Ok, this is a serious work in progress. It might get a bit long - it needs to - I need it to. Then it will clean up, tidy up, tighten up. Please try to be patient with this one. It may come in multiple, multiple parts!
Here we go...
I've never liked to hear a woman say she needs a guy because he "completes" her.
The equalist in me starts jumping up and down, shrieking,
"That's trash!!! I am a complete human being!!! I do not need anyone to breath for me, to turn on my brain for me, to lower my energy levels so that I will sleep, to beat my heart for me. I am complete!!!!"
The shrieking equalist is right on a very pure level. (But she's not even considering what happens when the hormones kick in!) Now that's not to say that I don't want a man in my life. Whole different jar of jellybeans.
I am complete. While I produce all the eggs I need, to reproduce, I will need a male. Many things may bring joy into my life, few things do it the way "being in love" does it. I am an interesting balance of yin and yang, but few experiences make me feel my yin-ness the way being at a dinner table with a guy I'm nuts about will.
I am complete. I will not cease to live without a mate. Will I be happy? Probably not - that's the jellybean jar to which I referred previously.
When I dance for myself I am satisfied up to a point. My mechanics and movement habits lean toward fluid, smooth moves that feel beautiful and elegant as I execute them. Buuuut, that does not give me movement and muscle balance. When I dance someone else's choreography, especially if the choreographer is a man, at first I feel awkward and "frou frou". If the choreography is yang, I approach it quietly and superficially to begin. My natural dance is yin (unless I'm dancing pissed, then it's unbalanced in yang!) and I can go there easily. Even someone else's yin. I feel like I can slip right in. But yang. Male energy. I have to practice. I have to dig from another place inside of me and for a while it doesn't feel "right". If I keep doing it, though, it creates strength and endurance, stability and mobility in a very different way than the yin work.
I know that working with both yin and yang in my dance creates balance in my body. I know this through the experience of overuse injuries. If I dance the same choreography in the same way every time, I will feel stress and eventually pain in the areas producing and re-producing the choreography. This translates to my Nia classes as well. If I teach the same routine for more than 3 weeks I will begin to hear complaints from the management (my joints, tendons and ligaments). However, if I balance my movement through mixing up the foci in the routines and also changing up routines, I remain without new injuries. Mmmm, balance.
Ready for the segue?
The world of Nia is predominantly female, the balance in the work itself, though, has always been present. Honestly I'd never given much thought to all of this until Carlos AyaRosas, co-creator of Nia, announced his retirement. All of a sudden every routine was highly sensitized in my body. I feel this balance, I would say to myself, I wonder how it will feel as Nia transitions.
As aware as I was at this point, I was to become more keenly aware (yes, I DID say "keenly" - it fits) as I experienced my Brown Belt intensive. Granted, I was primed, but we had 5 Nia men in our 50-person intensive. Dancing with them and hearing them express their perspectives on the process gave me much to think about. None of these men came from a dance background. For me, it was a vastly different experience to take Nia classes in the presence of this strong, grounded male energy. These 5 men did not need to stand in the front, take control, be the best, the strongest or otherwise throw their yang-ness around. They simply did what they did with quiet confidence.
They did what they did without losing their masculinity. They did it without becoming feminine. They did it, perhaps, the way they do everything else, simply the way they do it. And the room felt different. I will say again that listening to these men express their experience with the work reminded me that their comfort levels are different and their challenges are, indeed, different from mine. I also found myself considering that I may not be teaching men-friendly classes.
Is this important? Is it important to balance the work in the studio? Is it essential to insure that all aspects of our lives, from home life to studio life to professional life, flow?
How does this idea of balance and flow affect how we work, how we play (do we play?), how we love and how we rest (do we get enough, if not, why not?)?
For answers to this and other heart-stopping questions, stay tuned for the next episode...
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