LITTLE ROCK — Six women, most of them barefoot, gear up for a Saturday morning fitness class at the Jesse Odom Community Center in Maumelle.
In the darkened room, hypnotic, slow to midtempo world music plays while instructor Antoinette Mims leads fluid movements: arms raised, hands clasped. A marching skip with arms spread out, turn. Bend and sway side to side, swinging the arms. Raise up, skip, turn, bend and sway again.
Another marching skip, reminiscent of a tribal dance. Multiple turns. Bend on one knee, with upraised arms, sweep arms down. Slow turn, arms outstretched. Leg forward, step touch, leg back, step touch, grapevine, swinging then raising the arms.
The music quickens, climaxing in a disco-flavored number with an African drumbeat. Mims leads the women through faster paces.
Switch to a Tuesday morning Nia class with instructor Susan Sell Garrett at Little Rock Athletic Club. The moves are similar but the vibe is different.
This one has more of an aerobics flair and more of a martial-arts presence, more kicks and chops. But the dance element, complete with a bit of Latin-dance hip wiggling, is there. And like Mims’ class, this one’s appeal is infectious.
It’s easy to tell both groups enjoy what they’re doing. Mims and Garrett, in particular, wear the same rapt look at the crux of the workout, as though they’ve mentally left the confines of the class structure and lost themselves in the wonder of the movement.
This is Nia - a form of fitness that offers many things to many people.
SPIRIT, MIND, BODY
Nia is an acronym for neuromuscular integrative action. Often compared to Zumba and practiced in more than 45 countries, “Nia is a sensory-based movement practice that leads to health, wellness and fitness,” according to nianow.com, the website of Nia’s developers. “It empowers people of all shapes and sizes” - as well as ages - “by connecting the body, mind, emotions and spirit.”
Headquartered in Portland, Ore., and co-founded by Debbie Rosas and Carlos AyaRosas in 1983, Nia Technique Inc. defines Nia as a practice that incorporates moves from the martial arts, dance arts and “healing arts.”
It’s based on 52 moves that engage the base, core and upper extremities of the body. It offers three intensity levels, Level 3 being the highest.
Movements borrow from modern or Duncan dance (named for Isadora Duncan), jazz dance, yoga, the Feldenkrais method and Alexander Technique. The Nia training series imitates martial arts training in that it includes progressive belt levels, the black belt being the highest.
Nia “awakens different parts of your spirit,” says Tanya Stillman, 49, of Maumelle.
A registered nurse and a first-degree black belt in tae kwon do, Stillman loves Nia’s all-inclusive bent, and enjoys the way Mims teaches it. “She’s awesome,” Stillman says. “She makes us want to come to class.”
Also a practitioner of yoga, Zumba and Pilates, Stillman has been working out since age 24, but she’s trying to take it easy while recovering from a knee injury. She appreciates the fact that you can enjoy Nia at any level.
“You can do the same old exercise forever, and we need something different to do - all of us do,” Stillman adds. “You need to challenge different muscle groups.”
Stillman’s friend Hope Massery, 46 and also of Maumelle, concurs.
Stillman and some of Massery’s other friends urged the pharmaceutical sales representative to join the class. “For years we’ve done yoga and Pilates together, and they said, ‘This is so fun,’ that I should try it too,” Massery says. “I like that it gives me ‘cardio’ exercise but it’s fun, so I don’t mind it so much.”
“What makes Nia different from other new forms of fusion fitness? It’s not a fad,” says Mims, a white-belt instructor. “Nia was the first in fusion fitness before it became the new norm in the fitness world.”
GOOD FOR ALL AGES
Its flexibility accommodates all age groups, she says.
“When you’re young, it’s all about the cardio. I think once you hit your 30s, then you want to tone. I think you hit your 40s, then you want flexibility, and then I think at 50s you’re wanting mobility. So I think that’s why it hits all those ranges.”
A teacher at Dunbar Middle School, Mims, 43, has been teaching Nia for about five years. But she has been involved with it since the mid-1990s. After her husband’s job relocated him from Austin, Texas, to Little Rock, Mims took Nia classes from Garrett before returning to Austin to become a certified instructor.
Mims’ Maumelle class is only a few weeks old. “I became a teacher because I wanted more Nia in Little Rock, literally,” she says.
What attracted Mims - also a yogi - to Nia? “Good music, number one. Really good music. The fact that there was structure but still freedom. ... And then it was the fact that it worked all those other muscles that I didn’t know that I had at the time.”
Monica Beard-Raymond of Little Rock, a student and friend of Mims’ and also a white-belt instructor from Austin, learned about Nia and met Mims there. A 38-year old program manager who also enjoys yoga, Beard-Raymond was an undergraduate when she got involved with Nia in 1997.
“I used to do aerobics religiously and I always hated it,” she says. “I always wore out my shoes and had shinsplints and things like that.” When her aerobics instructor switched over to Nia, she switched with her. “And I just never looked back. ... It’s a great stress reliever [and] my ticket to [a] long-term exercising routine.”
The freedom to change movements to fit her needs is one thing Beard-Raymond likes most about Nia. Along with the sheer fun of dance, Nia uses imagery and arouses the imagination “so there’s an element of play that you don’t find in all forms of exercise,” she says.
Garrett has been teaching Nia for about a decade. She became involved through Somers Collins, who has been credited for first bringing Nia to Little Rock.
Garrett likes Nia because it’s “more about your whole body - where the emphasis [is] on really how you’re moving and the intention,rather than just moving.” Before each class, an intention and focus are set, then the movements correspond with that, she says.
“The most important thing is keep moving and have fun.”
Garrett will be 50 this year - “and really I don’t feel like it,” she says. “I think [Nia is] the thing that has kept me flexible and open and about the same size I’ve been for about 10 years.”
Nia has been a lifeline for Mims, who lost four loved ones - including her husband - in a seven-month period a couple of years ago.Grieving, she took a hiatus; but then she returned to class. “I was amazed at how much Nia allowed me to heal.”
Nia classes begin with a slow song to warm up the body; then go on to faster, more intense songs; then slow down again for the cool down, stretching and core work. The creators of Nia give the instructors four routines a year, providing the music.
Garrett says she usually throws in a couple of her own songs - an Adele tune here, a Lady Gaga song there - and tweaks the routine a little bit to change it up.
OPPORTUNITIES
Nia’s presence in the state remains small. Mims and Garrett believe that has to do with the teacher-certification process, an intense, seven-day training session. The closest training venue for central Arkansans is in Dallas, Mims says; but a master trainer would come to Arkansas for groups of at least six people.
There’s also the cost of training: $1,599, according to the website.
“So you really have to be committed to wanting to get certified,” Garrett says. Garrett has also been certified as a Zumba instructor; that certification can be obtained in a day, for $185-$355 depending on the level. “That’s why we have 20 Zumba teachers and five Nia teachers” in the area, she says.
Mims, who’s on a mission to make Nia more accessible, says it should not only be more available in general; it should be offered at inexpensive, nonclub venues such as the Odom Center, whose drop-in use fee is $7.
“More classes in different areas - it would grow,” she says.
Five belts available for education levels Nia is a fusion of exercise systems and traditions, and from the martial arts it borrows belts.
Students of the practice may earn five belts - white, green, blue, brown and finally black.
Each represents a 50-hour unit of education in five areas: how to move the body for wellness and enjoyment of life, music, anatomy, science and philosophy. The program includes interactive discussion and guided self-reflection.
Students begin with the white belt, which focuses on Nia’s exercise and dance.
The green belt is a teaching certification program.
One year of reflection is required before students who acquire a belt may undertake the next one; but they may study for the green belt as soon as they complete the white belt program.
Other, less-intensive training is also available, such as a supplementary program called Nia Five Stages Training. The “five stages” here are movement sequences representing human developmental stages, described as “embryonic, creeping, crawling, standing and walking.”
Used as a five-minute practice with “awareness,” the stages are said to be a tool for reclaiming and sustaining mobility, flexibility, strength, agility and stability.
Students and teachers are allowed to enroll in trainings more than once.
Source: Nia Technique Inc. website, nianow.com.
ActiveStyle, Pages 23 on 03/26/2012