Into a world that worships hard bodies, size zero and the age of twenty comes sanity. She dances into life and her name is NIA.
One evening my yoga class at the YMCA was cancelled. Not a big deal to most people but at 48 I've come to depend on this weekly ritual to keep my formerly ballet trained body simply moving. My yoga partner Christine, similarly addicted to the restorative power of downward facing dog, began to recite the horrible things that could happen to us if we went a whole week without formal exercise.
“Decline is rapid at our age…..If you don't use these muscles you'll…” Enough said. I looked at the next door down the hall and found a group of women who looked relatively like us gathering, barefoot and beginning to dance. “It's NIA” a passerby informed us. Even the name was inviting. “NIA.” It sounded like an ancient blessing or maybe a Far Eastern name for woman or perhaps an acronym. Non-impact aerobics? The women had their shoes off after all.
Bravely we entered, promptly took our places in the back of class and prepared to take direction. You see, this was a studio, of sorts and in a studio I'm programmed to take direction. Ten years of studying ballet had accomplished this and it once embedded in you it never goes away. This body of mine may not look like it did as a dancer but it is obedient to a fault. I was ready for orders. “Fire away,” I thought. “Bring it on!”
“Work your own way. Find the Body's Way. There's no wrong way” said the gentle voice in the front of the room.
What was this heresy and who was this woman who dared say such things?
Before the class stood the woman every woman wants to be as she faces middle age. Gleaming white cropped hair, a strong, toned and yet curvaceous body and nary a wrinkle in sight. If this is what NIA did for you I was ready to dance, directed or not. “I'm Loretta Milo. Welcome to NIA.” With those words a journey began!
NIA, Neuromuscular Integrative Action is dancing its way across the world today with classes in 31 nations. Over 1000 certified teachers are bringing this fusion of dance, the martial arts and the healing arts into YMCAs, private studios, colleges and community centers. Designed to celebrate the beauty and wonder of all that the human body is capable of doing, NIA's mantra reads “In movement we find healing.”
The technique was developed in 1983 by aerobics instructors Debbie and Carlos Cosas as a way to create movement possible throughout the lifetime. This is not about keeping fit bodies permanently young and rock solid rather it is designed to bring each participant's body, mind and spirit to its own personal optimal level of wellness. Though the class is constructed around movements the real workout is highly cerebral. The choreography is constructed to activate dormant or undeveloped neuromuscular pathways and the interspersed periods of free form dance awaken the imagination. Even the voice is put to work as the dancers enhance their movements with shouts of “Yes” and heartfelt “Ah's”
In the span of an hour, one that literally flew by, my fellow dancers and I moved from the slow and grace-filled movements of tai chi to jazz and modern dance patterns and then into strong martial arts stances and kicks. Make no mistake, NIA is a kick-butt workout but there are so many levels that the body can work at there is no need to do anything that violates the sanctity of your body's current state. How refreshing this was, not to worry about the end result and instead to nurture and still gently challenge the present reality.
I'd been wondering as of late how, exactly, my mother seemed to have inhabited by body. I'm just a few years older than she was at the time of my birth so her look in the 40 plus years is all I knew. I wanted to be like her; I still do, she was a marvelous woman, but I didn't find joy in looking like her. We all take on characteristics of women we admire; adding them to the repertoire of what makes us who we are and in the NIA studio I found approachable, possible, and beautiful examples of what my body in its 50's and 60's could become. NIA truly is body recreation for real women.
Although men are welcome at a NIA class in my eyes this is a truly feminine art form. The dances are choreographed to embody the sensuous movements, both lyric and staccato, that are natural and universal for women. Perhaps because Loretta herself is the epitome of feminism; strong, sensuous even jazzy and flirtatious it seems right that this class was filled with my sisters. Indeed that is what emerges in a NIA studio; a small community of sisters all dancing together. It reminds me of how the Deborahs of the Old Testament were said to dance; one movement carried out by many bodies, all engaged in praise and joy. It calls to mind the way women in rural Africa will gather as a group at the harvest or when a new child is born just to share the experience of dancing to wonderful music and making beauty with their movement. To me it also brings back hot summer evenings in New York City when my girl friends from ballet and I would climb the steps of the New York State Theater and dance on the sidewalk, leaping and pirouetting to music we alone could hear, just because we could!
