What is one thing dancers, models and finishing school students have in common? Beautiful posture. It is interesting that most of us don’t know what proper posture really is. We habitually round our shoulders and collapse our chest; when we stand in line, we one let one hip jut out or slump against the nearest available surface. We carry heavy bags that pull our shoulders out of alignment or have the telephone pinched between our neck and...

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It will be my one-year Nia White Belt Anniversary this weekend. At first I thought that teaching Nia would be like any other new teaching credential I’ve taken – a lot of preparation time involved to be sure – but it soon became apparent that my new ‘credential’ was offering me much more than a new teaching gig. I could write pages about the insights teaching Nia has given me; Let me just say it is deep and it...

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I came across this in our Nia forum and I thought it was intriguing – the Nia Promise. The Nia Promise is what a student will get in a Nia Routine: A body-mind-emotion-spirit experience Opportunities for self expression and play The Seven Cycles Three intensity levels The Five Sensations of Conditioning An integration of the 13 White Belt Principles A unique combination of the 52 Moves Musical variety Today I want to take the first two...

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If ever there was a sacred treatment, I would have to say it was massage and the art of ‘touch’. The concept of massage therapy goes back thousands of years, although I daresay the art of healing touch is, as a primal instinct, as old as human kind itself. In India and the Orient, touch was practiced to release chi (or energy) that was trapped in parts of the body through some sort of injury or stress, so the body was free to heal...

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A backache now and again when you’ve been out mowing the lawn or painting the house is understandable.  However, intense or long-term back pain could be a signal that something is wrong with either the structure of your back or your general health.  One of the main reasons to consult a professional  about your back pain is because it can be caused by things other than the run-of-the-mill suspects like injury, strain, exercise, or...

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It is the mark of an affluent society to have so many choices on what to eat, and the leisure to consider it at length. At times the choices can seem overwhelming and the concept of eating well means different things to different people. It can be taken to mean gourmet food or the slow food revolution; it can mean eating to promote health  and the idea of food as medicine. Another way of looking at eating well is making choices that...

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