nia moving to heal | Jule Aguirre

Movement as medicine

moving to feel better

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As Dr. Christiane Northrup says, “I love Nia! It’s a total mind, body, spirit celebration.” Dr. Bernie Siegel says, “Nia is both therapeutic and enjoyable. The movements feel natural and open up insights and feelings that will make you feel like you are discovering yourself in a new way.” Dr. Lissa Rankin, author of Mind Over Medicine explains, “My colleagues in the healing professions recommend Nia to their clients with body image issues (such as eating disorders), not just because the movement can be tailored to the sickest body or the buffest one, but because Nia celebrates the body, just as it is, in all its richness, and can be part of the therapeutic equation.”

What is Nia Moving to Heal? Nia is an internationally acclaimed movement and lifestyle practice taught in more than 51 countries worldwide in a variety of settings including high schools, fitness centers, and hospitals. For over thirty-five years Nia has been helping people to use movement to feel better in their body, and helping people with short and long term illness benefit by using movement as part of their prescription for healing.

Nia Moving to Heal is ‘Movement as Medicine’ and is for anybody seeking a gentler movement practice to compliment and facilitate healing of body, mind, emotions, and spirit. “Healing” is defined by Nia simply as, “I feel better.” Students learn how to personalize movement to adapt to their comfort and health needs. Chairs are even made available for students to utilize for maximum stability, pleasure, and comfort.

Nia is the one movement practice that delivers the creative expression of dance, the power of the martial arts, and the functional movement of the healing arts, creating a synergistic blend of movement forms that no other isolated movement form can match!

Nia Moving to Heal teaches people to listen to the voice of the body, sensation. Sensation is a tool for self-healing. Sessions begin with a body awareness walk (or seated as needed) and ends with body gratitude. Students are guided through a mindful movement experience using Nia’s 7 class cycles beginning with a focus and intent, warm up, mindful movement, cool down, movement on the floor (or chair) and consciously stepping out. Each session culminates in a “Dancing Through Life” tip – to bring the self-healing focus into the individuals’ daily lives.

For over 35 years Nia has been helping people to use movement to feel better in their body, and helping people with short and long term illness benefit by using movement as part of their prescription for healing, whether it be anxiety/depression, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis, Parkinson’s, brain injuries, eating disorders, etc., use Moving to Heal to step in to your body's healing potential!

Nia has been featured in Psychology Today, The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, The Globe and Mail, BBC Online, Psychologies Magazine, Huffington Post, American Way, and hundreds of other publications and websites praising its benefits as an applied science that has fundamentally changed people’s bodies and lives using pleasure and sensation for healing and sustainability in a body. What makes Nia so adaptable is that all methodologies and approaches to movement are based on what we call The Body’s Way, which is a method of using and moving the body in accordance with its natural design and function. Participants are taught to make choices and decisions to meet their individual needs, are supported in doing so by learning to become Sensation Scientists: learning self-guide and become mindful of how their bodies are feeling, and making choices to feel better. Over time they become fluent in reading the body, gaining body literacy, which gives them the tools to observe signs of health and unhealthy.