January/February  2006

A moving story:
An interview with Carlos Rosas and Debbie Rosas

By Ravi Dykema

The creation of the holistic fitness system called Nia

Can we experience deep physical pleasure, even joy, in a workout? Can a fitness routine nurture exploration of the self and transform the spirit? Nia says yes. Part yoga, part martial arts and dance, this soulful workout incorporates movement from nine systems, including tai kwon do, modern dance, Feldenkrais and others, into an inspiring dance-like routine. It’s performed in bare feet and unrestricted clothing to usually groovy music. And while a Nia instructor won’t urge you to feel the burn, a typical class will get your blood‹and your inspiration—flowing.

“Nia originally stood for non-impact aerobics, because we wanted people to know we weren’t going to be jumping up and down,” says Debbie Rosas, co-founder with Carlos Rosas of Nia and coauthor of The Nia Technique (Broadway Books, 2004). “Now, the initials stand for neuromuscular integrative action.” The word “nia” has meaning in other languages: In Swahili, it means, “with purpose”; in Hebrew, it means “a tiny, subtle stir”‹both appropriate translations for the essence of Nia, which celebrates small, subtle movements in the body as well as purposeful self-expression.

And self expression is apparently big business; in 2005, more that 634 students signed up for the first level teacher’s training at a cost of $1,499 for the weeklong program. What began in 1983 as a holistic approach to working out with two full-time employees‹Carlos and Debbie‹has spread to 30 countries, with 1500 teachers and 20 certified teacher trainers. In addition, Nia’s related products now include books, videotapes, audiotapes, and a line of clothing with innovative flourishes. Nia’s headquarters based in Portland, Oregon, has 13 full-time employees, and sales of Nia trainings and related products grossed $1.4 million last year.

Perhaps we have tired, at last, of step aerobics and jogging. Maybe we’re ready to move into a more soulful and transformative way of working out. In this interview with Ravi Dykema, publisher of Nexus, Carlos Rosas and Debbie Rosas tell us how they came to Nia‹and invite us along on their continuing journey.RD: Tell me about your background, Carlos; where did you grow up?

CR: I was born in Mexico City, a middle-class child. My father worked for Parke-Davis, the American lab company; he was actually the number one salesman in all of Mexico City. My mother stayed at home with me and my four siblings. I was the oldest male, and I definitely carried the alpha-male energy. When there was food on the table, I got the first and the largest, always the piece that I wanted. This was customary for an eldest son. If something happened to my dad, it was my responsibility to take care of the family, so they wanted to make me strong. It was very primal.

Maybe because of that, I was very good in sports. I grew up playing soccer, football, baseball, and a form of racquetball called “fronton.” And I was always the manager of the team. Whenever we put on a play, I was the director. When we finished school, I would stay and explain the lessons to my classmates; my peers would say “Okay, Carlos, explain the math lesson in language we can understand.” It seemed like my destiny, to take a lead role and communicate to others. That’s still my passion‹to communicate, to help people understand concepts and ideas, to facilitate their learning and achieving. I love seeing people understand a concept, watching them really “get it.” I get great satisfaction from that, even more so than from dancing.

I left Mexico when I was 20 years old, in1972. I was a first generation hippie, and society didn’t accept me very well. I went straight to San Francisco, to Haight-Ashbury, on a one-way visa from Mexico. From there, my life just took off.

 

RD: How did you get from Mexico to the United States?

CR: It was a one-way visa. I got on the bus with about 100 pesos in my pocket. I didn’t know anything about borders; I just thought it was like going to another state. I left Mexico very innocently, just assuming that I would be taken care of.

I didn’t speak English, but I met an American psychologist who spoke Spanish. I ended up living at his house, cleaning and cooking in exchange for room and board. As I was growing accustomed to the United States, I found that Latinos in the city saw life in a very different way than I did. I realized I needed to make my own way. I would say, “You know guys, let’s get together and learn English.” And they would say, “No, no, because we’ll forget Spanish. That’s our mother tongue, and losing it would make us traitors.” I would say, “But this is the only way we can get ahead.” They wanted to get drunk; I wanted to watch interesting movies or go to museums. I realized they brought the part of the society that I, myself, didn’t feel comfortable with in Mexico.

 

RD: You couldn’t find a group of immigrants that had similar interests to you?

CR: That’s right. Instead, I found a group of people who got together on the weekends to play music. I studied classical percussion, and music has always been a passion of mine; I started playing percussion with them, and they taught me English. I realized these were my friends; these were the people I liked. They were health conscious as well. This was in the early 70s, when the very first health food stores were sprouting in Mill Valley. We bought organic foods and I took care of some of their gardening. The whole situation was very healthy, very creative. I also started picking up some work as a Spanish tutor; I started making a little bit of money and feeling independent.

 

RD: What about your background, Debbie? How does it compare with Carlos’s?

DR: It’s quite different. I grew up as a very sickly child, afflicted by every possible ear, nose and throat ailment, to the point where I’d go for weeks at a time where I couldn’t hear, or my eyes were crusted shut, so I couldn’t see. I had eczema so severe it was from my wrist down to my waist. I was constantly bandaged, constantly sent home from school. I had a severe lisp, couldn’t read, had learning disabilities and dyslexia. Being in the body was just a not a happy place to be. I insulated myself from the world around me as well as what was going on inside of me.

Even so, I always had a little spark of creativity. I’ve always been artistic, so much so that my right brain was actually an interference, until I learned how to harness it. I can remember reading something in math class about four apples being in a basket. I remember tripping out‹all of a sudden the apples were shiny green with wings, and they were flying, and their legs started to grow long, and they had black and white striped leggings on, and the feet were touching the ground as the apples were running. I was tripping out on this vision, having a great time, and then I heard the teacher saying, “Debbie, Debbie!” and I felt myself come back. This happened a lot, because my creative side really liked to play.

 

RD: Sounds like you also were inclined to escape from your physical discomfort.

DR: Absolutely. I escaped a lot by being alone, by drawing, going inward and having it just be me, the images and the paper. I was tuning out the world. I grew up in Missouri. My mother’s from London, and my dad’s from St. Louis. We lived in a place called Afton, which is just a little bit outside of the city. It was very mid-western, very conservative and traditional, yet there was my mother, who was also an artist and definitely had a European flair. We had a painting of a nude black woman on our living room wall, and certain kids weren’t allowed to visit my house because of that painting.

So our family was always a little bit on the edge. And my parents always instilled in me that I really could do anything if I put my mind to it. My dad was a salesman, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom until she decided to create her own business. Then they went into business together; they were entrepreneurs. I learned a lot from them. Once I graduated high school‹barley‹I went to a junior college in St. Louis where I studied art for two years. Like most good Midwestern girls, I got married and decided there was no need to continue going to school. I married George, who I’d known since I was 13 years old; we moved to California where George worked for a clothing company, and we started a family. I had what I’d describe as a perfect life.

However, after my second daughter was born, I had severe depression. That was before anybody talked about post-partum depression; doctors would just prescribe tranquilizers. During that time, I was introduced to a fitness club close to my house. The whole thing was decorated in hot pink and gold, and it was like walking into a Grecian spa. This was when fitness clubs were just getting popular, back in the times where you stood in front of those rolling things that went around your belly and you thought you were working out. Women didn’t sweat.

I remember lying on the floor with a hot-pink pulley on my foot, moving my leg. After about a minute and a half, all of a sudden I thought, “Wow, something just shifted. I feel better. I’ve just been moving my leg up and down for 90 seconds, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m going to survive. I don’t feel as depressed.” I was amazed; I kept thinking about it the rest of that day and night. The next day, someone else invited me to an exercise class, and I had another of those experiences.

At that time, I was not really a physical person. I had been a cheerleader in school, but that was about it. But I found myself doing this traditional aerobic exercise; I start moving, and, oh my God, I had the most intense emotional rush. I didn’t even relate it to being physical. All I knew was something emotional was happening, and I felt better. I said to Barbara, the woman who had invited me to the class, that this was amazing but that we could do it better; based on what I knew about the human body, and based on what she knew about nutrition, I thought we could do a better job. We started talking about it, and two weeks later I called her and said, “You know, I’m really going to do this.”

Now here I was, at home with these two children, and all of a sudden I had this huge creative streak. Even then, it was still difficult for me to read, but I really wanted to put together a fitness program. Barbara quit her job, and over the next year she and I went to the library every day, from nine to three, and she helped me, and we studied together. When we had 20 routines, we started teaching. Our program began in a gymnasium with two people at our first class, both of whom were from my family; our program‹called “The Bod Squad”‹grew through Northern California, from Sausalito all the way into Petaluma, with 100 classes a week, 50 teachers, two exercise studios. It was the most successful, popular exercise program in the whole area.

Life was perfect. George and I moved to a new, bigger house, I had my family, I had this job that was fulfilling me, and I really thought I was in my body, that I was connected. If you’d asked me if I really knew a lot about movement, I would have said, “Absolutely. I’m the best in my field.”

RD: What was the raw material for The Bod Squad?

 

DR: The raw material was what aerobic exercise at that time presented as an experience. You’d go to a class, they’d put on records, and the routines were dance-like, rather than straight calisthenics. Jackie Sorensen, who created aerobic dance, was the first person to create an aerobic dance program. Shortly after that, Judi Sheppard Missett came on the scene with Jazzercise, which was a very jazz-based aerobic dance exercise class. Then other things sprung from that.

While that aerobic class was the raw material, we really studied exercise as calisthenics‹this is what you do for this muscle group, and this is what you do for that muscle group. We studied it from a book, and then came up with a system. The system was based, in part, on the fact that Barbara and I were two very different body types. She was much larger than I was; I was smaller and looked more fit. I was the former cheerleader and I had always had very good body control. She was the front person; she had an outstanding personality. We kind of fed off of each other.

In those days, you would do one song, and then stop and do another song to warm up. After the heart rate was elevated to the lower end of your target zone, you would keep it elevated for a minimum of 15 to 20 minutes. Then you would check your heart rate, cool down and go to the floor for a series of exercises for your abdominals, thighs and buttocks. It was very basic. A traditional plan that works because, if you repeat enough of one motion, it will change the shape of the body. So it worked.

There was also a social aspect. For a lot of women in those days‹and I believe this is still true today‹the community component of women coming together, doing something healthy for themselves, getting out of the house and being able to talk with other women, was very important. When I started the company, most women were working; not a lot of women were staying home with their babies. So the social component played a big part in the way we did the programming. After the aerobics, Barbara talked about nutrition, we gave educational information, we put on fashion shows as a company and really gave women an opportunity to do something other than just working out.

 

RD: How did you and Carlos meet?

DR: My perfect life was such that I had the two exercise studios, and one of them happened to be in a tennis club, where Carlos was the assistant tennis pro. I was teaching a class one day, and he walked into the class and then went to the owner of the club and said, “I went into this class, and I’m really interested in what they do. I think I might like to learn how to teach that class.” He came up to me and said, “I’d like to learn this,” and I gave him a tape and a write-up of the routine, thinking I’d never see him again. But he came back and when he showed me what he could do‹he was on the beat, he moved well, he knew the routine‹I thought, “I’m going to hire this guy and make a lot of money off of him, because there are no men in aerobics.”

 

RD: And he’s cool looking.

DR: And he’s cool looking. My other two partners agreed, and so I hired Carlos to come to work. And then they decided I should take him out to dinner to sign a contract and get him in line with what the company was all about.

Now, I’d left my house at nine in the morning, and my life was perfect. George and I had moved to a new, bigger house, I had my family, I had this job that was fulfilling me, and I really thought I was in my body, that I was connected. I get finished having Carlos sign a contract, and he asks me about my family. I tell him about my kids and my husband and my house and my perfect life. He leans back and folds his arms and looks at me, and he says, “Well, are you happy?” Whereupon I bit down on my fork and almost lost my back teeth, and whoever I was at nine in the morning when I left my house was gone.

I started panicking, thinking I was having a nervous breakdown. Nothing was making sense. As I’m walking to my car, I’m thinking I’m going to have a car accident, so I’m going to drive very carefully. As I get in the car to go home, I adjust the rearview mirror, and I see myself. I really see myself. I got another huge blast, and it felt like my whole insides were shattered, like a plate glass window. I held onto the steering wheel, and my voice said, “This is one of the last times you’re going to be driving home.” I drove home, pulled in the driveway, and I got the voice again. “This is one of the last times you’re going to be pulling into the driveway.”

I went in the house thinking, “Well, just do something domestic, and your life will fall back into order.” I started making salad; it didn’t fall into order. I heard the door open, and I saw George, my husband, walking in the house, and everything just slowed down, and I wasn’t me watching this. The next two weeks were probably the most in-body experiences I’d ever had in my life. I was so riddled with anxiety and trauma, but smart enough to know that something very magical was going on. I found a psychologist named Bill; he said, “This is very good. I know it feels extremely traumatic, but you’re coming into your body and, for the first time in your life, you’re paying attention to your body, your feelings, your emotions. You are being in relationship with the world inside of you and outside of you.”

Prior to that, if you would have asked me if I was in relationship, I would have said, “Of course.” But I wasn’t. I was not consciously in my life. I was doing things because I was supposed to be doing them, or doing things by thinking about what I should be doing, not from my in-body experience. So when Carlos and I met, it was a meeting of two opposites, and also a meeting that was very much, I believe, about a destiny. These two people coming from different paths to create something that, you know, is now called Nia.

 

RD: In hindsight, what do you think it was about Carlos that was such a catalyst for you?

DR: First of all, I believe we’re definitely soul mates. We have an energy connection where we don’t even have to speak. We can be moving in opposite directions and get the same piece of information, and all of a sudden be on the same path. I believe a lot of it was just spiritual destiny, soul work for both of us. It’s going to sound really woo-woo, but I think we both made a commitment in this lifetime to do this work.

Carlos demands that you show up. Carlos demands that you be honest. Carlos demands that you don’t settle for the status quo. Carlos demands transformation and growth; he demands mastery, and I believe this is what I had always wanted. My ways of learning never included the body and the emotions, which must be present when you want to master something. It is not mastered if it is just of the mind. It must be inclusive. So Carlos was my teacher.

We describe Nia as a love story, that Nia really began by the two of us falling in love with each other, then falling in love with the body and with sensation and awareness. And if love is a real soul-level connection, it never diminishes. It only gets brighter. This is true even now, now that we’re no longer married and my husband runs the company for us while we travel and do the work.

 

RD: George runs the company?

DR: No, George is my first husband. Carlos was my second husband. Jeff is my third husband. Jeff runs the company, and Carlos and I travel.

 

RD: So you were married to Carlos, but now you’re divorced?

DR: Correct. It’s more time than we have now, but it’s a really good story. But you know? It’s part of the work. As I said, Carlos demands mastery. It’s not good enough to just preach something. It has to be reflected in our bodies and in our lives. We made the choice to ask the Universe, “Does love work in fitness? Can pleasure really be the way? Can love be the way?” We found that it was. Then we got an opportunity to discover that love is the way of relationship, all relationships. It is how you let anything grow and prosper, and it’s also what you use to transform not only a body, but a relationship.

 

RD: Carlos, when did you realize that you would like to have a relationship with Debbie or maybe even get married?

 

CR: The first moment that I set eyes on her. I knew that I wanted to be with her. I was standing in the back of the room; she was teaching the class, and I remember that she was dressed all in pink. The moment I saw her, I knew. I was not looking for a relationship. I would meet women and spend a little time with them, but I was very happy living alone.

What I was looking for was a new career. I had been fantasizing about doing something that involved music and movement, and that I would make my income based on the number of people who would somehow come to this activity. I was dreaming this in my head at night, not knowing that it already existed. It was called “aerobics.” And then when Debbie gave me the tape, the routine was very easy for me. I was in good shape, and it was just simple calisthenics, which I grew up doing as a little kid in the school system in Mexico.

But then I felt that I wanted to seduce Debbie. When I found out she was married, I played this dangerous game of really respecting her as a married person, and not crossing the line, but at the same time luring her to be my friend and to spend time with me. Then one time, we were taking a walk‹before we had even had sex or anything‹and then she collapsed right in front of me. I said, “Are you okay?” and she said, “Oh, my God. I just got this vision that you and I are going to be married.” I said to her, “That’s impossible, you’re married with two kids.”

Not only that, but I knew from the time I was a little kid that marriage was not something that was going to be part of my life. My visions involved my work. When I was seven years old, I was told in a vision “Carlos, when you grow up, you are going to create a system for self-healing the human body that will require nothing but the body itself. No pills, no drinks, no machines, no tools.” So when I was fantasizing as a 30-year-old man about the work I wanted to do, it was my destiny catching up with me.

My pattern was always living alone, but I began to look at myself and I realized there is a part of me that is afraid of committing to love, committing to a woman. I saw that marriage would be an opportunity for me to step away from having affairs with other people and to find out what it was like to give my heart an opportunity to really love someone, and get rid of something that I was beginning to understand was an addiction‹looking for women to have affairs with, especially women who were already in relationships. It was an addiction that, eventually, was really going to cost me.

I began to understand that I was hurting other people. But the key piece for me was commitment: Could I commit to Debbie and really create something with her? It was very clear that she was saying to me, “Carlos, I’m committing to you.” And I knew I could trust that beyond anything. When I said yes to that, Debbie and I began to really put all of our life force into the creation of Nia.

You know how people ask the question, “What is the meaning of life?” For me, the question was, “What does it mean to live life in a body?” I didn’t know what it was like. And I didn’t know how to put it together. But whenever I ask something, life points me in that direction. So when Debbie and I started to create Nia, it was clear to me, this is the answer to finding a way to live in the body.

 

RD: So you both were nurturing the idea that there was a connection between emotion and love and movement and body. Did you find any systems of movement that you thought had these qualities?

 

CR: Not any system that had the model of an aerobic exercise. In studying Tai Chi, I noticed that there was a strong element for loving the body and for connecting with the loving nature of life. Before Debbie and I formally created Nia, we studied Tai Kwan Do four to five hours a day, Monday through Thursday. Our sensai said, “I am not going to teach you martial arts as a defense system. I’m going to teach you Tai Kwan Do so that you learn about the body and how it moves,” which is what we wanted to learn. We found that Tai Kwan Do and the sensai’s teachings really honor the body. My body was saying, “Yes, I like this. Aerobics‹I don’t like it. Tai Chi‹I like it.” But it was still not in the model of music.

 

RD: You’d always known you didn’t like aerobics? Even when you were taking Debbie’s classes?

DR: He knew. Within two months, Carlos came to me and said, “How come you guys are always jumping up and down?” And I said, “Because it’s aerobics.” And he said, “Well, you know, I get a great workout on the tennis court, and I’m not jumping up and down.” At the same time he asked that question, I had called a martial arts dojo to find out about the belt system, because I wanted to find a way to honor students who had been working out with us for five or six years.

 

RD: You mean like brown belt, black belt credentialing?

DR: Exactly. So I described my class to the sensai, and he described the belt system. He came and observed my class, and then he invited me to go to the dojo; I asked Carlos to go with me. When we arrived, the sensai said, “Take off your shoes.” I don’t think we did anything without our shoes on, other than have sex. In those days, we kept our running shoes and aerobic shoes on forever. So we took off our shoes, then the sensai asked us to move. Whereupon, Carlos does this (she shows a movement.) The sensai says, “No, no, no, no. Come on, you know. Move!” So Carlos does. And the sensai says to us, “Oh, my God. You’ve forgotten how to move.”

We looked at each other. “What do you mean, we’ve forgotten how to move? We’re the best in our field,” we said. He said, “You have trained yourself mechanically to move and lost your body’s ability to move naturally in a very graceful way. When you remember how to do that, then you’ll have power.”

We went home, and we each started thinking, “Have we really forgotten how to move?” We realized that we really knew very little about moving, other than exercise. At that point, we committed to each other that we were going to learn how to move. We realized that what we felt by taking off our shoes was so amazing that we weren’t going to put our shoes back on. We also realized that doing the martial arts stances and kicks had taught us that we were weak in areas where we felt we were strong. What we felt by moving without jumping up and down, doing the martial arts stances and kicks, was so exhilarating, there must be a whole lot more to this.

That started us on a quest of self-discovery, of learning how to move. It was after the sensai asked us to take our shoes off, after he said we’d forgotten how to move, that we realized we were going to create a whole new system.

 

RD: And that system was Nia?

DR: That was how and when it began. Tai Kwan Do was the first of Nia’s nine art forms that we began to study. We did that for a while, and boy, I’ll tell you, our bodies looked amazing. People would say, “What are you doing? You look like body builders.” But we still had aches and pains, and we had committed to creating a system that would use the energy of love and pleasure. Would that really work? We still didn’t know.

At that time, the company was making about $350,000 a year which, back in the Œ70s was a good little part-time business to have. And overnight, we decided that we were going to take off our shoes and stop jumping up and down, but still do aerobics. I lost my entire business overnight. Meanwhile, I was also in the process of getting divorced, so I’m suddenly without my business or my income.

All the other teachers, the fifty teachers in those hundred classes, thought we were out of our minds. This was in the early Œ80s and Jane Fonda’s fitness style was it, and we’re saying, “Hey, you’re going to take your shoes off and you’re not going to jump up and down, but you’re still going to get an aerobic exercise workout.” No one believed it. But we knew if we wanted to create this new system, we had to stop doing what we had been doing. It ended up being just Carlos and me, because everybody else abandoned ship.

 

RD: What happened to the partner who created The Bod Squad?

DR: She actually went behind my back and kind of did a mutiny with all of the teachers. I showed up at a business meeting one night and, even though it was my company, they basically said, “You’re fired.” It was probably one of the most traumatic times in my life. I was in the process of getting divorced and had made a commitment that I didn’t want any alimony. I was going to pay for half of everything for my kids, and all of a sudden I lost my business. It was horrible.

At the same time, it was exhilarating. When Carlos and I would talk about it, there was just a knowing that this was what we were supposed to do and that it was going to work. I think the thing that got me was when we were asked to go into a bow stance, which is a martial arts stance; I felt my leg and thought, “Oh, my God. I can do, like, a hundred leg lifts. How come I can’t do this?” I couldn’t because it was a more natural way of the body moving. It was more functional, and I wasn’t used to doing that kind of thing. It would be like someone who thinks of themselves as very strong getting into an intense yoga posture. Everything shows up. All the imbalances show up.

At that point, then, because money was an issue, we moved into a one-bedroom apartment with my two girls, and Carlos and I had a mattress up against the wall in the living room that we’d pull down at night to go to sleep. Mind you, I came from a big house with a swimming pool and a Mercedes in the driveway and private schools for the kids. But this was what we were committed to doing, and we knew it was going to work. Oddly enough, the people who started coming to our classes, which once again were small, were people like Dan Millman, Alexander Technique people, Feldenkrais people, yoga people, martial artists. The people who really knew the body all of a sudden started coming to our classes, and they reaffirmed that what we were doing was the right thing. Then we began studying even more forms and systems of movement so we could create a technique that would address the body’s way of moving, the nervous system, the body’s ability to move fast or slow, and so on.

 

RD: What other forms of movement and systems did you choose?

CR: After we began studying Tai Kwan Do, we found that our bodies needed balance, and we still had some aches and pains. So we looked for contrasting movements, and realized that Tai Chi would be the opposite of Tai Kwan Do in many ways. We started taking some Tai Chi classes and incorporating the slow, sensitive motions into our system.

After a while, I said to Debbie, “You know, this is good. I like what I’m feeling, but there is a joy that is not present.” I’ve always felt that joy is the survival energy in life. So we started looking at jazz dance. People seemed happy when they did jazz; we also noticed that it visually complemented our other movements. When we added jazz, our students just came alive. They loved it.

Then a student came to us and said, “Have you ever thought about opening the chest, opening the back, moving the body in different ways like that?” We noticed modern dancers did that, so I took some modern dance classes and brought those movements of opening the chest and closing the chest into our classes. Of course, the modern dancers in the room just came alive.

About that time, we became acquainted with Aikido. When we went to take a class, we immediately fell in love with the energy that we sensed in the dojo and the camaraderie, which was very different from Tai Kwan Do, even though it was a martial art. Also, in Aikido, you use the whole body. It wasn’t just blocking with the forearm; you need to enter into awareness of energy, receiving somebody’s body, flipping in the air and falling. The philosophy of Aikido was wonderful‹blend so that you create a win-win situation. So we started experimenting with blending movements, blending arm movement with hip movement with leg movement so there’s a win-win in the body. We brought Aikido into the classes using spherical motions and blending movements from the hara.

Then a woman introduced us to Duncan dance; her mother had studied directly with Isadora Duncan. She said she loved the fact that we did our classes in bare feet, and that she felt we really paid attention to and trained the feet properly. Then she introduced us to the lyrical aspect of Duncan dance. The childlike energy, the uplifting feeling, the use of imagination, incorporating images of nature and telling people, “Run around this room as if you were running in a meadow; imagine the sensation of grass under your feet.” We were just loving it, soaking it up. Old injuries had begun to surface, and then they began to heal as a result of all this work. My body really started to integrate.

Then we started introducing yoga. We had always felt that yoga was a movement science, which we respected. We learned the principles of alignment in yoga, and then began incorporating those principles into movement, rather than just postures. So we’d be doing movements on the floor, and keeping the same awareness: Where is the yoga? Do you know where your leg is? Are you aligning your back foot? I started to gain more sensory insight through yoga.

Then we explored Feldenkrais. Moshe Feldenkrais, the creator of the system, said the three states of a human being are asleep, awake and aware. A lot of people are awake, but not aware. Then a woman introduced me to the Alexander Technique, which has a lot to do with using visualization and imagery in movement. She taught me how not to use my muscles to reorganize my body, but to use visualization and to feel the subtle shifts, even though I wasn’t moving muscles.

We decided that, even though we could study many other forms, those nine would become the foundation for our system. Basically, we used three martial arts, three dance arts and three healing arts as the pillars of and the foundation for us to study and create a science of Nia.

 

RD: Please tell me about your certification and training of teachers.

DR: From the beginning, we wanted our training to be fashioned after the martial arts‹at least in the sense that you need to understand the concept of the system and be able to execute it in your body and on the mat. That is, we wanted teachers to embody Nia in order to teach it. So we have four initial levels in our training: white belt, blue belt, brown belt and black belt.

 

RD: What do you teach in each level?

DR: Our white belt level teaches the body’s way, which is the map we follow that guides what we do. It also focuses on learning Nia’s first 13 principles that teach people the foundation for further study. Students go through the training to teach and represent Nia or for themselves, for personal growth. Many people come to the training thinking Nia is just an exercise program. They quickly learn that it is more, that they can transform themselves in more ways than just the physical dimension. The second level, blue belt, adds 13 more principles,s, and focuses on teaching-skills and communication techniques. Students learn to observe in great detail to notice the decisions they make, at the levels of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual growth. This level of the training places more attention on detail and teaches people to craft a class and to consciously craft changes.

Brown belt teaching explores energy, and adds 13 more principles to learn how energy works, and how their movement can be supported and guided when they relate to energy and to the sensation of dynamic ease as a sensation. They learn to sense energy in their bodies, monitor it and ultimately direct it. They learn to monitor their energy using the metaphor of a battery, noticing when you feel energetically full or empty, and noticing what drained your battery. This kind of sensing enables people to experience themselves in a special environment called the “zone,” which is where you experience the sensation of expanded awareness.

The fourth level is the black belt where we teach 13 more principles, making available to the teachers a total of 52 principles to master and use. This level is about creativity and transformation. Students learn how to creatively transform their body, and what they know, into something new, something that spirals them upwards. They also learn to use movement as medicine and to consciously take part in their evolution. They learn that life can be lived creatively and guided through pleasurable sensation.

There is a level beyond black belt called first degree black belt that students are admitted to by invitation only. This level deals with the realm of consciousness, and focuses on integrating left brain knowledge with right brain experience and intuition.

 

RD: I understand there are 1500 certified Nia teachers in 30 countries. How many of those are black belts?

 

CR: One hundred and nine students have earned black belts, and five have reached the first degree black belt level. By the way, of those who take the entry level white belt training, 85 percent go on to become licensed and to teach, and 50 percent go on to take the next belt level.

 

RD: Do you require teachers to continue their training in some way once they are certified at a particular belt level?

 

DR: Yes. They are required to keep in touch with the new material we are developing, and with the ways Nia is evolving. They do this by yearly licensing, which includes continuing education in the form of videotaped material.

 

RD: What is your vision for Nia’s future?

 

CR: Over the last 25 years, we have put a tremendous amount of energy into teaching our technique with an emphasis on fitness. We feel like we have completed a sort of circle in the past 25 years and are now ready to begin a new circle, to begin setting a foundation for a new generation of Nia teachers and students to emerge. We now understand the full scope of what Nia has to offer, and see Nia as a transformational exercise: a way to consciously transform the body, mind, emotions, spirit and the lifestyle. We hear people who are on a personal growth path say, “I want my spiritual exploration to include my body.” Nia does make that connection.

 

DR: We also are developing training and guidance for practitioners to use Nia in specialty markets, such as in medical settings. While this has been a practice for the past 25 years, we are now going to focus more directly on helping teachers to become practitioners. To do this we are working on formalizing and branding that part of our message, so we can attract and reach people who are looking for somatic healing tools to use in their existing profession. To that end we want to train existing fitness teachers to service special and new markets, such as healing and rehabilitation centers, even offer support to the youth, to teen and inner city organizations, and also for the up-and-coming leaders in university physical education and dance departments.

 

CR: And we’re focusing on creating “the body’s way” campaign, an educational campaign using advertising, products and services designed to educate people regarding the benefits of pleasure-based fitness. Ultimately we want to inspire people to develop a loving relationship with their bodies. We want to spread the message that loving movement leads to positive lifestyle change and newfound wellness. The gift we have, body, is ours to take care of, learn from nd grow with. It’s a relationship we must develop out of love and over time. The “I” and body must listen to each other’s voices and respond so that living becomes passionate, healthy and transformational for self and the world.