Licensed Teacher Content | August 2006
Special Feature
Natural Time affects us, our students, and the way we teach. It alters the way we relate to music and create our work. It is an energy you can sense that physically feels relaxed, powerful, personal, and less hurried. When you hear other Nia teachers say, “Do it your way” or “Feel your own body” or “Whatever that movement looks like for you” or “Make the movement yours” or “Take the time to move how you want to” — you are hearing somatic teaching that supports people in moving in their own way, and in their own Natural Time. When you look at Nia’s choreography in action you will notice that even though everyone seems to be going to the same place, everybody is really moving in their own way, in their own time. This is Natural Time.
Nia used the teachings of the Mayans to create its approach to natural Time. The Mayans believed that the sacred cycles in the universe, cycles that move in lengths of 13 and 20, are healing cycles. This kind of healing is a big part of the movement medicine we share in Nia. Natural Time uses the number 13, which represents the number of joints in the body, and 20, which represents your ten fingers and ten toes.
Living and creating in Natural Time allows you to experience life as a meditation. It has the power to change your entire nervous system so that what you do is elegant and powerful, healing, and sustaining to the body. The law of absolute connectedness becomes apparent when you honor nature and Natural Time. Natural Time is staying sensitive to the waves of life and moving with the forces that come your way by staying connected to absolutely everything.
Right now, inhale and exhale and breathe your way, in your own time, at your own speed. Continue to consciously inhale and exhale and find your Natural Time rhythm. Notice the relationship you have between the amount of time and space you need to support a full relaxed breathing cycle. You are in Natural Time.
Share the voice of Natural Time with Your Students
To the physical part of you I provide you with new sensations that connect you more deeply to yourself and to the Universe. I awaken in you your intuitive intelligence and I reconnect you to your visionary dream-maker, your magician and co-creator. Through me, all of life feels more expansive, connected, whole, fast and slow at the same time. Within my flesh, time stands still and also moves forward. My eyes are the eyes of the Universe. My hands are the hands that touch the life force that reunites us all to the heart of humanity.
To the thinking part of you I offer a new vision of time that is liquid. Enter into my symbols and mind-shift happens. Thought transmitted in the form of glyph images, I allow you to expand beyond your normal ways of thinking and to eliminate boundaries that inhibit the natural flow of life within you. Through me, life appears graceful, balanced, and illuminated. I guide you to think with your self-existing, yet fully-connected Universal Mind.
To the emotional part of you I offer an energy that is marked not by drama, but by hope, light, and love. I take you into places of deeper feeling, where all emotions are fully felt. I keep you grounded in the experience of life without judgment, interpretation, or projection. I keep you open to the love that is your guiding power, your ally.
To the spirit part of you I offer a reconnection to what you have forgotten. I am your cosmic connection, the one that reattaches you to the universal flow of consciousness and to creations never before experienced. I am your divine connection to the Great Chain of Being, the spine of creation that runs through all things.