NIA White Belt Intensive

As you all know, I attended the Nia White Belt Intensive in Cape Town at the end of February. I am now a certified Nia teacher, although I'm far from feeling ready to teach. I do plan to teach within the year, however, but I still need to do a lot of practicing! I think Nia would be a wonderful thing for me to bring to Mozambique, and I know that having it as part of my daily life would do wonders for how I feel, both inside and out.

On the last day we had a graduation ceremony. We all sat in a circle and were recognized by our fellow participants. As each person received her training certificate, the rest of us took a few minutes to describe that person. So for example when it was my turn to receive my certificate, everyone in the group said what their impressions of me were. The list was really incredible, and it was such a nice exercise to do as a closing activity.

There were 14 of us that went through the intensive, with participants from South Africa, Israel, the UK, Switzerland, and the US/Mozambique (me). The woman with her arms crossed in the middle of the picture is Kathy, our trainer, who is originally from the US and brought Nia to South Africa 4 years ago.

In the middle of the circle, we created a sort of Nia altar. Each person in the training brought a special object from home to share with the group. Everyone was so creative and throughtful with their offerings. One girl brought a teapot and went through the motions of serving each of us a hot cup of tea to warm our souls. Another person brought photos of her family because they are the most important thing in her life and she wanted to share the feeling she gets when she thinks of her family. Other people shared flowers and special pieces of jewelry.

My favorite offering was from a girl from the UK, Miranda. She'd gone to a rocks and minerals shop in Cape Town the day she arrived for the Nia training. At this shop, she told us, she'd spent over an hour searching through bins and bins of polished rocks to find the perfect ones for her to take home as souveniers. However, Miranda decided the night before our graduation ceremony that she wanted to give a stone to each person in the Nia intensive. As we sat in our circle, she presented each of us with a beautiful rock, and explained how the color and shape of the rock represented aspects of our personalities and our dance. Miranda's choices were amazing - there was a polished stone perfect for each woman in the group.

My stone is opaque gray-blue and triangle shaped. All over one side of the stone are black splotches. Miranda said she chose the stone for me because blue is my color, because I wear a triangle necklace around my neck, and because I have dark patches in my life that I am working through, underneath which lies a beautiful person.

My offering to the group was my triangle necklace that I got when I was 16 in Brasília. It has an engraving of 2 people sitting back-to-back on a palm tree. I love the necklace so much that I got the design tattooed on my back last year in Austin.

Here is a picture of our Nia altar (we got our offerings back at the end of the graduation ceremony.)

And here I am looking as if I'm in a trance. Really, Miranda is telling me how much she thinks we are alike, and that she hopes I wasn't offended by the rock she gave me (I wasn't).

And here we all are immediately after finishing the intensive. I don't think I have ever felt so at peace in my entire life.

I don't think I even need to say how much I encourage anybody interested to try out a Nia class, and to attend a White Belt intensive. You can be at any athletic level and don't have to have any experience in dance or anything else (even to participate in the intensive), just a desire to connect with your body and find the joy of movement.