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

How do I adapt movements in Nia class to fit my body?  What if I have an injury or a condition that I’m healing?

White Belt Principle #7, The Three Planes and Three Intensity Levels, offers us an important way to personalize our movement choices.  The intensity levels give us a map of how we can adjust our movements to fit the moment.  They show us how to find and sustain the joy of movement, bringing health and healing to the body, in Nia class and while dancing through life.

Learn the sensation of each of the three intensity levels in your own body.

Because the levels exist on a relative scale, everybody can move at all three levels, no matter what their physical state.   Like our own personal volume control knob with settings at low, middle and high, the levels allow us to explore and move in our body’s full available range.

Fall in love with the sensation and the benefits of each level.  Each level nourishes the body in unique ways.  No one level is more or less important.  Regardless of fitness level, Nia encourages everyone to explore all three intensity levels.

Level 1: Movements are simple and less intense.  Movements may be smaller, slower, closer to center, internal, intimate, grounded or simplified.  Like a microscope, Level 1 can travel infinitely inside the body.  Level 1 teaches us subtlety, center and depth.

Level 1 is where we go to rejuvenate, heal, find our energy, our center and our ground.  We spend time at Level 1 when we are healing.  We return to Level 1 from Level 2 or 3 to rejuvenate.

Level 2: Movements are somewhat larger, faster and more complex than Level 1.  Level 2 teaches us the middle way.  Level 2 is always equidistant between your Level 1 and your Level 3.  This develops a continuum of choices and of sensitivity within the nervous system.

Level 2 is where we go when we want to sustain a higher level of energy, paying attention to detail, yet adding intensity and complexity.  We return to Level 2 from Level 3 to find center.

Level 3: Level 3 is where we seek our edge.  Level 3 is the most challenging and most complex.  Here we approach, but do not cross over, our own personal edge — whatever that may be — regarding range of motion, flexibility, strength, speed, height, depth, complexity, variety, emotional expression, style, vocalization and energetics.  Level 3 is a place we visit; it is not meant to be sustained.

Level 3 teaches us to maximize our experience with a movement in the moment, yet stay connected to the center and ground we established in level 1.

Find the sensation of your breath at each level.  Learn the sensation of each of the three intensity levels in your own body.  Become intimate with your body’s way.  

A balanced body is one that can do all levels with ease, grace and passion.

Going about the practice 
of dancing through life, 
living meditation and life 
as art, the body invites us 
into its deep reservoir of
sensation, perception and 
proprioception in all its 
75 trillion cells.  

The body itself is awareness.

Dancing through life invites
us to experience all of life to
be as pleasurable as when
we are dancing or doing
something else that brings
us pleasure.  

The body says pleasure is
here all the time.  All we need to do is notice.  The body says everyday, ordinary movement is a dance.  Remember?  

To a child, everything is a dance.

The world itself is a dance, and the body, coiling and uncoiling its unique magnificence, shimmering within that great dance its own heartbeat life pulse echo song rhythm breath to dance the world alive.

Here’s the focus from Saturday’s class to sustain us during our break until we dance into the studio again Tuesday, September 2:

Dancing Through Life

Igniting,
igniting
the voice
of wisdom,
compassion and
beauty.

In Nia we call the feet, “the hands that touch the Earth,” and the hands, “the feet that touch the space.”  Front paws, back paws, four paws radiating from the body center.

Check out these beautiful photos of feet and hands from the Olympics in Beijing:

Feet

Hands

Hands are feet, feet are hands

Look how the hands of these athletes are connected to their body centers.  They are not only masters of the physical realm, but energetic masters as well:

Hands represent the center

Star body

Center

Even this guy.  Wow!  Here we can see the beauty of the mastery of the ancient shot put athlete, the sculptor and the photographer.

Yesterday I received a Watsu session from my friend Sharon Dvora.  Wow! 

Watsu (from “water shiatsu”) is type of bodywork done in the water.  (Find out more about Watsu here.)  

Talk about the sensation of being Embryonic!  

You are floating in warm water, while being continuously cradled, rocked and stretched by the Watsu practitioner.  Stillness alternates with flowing movements.  In the water, the body is weightless yet always supported.

Again and again during the session, I found myself thinking, “Everyone in the world should experience Watsu!” 

In a Watsu session, the body moves, senses and feels in ways that are impossible on land.  The sensation truly is like nothing else.  

You might think, “Well, I could just have that experience in my bathtub or out swimming somewhere.”  But no. 

Floating in a body of water does provide the sensation of weightlessness that the Nia practice of Embryonic brings us, and is beautiful in its own right.  But add the deep presence of a practitioner and the gentle Watsu movements, and the nervous system and the spirit receive a profound nourishment they have never had before.

So if you want to receive peaceful healing, if you want to receive deep relaxation, if you want to receive the experience of Embryonic more deeply into your 75 trillion cells, if you want to travel energetically within your own body, if you want to give your nervous system one of the biggest gifts possible, try Watsu.

Watsu is like Nia:  It’s like chocolate — you have to taste it to know if you like it.

Sharon Dvora, LMT, Certified Watsu Practitioner, can be reached at 541-482-6396.

My Black Belt sister, Lisa Cassidy from Canada, created this compilation of the beautiful photographs taken by Nia CEO, Jeff Stewart, during Black Belt and set it to music.  It’s lovely.  It may take a little while to download, depending on your system, but it’s worth it to see and feel the soul of Black 2008.

Mac version:

http://www.nia-lisa.ca/downloads/Black%20Belt%202008.html

PC version:

www.nia-lisa.ca/downloads/BlackWebShow.html

In the temple of the body,
the king and the queen
and the thirty-three,
together
waiting, breathing, 
receiving, seeing, 
knowing not knowing,
echoing, pulsing,
speaking to the Mystery.  

I’m exhausted, happy and . .  . I’m a Nia Black Belt!

The day began at 7:00 am with class with Debbie.  The week long training officially ended with a Black Belt ceremony at 4:00.  Afterwards, the whole group, including Debbie and Carlos and Debbie’s husband Jeff, had dinner at a restaurant in Northwest Portland.  My beloved husband, Richard, arrived yesterday and was able to celebrate with us.

I’ll write more soon.  Photos by Jeff forthcoming next week. 

Thank you to all of you who have been following the blog and supporting me.  I have felt it and I am grateful.

Now I have to go to sleep.

Blessings as we immerse in the river of dreams.

Between the Known and the Unknown
the Third Thing has put up a swing:
and all Earth’s creatures, even the supernovas,
sway between these two trees
of the Known and the Unknown
And it never winds down.

Angels, animals, insects by the millions,
also the wheeling sun and moon;
ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging:
heaven, earth, water, fire,
and the secret one slowly growing a body.

Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds,
and it made him a servant for life.

— Kabir
Translated by Robert Bly,
version by Rachael R. Resch

Great beauties of the day:

The shimmering echo of the constellation work I study with Stephen Victor arising, assisting and present in the field of Nia.

Small self going to the river to drink,
Sees the reflection of light dancing on the current,
And stepping in,
Becomes a swan.

We are all love poets
And love poetry.

Today was a rich, blossoming, beautiful day, sprayed with shimmering sleeplessness that seemed to make us all mysteriously more awake, more available to the unknown and to each other.

Here are some of the great beauties of the day:

I experienced a strong and harmonious echo between Black Belt and my Senté energetic studies with Paul Richards, as well as my studies with Martín Prechtel.  The profound energetics of what we are learning have parallels to Senté, and practicing omitting certain everyday components of speech felt a lot like trying to write and speak without the verb to be, as Martín loves to do.  I learned some time ago not to try to harmonize all my paths, but to be available when they want to come into relationship with each other.  I love it when they do!

Dancing as a group to The Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy” and laughing.

Going on another field trip, this time with three buddies to the Portland Public Library central branch, with its magnificent open, marble stairway and temple-like architecture, giggling like 12 year old girls as we attempted to complete our assignment and get back to the studio in an all too brief 20 minutes, talking too loud in the stacks and saying “fuck” in the elevator because we could.

The feeling I don’t want the intensive to end, that I am just now consistently relaxing for no reason into the material, and that as a group we have so much to share and learn from each other.