Nia Community

Dear Debbie and Carlos,

I hope you both are well and that you’re moving relatively smoothly through all the changes that you’ve set in motion.

I need to share this extraordinary experience with you, which brings even more credibility to the ability of Nia to heal.

Monday night at Gilda’s Club (for people living with cancer), where I’ve been volunteering Nia for 3 years, I had 11 people in class, the largest class they’ve had so far. One woman broke down while telling me of her bad diagnosis, so I cried with her (I no longer hold back). Another woman who comes to my classes elsewhere, came in weeping because her husband’s cancer has metastisized to his liver. It was gray and raining and we all stood there in grief. Then I said, “Ok, we’re moving on.” I put Fantasia on, to which I added a wild hip-hop tune with the lyric “Show off that body.” I hollered, “wiggle those big asses, show off those scars on your chest…” We were howling.

We all got into our joy, into our bodies, into the moment. One woman threw her wig off into the front of the room, then another, then 1 more. We were completely together, looking each other straight in the eye.

At the end, I asked them to thank Debbie and Carlos for making this gift possible.

This was the fulfillment of the vision I had that led me to give up my university English teaching career to become a Nia instructor; I dreamt that I was teaching a Nia class (which I discovered at Rancho La Puerta years ago) in front of a group of wounded people with bandages and splints — so sad. Then as I taught, acting like a clown, etc., they began letting go and then they were smiling. This is what happened at Gilda’s. I know I’m in the right place.

Thank you, thank you.

With so much love,
Lynett

We’d like to hear from you…

We are always looking for writing submissions from the Nia community. If you have an article, commentary, poem, or any other piece of writing you would like to submit, please send it our way. We want to know how Nia is working in your life, and we want to share your thoughts with all of our community.

Please send all submissions to editor@nianow.com

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