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.
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.
Today I chose the 40-minute online routine “Passion” with choreographer Kellie Chambers. At the end of the dance, she said: “Take this energy of passion and fuel it into the rest of your day.”
Which is why you are seeing a batch of home-made ketchup that I canned yesterday after coming home from Nia all jazzed up and ready.
While I’m a home canner (water bath, not pressure cooker), I hadn’t ever tried ketchup and now I know why. It’s a full day of peeling, gutting, cooking, spicing, simmering and simmering and freaking simmering! But I digress.
I appreciate how Nia echoes out into the rest of my life, and needed to hear the guidance on letting passion fuel today. I’m in the process of editing a book I wrote a few years ago, but that wasn’t perfect. I abandoned it after a few agents I queried rejected it. But earlier this summer it started muttering in a back corner of my mind and wouldn’t shut up.
I got it out, read it again and decided that I really do like it. And I saw how it had a thing that could be improved. I created a schedule for the revisions, but I’m midway through them and losing my early momentum. So, thank you Nia. I needed that little boost as I step into the rest of my day.
Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now 