March/April 2005 Living Now
Nia is Like Chocolate

by Phillip Jefferson

Like the sensuous pleasure of really good chocolate melting on the tongue, Nia infuses the pleasure zones of the body, stimulating a healing of the chakras through intense activation of the Chi in each center. It’s all done by just plain bouncing across the dance floor having barefoot fun.

Debbie and Carlos Rosas are the inventors of this crossbred funky fusion of martial arts, aerobics, yoga, modern dance and other movement methods. They have done everything possible to get the work out of workout, inviting their students to enter a deep state of playful physical pleasure. From the moment a Nia student sets foot in their beautifully decorated dance studio, till the time they leave with a cup of green tea and smiling body and face, they are moved in every way possible by their instructor to dance, have fun and workout.

It is one of the most demanding workouts available today and can be done on your choice of movement levels one, two, or three on any exercise. The levels are basically just more creative and more difficult amplifications of the same movements so you can pump up the volume on any exercise at any time.

That is what makes the method so much fun and so accessible; you are creating all the time, not following a tight, rigid method or teacher. You are creating from the inside out. Liberation of the body is the goal and liberation is fun. Liberation is breathing. Liberation is following your feet across the floor spinning with the other dancers to inspiring contemporary pop music.

Such ease of style in a dance/exercise method was not created by its inventors, Debbie and Carlos Rosas, without a great deal of study, commitment and body reeducation. It was a long path of retraining to get to the natural workout that is now the Nia Technique-an acronym for Neuromuscular Integrative Action.  Nia should not to be confused with non-impact aerobics, also an outgrowth of Carlos and Debbie's influence on the fitness movement, for Nia integrates body systems and body performance in ways that other methods just don't.

The Nia Technique was born from the uncertainty and struggle of what was ironically an outwardly successful career for Debbie and Carlos.  At the top of their game and leaders in their field as aerobic teachers running several successful exercise centers in the San Francisco area, they began to question what they were doing as the intensity and rigidity of the aerobic workouts that they and others were promoting in the 80s seemed to cause injury after injury. 

They began a total renovation of their own movement styles through deep exploration of many seemingly disparate methods. This enabled them to formulate a dance workout method that was the polar opposite of what they had been teaching before. The more they integrated elements of tai chi, yoga and modern dance, the more fun it became for them to teach and for their students to workout.

They developed movement principles based on flow, rhythm and a natural awakening of the body's energy centers. It was a fresh approach in the competitive fitness world of "feel the burn", building muscle and pushing for high endurance levels. 

Anyone who enjoys the sweet pleasures of moving to a beat can do Nia. There is no competition, no right or wrong (but there is better), no master teacher to heed and no goal except the liberation of the body. That liberation comes through building a deep emotional connection to the body through the movements.  

The how and why of Nia is beautifully delineated in a new book called The Nia Technique that has just been released by Broadway Books and has gone through its first printing in a little less than a week.

The book begins with some compelling case studies of Nia students who have healed major physical and neurological problems through their Nia practice. At the close of the introductory chapter the reader is led through the first of many exercise sets, the thirteen joint exercises, to get them out of their chair and moving.

Chapter One lays out some Nia fundamentals such as: the joy of movement is fitness, that "fitness must address the human being, not just the body", that "movement must be conscious, not habitual", and that the Nia practitioner should use his or her body the way it was designed to be used- to heal the mind, emotions and spirit.

In the chapter on the body’s way, Carlos and Debbie bring out some principles of movement and stability that we have known all of our lives in our body but have never been taught correctly. If we move inefficiently with stress in our everyday lives it is probably for two reasons: we have been imitating the incorrect movement patterns of other people and have never given ourselves permission to move to the natural flow of the body’s way.

In an exuberant and practical style they give first person voices to the feet (The Voice of the Feet), the Lower Leg, the Knee, the Thigh. These help the beginner to visualize what each body part is designed by nature to do and wants to do when freed by the mind to do it.

The book then moves from the body’s way to your body’s way, going through the theory of how to bring the intensity of small movements in individual parts of the body to a global healing of all parts of the body. This concept is easily understood as small is big or less is more.

Their five stages of self-healing, as inspired by Stanley Kelman’s book Emotional Anatomy, are more subtle and need an open mind and a mind willing to be taught by imagery to be fully understood. These stages are embryonic, creeping, crawling, standing, and walking. To just be aware of the hips, its voice and mechanics, is the goal of the embryonic stage. Learning whether the hip joint needs to be strengthened or relaxed, and then acting upon that knowledge in healthier movement patterns is the essence of the creeping stage. The crawling stage involves explorations of pushing the ranges of motion from the hip with squatting, rising and falling movements and finding ways to change the direction of your feet to make movements in the thighbone with the hip joint more effective. The standing stage is a stage of foundation, after the exploration of the first three stages the Nia dancer is able to play with the confidence of balance and push the limits of risk in each movement. The goal is reached at the walking stage. You can move freely; any kind of squatting, rising or falling is achieved with ease, and all these joints and muscles are strengthened. This is what leads you closer to your own body’s way.

The Rosas outline three stages of practice: learn the move (there are fifty-two key moves), move the move and energize the move. The role of sensation in the method also brings great subtlety to the practice; those five types of sensing being sensing for strength, sensing for flexibility, sensing for mobility, sensing for agility and sensing for stability. After a few more tips for starting, the writers urge their readers to get out in their kitchen, or patio or dance studio and start going through the moves (preferably to music that makes your feet want to cha-cha-cha). The photo pages feature students and instructors from the strong Nia community at Carlos and Debbie’s home base studio in Portland, Oregon. All of the fun and energy of taking a class with Carlos or Debbie can be seen in the sheer force of light energy coming from their bodies in the photographs.

The final chapter in the book gets to the heart of the technique’s purpose and is called simply, Dancing Through Life, which is the true goal, not just toning or working out. If you are immune to the beauty of aesthetic ideas such as The Dancing Through Life Triad, presented in this chapter, then Nia is probably not for you. But if you are receptive to Nia you might find that learning to live Life As Art, Dancing Through Life and practicing Living Meditation can be just as delicious as really good chocolate.

The Nia Technique by Debbie Rosas & Carlos Rosas is published by Broadway Books, 2004, $17.95.
Visit their website for the location of a NIA studio near you: www.nia-nia.com.