Physical Agility: choose a stream & step in

For the past week, my class focus has been on Agility.

Agility is the balance between stability & mobility. In Nia, we describe Stability as the sensation of being in a powerful pause. Stillness. Rooted. Waiting. Stalking the next movement. And Mobility: the sensation of energy in constant motion.

I trust that it may be obvious to you, my gentle readers, why a mother of 6 month old twins might benefit from conditioning her agility skills. Just when I'm ready to settle in for a nap with Emmet, he decides he can only stop screaming if I walk continuous laps around the living room sofa. Conversely, when I'm out on the town with the boys (read: Babies-R-us or Target, take your pick) and we're soo darn close to finishing uo our errands...everyone decides they need to stop and eat a bottle right-this-very-moment!

When we experience our agile bodies, we are connected to the ease of starting and stopping. Visualize kids playing a game of tag. They mobilize to avaoid being tagged, but once they're "it" stopping on a dime to scout out their prey, before mobilizing again to tag the next one. Gracefully, artfully.

Something I noticed this week in myself and others while focusing on agaility in Nia class: when practicing physically, we can sometimes feel the need to recreate the flow of energy, and as well, to take a fair bit of time and effort to still the body.

Imagine that these 2 energies already exist: Mobility and Stability energies are constantly available and active. And all we have to do is tap into one or the other. It is a decision to participate. While we are responsible for being present with the energy, in order to participate fully, we are not required to create it each time, but simply to chose stability and enter the powerful pause that is always in existence, or chose mobility and enter the flow of energy in constant motion. Just like stepping into a stream.

Try it. Put on some music that you love. During the verse, freedance mobility. Sense energy moving seemlessly through your body. The movements can be big or small or both, but the energy should flow continually. When the chorus comes, root the body in stillness. Whe you arrive, take a sensory snapshot of what that feels like, to be stable in your body, so that you can return to the exact same place effortlessly. Listen for the next verse to begin. Visual the stream of mobility. See what the water looks like, hear what it sounds like. When the verse does come, invite yourself to simply step into the moving stream. Next chorus, try the same with the stream of stillness.

If this exercise failes to hammer it home for you, feel free to borrow a baby or two for the afternoon. Really, just ask!

If you can enjoy the shifting tides that agility provides for the body, imagine what this practice might do for all the shifting demands that are places on your time in tems of minding the mental realm, and the emotions too.