Oooooooo! I got a flaming heart! Nia has been around for about 35 years, but it’ still pretty rare outside of major metropolitan areas. I first discovered it by chance in 2008 by going to a free “Turkey Burner” class offered the day after Thanksgiving. I loved that it smushed together a lot of the things I did anyway (dance, martial arts, yoga) in one class. One stop shopping.

Then the woman who taught local classes stopped. So much for that.

Two years later, I saw a flier for a New England training that was happening right in my town. If it hadn’t been here, there is no way I would have thought to take it because of the expense of staying a week in a hotel room, missed work, etc. I was just recovering from cancer treatment and really needed movement to help me recover. I thought, OK, maybe I can bring Nia back to town.

I took the base level teacher one-week training. That’s when I first learned the underlying principles. I was pleasantly impressed with all the thought and science that has gone into creating the form and the quality of the training (definitely not the “become a ____ in a day” type of training I have seen for some other modalities). I’ve since taken three more weeks of training spaced out over the years.

As for my voice, hmmmmm. Whenever I listen to recordings of myself, I think I sound awful. When I hear it from the inside, it sounds so much more resonant than in a recording. I wonder if that’s true for everyone.