Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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recent posts

  • Down with it!

    Day 12 of 52 Nia dance challenge

    Cue the music! I’m working to memorize the hour-long Bloom routine, written by Nia choreographers Christina Mae Wolf, Kellie Chambers, and Rossella Vanti. Today I spent 50 minutes just repeating the first four songs of this routine, using the Nia on Demand video to guide me.

    My energy level was low, but my interest in dancing the steps, remembering what came next and listening for the musical cues was high.

    The third song is a waltz, “Roots of Levant” by Jimmy Wahlsteen, and it’s interesting how the choreographer’s guidance on hand and arm movements suggesting a figure-eight or infinity shape feels like it fits perfectly into the 3/4 time.

    When I had the opportunity to interview Nia founder Debbie Rosas last month for a story in our local paper, she talked about the importance of the movements being integrated with the music, and this just seemed to exemplify that to me to today.

    Even though I won’t start working on memorizing the steps to the fifth song until next week, I couldn’t help dancing at least once to  Katharine Appleton’s “Rebel Soul “. Woo hoo!

  • Hubris and yesterday’s body

    Day 11 of 52 Nia challenge

    I stepped into class today feeling a little cocky, living in the past 10 days of dancing, not RAW, another Nia thing. RAW stands for relaxed, alert, waiting. That’s how to be present for today’s dance. Instead, I was all about racking up another day on the dance floor, looking back over my shoulder and on ahead to the next thing.

    Not being in the now felt a little messy, a little off the beat. So. I brought my breathing back to the rhythms and let myself be a little messy and off the beat.

    Dancing Express with Dael Parsons. I love the combination of dainty steps with throwing kicks and punches, one minute a fairy princess, the next a fighter. That routine has such great energy, even messy and off the beat.

  • How I look vs. how I feel

    The great women in my white belt training group. I’m bottom left.

    Day 10 of 52 Nia dance challenge

    The bitch voice in my brain, the lifelong curator of my dissatisfactions, thinks I’m chubby and graceless. Because of that voice, when I first started dancing with instructor Dael Parsons, I couldn’t look at myself in the studio mirror. An ugly duckling among the swans, I was embarrassed when I caught any glancing image of myself in the mirror.

    But I did like the way dancing made me feel so I kept showing up.

    Slowly — I’m talking weeks and months and years of slowly — that has changed. Dael had a gentle way of encouraging me to notice myself in the mirror. I began by noticing my feet and ankles, which even the bitch voice could not object to. And as I began to learn the steps, it was fun to see that progress reflected back at me. After a couple of years of dancing, I had internalized Nia’s “your body, your way” mantra sufficiently that I was able to shed almost 20 pounds.

    Now I look at myself often when I’m dancing. For one thing, I’m almost always smiling, and should I miss a step or get out of sync, I’m laughing and smiling. In the past, I imagined how I appeared to others and the bitch voice was always there to insist that I looked bad, that everybody was probably thinking it.

    But now I know that how I look to others is not my business, and something I am powerless over. How I feel, however, that’s huge, and something I do have power over. I feel good when I’m dancing. I’ve come to learn that feeling good isn’t something I have to wait around for. It’s something I can choose. Weirdly, choosing to smile, helps. Also weirdly, the bitch voice seems to shut up whenever I smile.

    A few notes about the 10th day of my challenge. On day 2, my knees bothered me sufficiently that I danced sitting down for the last 10 minutes or so. But I’ve been able to dance without injuring myself by paying attention and dialing down at the first twinge. My longest dance session has been 60 minutes. My shortest has been 40 minutes. I haven’t missed a day.