re now doing White. Would you explain how that works?”

Two years ago, when I was auditing two days of Sarah’s Blue Belt training in Portland, Carlos asked that I consider repeating my White and Blue Belts before continuing on to Black Belt.  My body said, "Yes."  That is the somatic answer, the Nia way to sense and respond.  The objective answer is that as Nia teachers we are encouraged to audit sections of previous belts and to repeat entire trainings, especially the White Belt since it is the foundation of all the belt levels.  

The purpose for me in choosing to repeat my White Belt this week has been:  First, to integrate and embody the material more fully into my present state of being (I took my first White Belt nine years ago); To be in the presence of and to receive transmission from the Nia founders; Since Nia is an organic, living system I want to experience the sensation of how Debbie and Carlos are articulating the practice of Nia now; I want to review the material, and catch up on and receive inspiration and guidance for the practices I have not yet fully embodied; And to be available for what Nia wants me to put my attention on so that I am fully prepared to take my practice to the next level at Black Belt.  I know from being in the Karate dojo that there is a great deal of precision and training asked of the student in the process of moving from Brown to Black Belt; it is developmental leap in the practice and in the individual.

I was successful in all these.  

In addition, I received:  Touching the beauty of the Mystery; Friendship; Love; Healing; The opportunity to step up and be of service; And the light of the attention of my teachers shining on me, changing me, watering the flower of my being and inviting me to continue blossoming and opening to the path. 

1.  The Joy of Movement
2.  Natural Time and the Movement Forms
3.  Music and the 8BC System
4.  FreeDance
5.  Awareness
6.  The Base
7.  Three Planes and Three Intensity Levels
8.  The Core of the Body
9.  Creative Arm and Hand Expressions
10.  X-Ray Anatomy
11.  Business and Marketing
12.  Continuing Education
13.  Teaching What You Sense

 Nia Principle #13: Teaching What You Sense.

The practice of this final White Belt principle is quite beautiful.  When we teach we cycle through a three stage process.  

First I practice listening to the music, receiving it with my whole body.  Next, I dance to the music just for fun.  Finally I ask my body to to show me a sensation.  I don’t go looking for the sensation, like "How are my elbows doing?"  I ask to receive it.  Once my body shows me, I say to my class, "Everybody sense your left clavicle," if it was my left clavicle that I sensed.  I then return to just listening and dancing, allowing the students to sense that part on their own bodies.  

After a while, I repeat the cycle.  I am finding this to be a very peaceful practice.  It is relaxing and expansive to simply rest in listening, then just rest in dancing, then receive.

Principle #13 is an attention practice for both the teacher and the student.  "Everybody sense your left clavicle" provides a way to cue attention, in the same way that a teacher might cue movement by saying,"Everybody get ready to turn."

For me, Nia is a profound energy practice because it is a practice of growing attention.  The 13 Principles and their practices offer me an elegant and thorough system of ways to pay attention to my body through sensation.  This expands my ability to pay attention.  It allows me to become more present.  As my attention grows so my devotion to the Mystery grows and my wonder stays vital.

In our closing circle today I shared with the group and Debbie and Carlos my single intent: I love the the way the Mystery manifests through the body.  

And I actually got a white belt!

I did it!

My class focus tonight at Nia HQ was White Belt  Principle #10: X-Ray Anatomy.  We danced our bones, ligaments, muscles, soft bellies, desires, marrow, wings, tails, claws, osteoblasts and osteoclasts, directed energy with fingers and hands, floated over the planet, shouted, sighed and shook.

I felt a bit numb within the bigness of teaching for the first time at Nia HQ and within the process of unchoosing again and again the demons of comparison and judgement as I was teaching.  I wasn’t always sure what moment I was sensing, this one or another one.  But people definitely enjoyed it.  I feel happy and relieved and ready to do it again and have more fun —  like losing my virginity.

It was great to feel the support of having Sarah there and my White Belt sisters.  I will post photos when I return to Ashland.

Tomorrow is the last day.  I feel both sad and ready.  It has been feast, a feast of knowledge, learning, labor, little sleep, sensing, subtlety, friendship, practice, beauty, trusting myself and opening to the moment.  It feels like I have been in Portland for three weeks not one.

Sometimes, as we are sitting in the studio having a lesson with Debbie or Carlos, I find my point of view has moved.  It is as though we are all now in a European movie with poignant, beautiful light, participating in a poetic practice of studying the arts in a moment that may not be world-changing, but nonetheless somehow is world-changing simply because it is happening, and the courageous dedication of all the hearts involved makes the moment print on the Mystery in such a way as to make our loves and our griefs and our desires echo through time and feed something greater that we may not always see but we can feel.

Before our afternoon session began with Carlos on Principle #10, X-Ray Anatomy, I became very curious about the white curtains covering the tall central mirrors in the studio in the area where the teacher stands during class.  I went behind them, having fun walking back and forth along the wall between mirror and curtain, feeling partly childlike, partly catlike, and partly just like myself.  One of the sensations I had was the thought, "I could teach here."

After tonight’s class with Carlos with a focus on the hands, studio manager  Liz Ganz (who did some workshops for us in Ashland a few years ago) brought me down to the Nia office.  Debbie had invited me out to dinner tonight.  It turned out she couldn’t go, though, because she was working on a deadline.  Liz mentioned to Debbie that she might need a sub for Thursday night’s class because Liz had an injury.  When I heard this my energy field said, "I could teach!"  My body was quiet.  My mind expected only the next moment.  They discussed it a bit and then Debbie said, "Rachael could teach!"  

It feels natural, exciting, nerve wracking, natural, exciting . . .   I wept tears of joy and gratitude on the bus home tonight.  I have been dancing in that  studio since 1982 when I studied jazz with Joe Orlando and Senegambian dance with Ruby Burns, and in that building since 1980, when I first moved to Portland after college.  

The icing on the cake is that Ashland Nia Blue Belt, Sarah Rose Marshank, will be here at Nia HQ to dance with me in my class!  What a dance the universe is.  Baruch Hashem!  I love you all.