It’s easy to get swept up by the music, movement, and magic of Nia. In the process of one’s excitement, moving functionally and in ways that protect the knee joints often goes unnoticed until after class.
According to the Mayo Clinic Women’s Healthsource (Special Report, July 2006), nearly 42 million Americans have arthritis or related condition, such as lupus, gout, scleroderma, and polymyositis. People who experience pain from these conditions and others such as bursitis, the painful inflammation of the fluid-filled sack outside the joint, often ignore their pain. They brush it off as being a normal experience and say things like, “Oh, well, I worked – what do you expect. Pain is just part of the deal.”
Keep in mind that any joint pain, stiffness or sense of limitation of motion, is a call to self-heal. Healing is not isolated to individuals labeled with an affliction. Pain is a Voice of the Body everyone should listen to and respond to. Injuries caused by overuse of the body can be avoided by sensing for pleasure. Injuries caused by lack of use can be avoided by sensing the lack of stability and/or mobility.
Encourage your students (and yourself) to condition their Conscious Personal Trainer to respond to pain by changing what they do so that as they move, they are guided by and constantly feel more and more pleasure. Play with the Nine Movement Forms so that all joints in the body become conditioned and able to respond to different ranges of motion and speeds of activity.
There are many ways to protect the knees and still feel and move the passion
Always be conscious of placing the feet. This means, teach the foot movements. When presenting choreography, call attention to The Base, as this is the foundation for all other choreography. Develop good foot technique and your knees and whole body will be protected and supported from the ground up, which is how your body is designed to move — from underneath.
Avoid locking the knees. Use your feet and all 19 muscles in them, plus the ankle, knee and hip joint, in dynamic ways that move energy up and down the entire leg. Locking the knees stops the flow of energy at that point, causing the thighs and low back to feel fatigued, gradually causing your movement to require lots of effort, rather than Dynamic Ease.
Use the knees the way they were designed to be used. Bend and extend them. Integrate the Three Planes – Low, Middle, and High. When your rise into High, fully open the back of the knee as if yawning the knee, without locking it. At the same time open the groin without pushing the pelvis forward. In sinking motions, lower to a point where you feel support through the whole foot and where the knee floats above the foot. To keep the knees properly aligned on deep sinking motions, point your tailbone back, moving your hipbones away from the knees. To rise, push down into the earth through the feet and lengthen up fully. Think of massaging your legs by using the bending and extending action of the knee joint.