Using Witnessing in Your Practice

By Ann Christiansen, Nia Trainer

Using your Witness while teaching Nia will help you notice everything that you do. Leading a group is a complex act. When you are in front of a class, no matter what belt level you are practicing or becoming, you are multitasking – you are leading a group, sensing your body, and keeping track of your Focus, the next One, and your choreography. Practicing Witnessing will improve:

Your ability to carry the Focus through all cycles
Your timing (cueuing between 3 & 6)
Your ability to practice self-healing during class
Your overall transmission of the Nia promise
Whatever else you may ask it to observe

The seed of the Witness was planted in you during the White Belt. Each night you were asked to recapitulate your day by reading the name of each session and recapitulating the sensation of it, going through the details in your mind and making it a sensation. That was the “seed.” With Principle 5, Awareness, your skills of observation were awakened and alerted to later develop into that important entity, your Witness.

You were formally introduced to the Witness in Principle 4 of the White Belt, FreeDance. The language of the Witness is objective, and it is the neutral, non-judgmental observer. First you learn to use the Witness to observe your movement habits. Then the Witness helps you to store the cellular memory of the Intensive training through recapitulation. In the Movement Review, your Witness “sees” and stores the information about the correct technique. If you have not recapitulated, go back to your latest Intensive schedule, read the sessions, and be in your cleanest RAW — wait for your Witness to send the information, the download, to you.

Having a strong Witness can free up your creativity, letting you be more in the now, not concerned with memorizing. The body takes this invitation to a higher place, releasing hormones that give you access to experiencing something new. Neurons fire their signals to the muscles, bypassing old memories and “set” ways of doing things. That is also one of the gifts of Authentic Movement, Stage 5 of FreeDance, where the key word is “Change!”

As part of your personal practice, spend time with your Witness. Have a dialogue with your witness and ask what it observes. Then, you can begin to make requests such as, “Witness, please observe what I do with my ankles throughout the class.” Going through the process this way to can also be used if you experience pain somewhere in your body and you cannot figure out why or how it came to be. Do a Witness screening of your movement and be sure to keep it clean, precise, and 100 percent true. The report that you want from your Witness is a non-judgmental, purely observational one. An overly critical or even celebratory quality of “I am the greatest!” can contaminate your relationship with this pure entity.

Once you walk your talk, Witnessing yourself in this way, you will then be able to transmit it to your students. You can bring in the Witness in a subtle, even non-verbal way, by focusing an entire class on Dancing What You Sense. Bring attention to technical details (angles of the feet, the height of blocks, etc.), then invite your students to recall those details from their own bodies – not from instruction – to help them build strong nervous systems. Coach into strength!

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