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We learn more about Nia, an internationally acclaimed cardiovascular mind-body movement, that has recently been awarded the CANSA Smart Choice Seal in the physical activity category.
As the first practice to combine martial arts, dance arts, and healing arts, Nia (pronounced nee-ah) has fundamentally changed people’s lives with its evolutionary approach to fitness and wellness. It is taught in more than 45 countries worldwide in various settings including high schools, fitness clubs, hospitals, and corporate environments.
Blending the joy of dance, the discipline of martial arts, mindfulness of somatics, and universal spiritual principles, Nia’s ground-breaking body-centred classes and training support physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.
How will it help?
Shifting your mindset from I’m ill to I’m self-healing is one of the ways that Nia can help you feel supported on your journey to feeling better. Nia isn’t just mindful movement, but also a lifestyle practice that helps you live your life with more joy and pleasure, no matter what age or ability. Nia helps you cultivate more sensory awareness and teaches you to bring more attention to places that feel tight or painful and helps shift through movement, music and expression into feeling better.
Who can do Nia?
In Nia we offer levels of intensity and range of motion to meet you where you are at. We move with a variety of music and movements to condition the whole body and connect to expression through emotions, your mind through the imagination, your body through sensation, and invite you to find your unique way. Your body’s philosophy way helps you find your way back to the ideal whilst honouring your body’s way. Rest, release, find healing.
Benefits of Nia
- Emotional release
- Daily dose of happy hormones
- Improved heart health
- Increased confidence
- Mental clarity
- Spring-load for healthy joints
- Shoulder joint mobility and flexibility
- Reduced pain
- Mindful movement to energise whole body equals less fatigue
A sneak-peak of what you can expect
Turn palms up, turn palms down to open and close the shoulder joint. Smell the moment and breathe into those places that feel tight to increase range of motion in your natural time. Palm directions is one of the 52 moves of Nia that will help you find more flexibility, agility, mobility, stability and strength in your whole body again.
Move holistically, moving your body connected to sensation, use your imagination, express, release and build EQ, connect to form and freedom in your own way and time. Balance – shift your body’s weight instead of jumping up and down. Play with mobility and stability to increase balance and strength in your body.
Find online and in-person Nia classes near you:
MEET THE EXPERT – Mia Steyn
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