48 of 52 days of Nia
It’s not like I just took up Nia last week or last month or last year. I’ve been dancing pretty much twice a week since 2019.
This year in April I trained to receive my Nia white belt. That experience, seven days of learning and dancing, gave me back to myself. By that I mean that the dancing helped me disentangle myself from the cultural noise about me and my body — what I should look like, how I should feel, how I should think about myself.
It gave me space to consider other questions: How do I really feel? What am I actually thinking? What do I really want that has nothing to do with advertising or cultural imperatives? The deep dive into dance helped strip away the social noise and let me be in a mindful body space. Mind and body as a unit, not two separate systems.
But that’s a concept that’s hard to hold onto. The cultural noise is continuously loud and I’ve had several decades to embed it. Mostly it’s my brain yelling at my body for failing to meet my long list of shoulds without considering if the shoulds are meaningful to me.
But today, dancing “Selfless” with Casey Bernstein (one of the moving to heal routines in the online catalog), there was a moment where I understood again what Nia means to me.
It’s the safe place where body and mind can be in sync without the “shoulds.” My mind is not yelling at my body for acting like an off-leash dog running wild. My body is not huddled in a corner wondering why it’s being yelled at yet again for liking whatever in the hell it is currently liking.
Today I got to feel how sad it has been that my brain gets so mad at my body for being the sensory system that it is. My body doesn’t have words, just feelings. Today, while dancing, I was sad. And the sadness was rich and true.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 
3 responses to “It’s a journey”
[…] to heal routine “Selfless,” which I tried for the first time on Sunday and found quite emotionally cathartic. Today’s experience was less fraught, more just enjoying the routines and the […]
Wow! If your blog was my email or Google photos, I would put a star on this one Susan. Giving words to the evolving relationship between your mind and body offers valuable insights for others. Your white belt experience propelled you so far forward on your journey of self discovery and actualization. I like witnessing the ways in which you continue to integrate it into your dance and life.
Thanks Dael, for continuing to hold an open space for your students. I think the timing was right for me when I did the white belt training. I was pretty fully present.