Secret Recess

The following poem was written by my dear friend, soul sister, and fellow Nia white belt graduate, Amanda Coleman. Amanda wrote this poem only a few days after her birthday and on the same day that I held a Vision Board gathering at my home. She read this aloud at the gathering and we were all deeply touched and moved by these words. Her words resonated with me. She captured beautifully what makes Nia so special. I feel compelled to share this with everyone I know. 

Amanda is a bodyworker, healer, dancer, visionary, a compassionate and conscious thinker, a deeply sensitive soul and lover of the Earth and humanity. I feel blessed to know her and to dance through life with her.

For more about Amanda: http://www.somabodywork.org/practitioner/AmandaColeman.html 

Amanda Coleman, LMP, Nia White Belt

To Debbie and everyone at Nia,

To Nia teachers everywhere,

To every student who has dared to show up to class,

To every lover of Nia who has grabbed a friend and said, “you have to come with me.”

Thank you.

I have been loving and dancing Nia for 2 years now, and for the first time today did I take class in a gym setting. And there, in T-shirted bodies and New Year’s resolved,weight-loss focused , sweat-seeking  minds, a miracle happened.

Something happened there, in the least likely of places.

People began to untangle, to whoop, to smile, to close their eyes.

People began to hear something.

It was the song of the soul of creation as whispered to them through the voice of their own bodies.

I witnessed it.

I danced with them all in joy as the nervous middle-schoolers, for whom no look, no self could ever feel quite good enough, cracked and died, in her, in him, in me.

Thank you.

I feel a great wisdom is transmitted through this seemingly benign “aerobics class”. I grin from ear to ear as I feel so blessed to be able to receive the teachings, like subliminal messages.  I thank you for this vehicle you have designed to convey this vital information to the masses. The message says to me, “I am right here. Within you as I have always been. I am your body, your being, and I hold the map to that world you seek: the one you catch a glimpse of between night and waking, the one you wish for when you hope for your children’s children. I’m here, let me show you the way.”

And people everywhere are being woken up to it. I wish I could throw my arms around Debbie and Carlos and all the teachers whom they received from and all who are alongside them.

We, the human race, are on our way to becoming fully here, on this planet, in this now. 

Thank you for the care and intricacy that you took in encoding this message in such an elegant, complex and simple vehicle…that anyone can get, down at their local gym! Holy Cow! What is this world coming to!?!

All my heart,

Amanda

(White Belt, May 2010)