I’m super in love with my latest Nia Routine “Rising”
It’s an adapted routine, based on the classic Nia routine Mantra, originally designed by Carlos Aya Rosas and one of the first routines I ever learned.
Focus: movement as mantra and a metaphor for self, community, life.
Beginning with sensing the belly (our core) notice how this “moma cell” can contract/extend, bend/lean, figure 8. The Belly is a substance with strength (resilience), elasticity (the ability to bounce back), and fluidity (go with the flow). After embodying the focus in the Belly we expand awareness to the belly of the 700 muscles in our body, then to each piece of connective tissue, the 7000+ cells. All the same mantra of movement.
We sense inward (Body, Belly, Muscles, Connective Tissue, Cell)
We can also sense outwards (Body, Self, Others, Class, Community, Global)
and realize it (and we) are one.
The Mantra, our lives, the community continues. We are strong, we bounce back, we go with the flow, we celebrate, there is much love.
I’m inspired by the words of David Foster Wallace, This Is Water
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”….
….the immediate point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
| Track | Length | Artist | Album |
| Lift The Wings | 2:04 | Bill Whelan | Riverdance |
| Feeling Good | 3:57 | Michael Bublé | It’s Time |
| Everybody | 3:30 | Ingrid Michaelso | Everybody |
| Rise | 7:37 | Herb Alpert | Rise |
| Rise | 4:21 | Samantha James | Birth |
| Rise Above Remix | 6:17 | Afro Celt | StaCCAto |
| Womans World | 3:44 | Heart Music | Trib to Cher |
| Rise Up | 5:58 | Karsh Kale | Broken English |
| You raise me up | 4:51 | Josh Groban | Closer |
| Raise It Up | 2:28 | The IMPACT Rep | August Rush |
| Long Time Sun | 4:00 | Snatam Kaur | Celebrate Peace |
| Holy Morn | 2:25 | Tina Malia | The Silent Awakening |