Goodbye Jack, It Was a Pleasure Knowing You

Today I take a break from the series on the Masters of Enlightenment, to share with you this story that was in today’s, Jan. 24, 2011, New York Times.

It’s about Jack LaLanne, who was featured in these pages a year ago, during the series on Longevity.

Jack passed away yesterday, Jan. 23, 2011, at the ripe age of 96, so as a tribute to him, I thought it would be best to republish the story from the NY Times.

Jack LaLanne, Founder of Modern Fitness Movement, Dies at 96

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Jack LaLanne, whose obsession with grueling workouts and good nutrition, complemented by a salesman’s gift, brought him recognition as the founder of the modern physical fitness movement, died Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, Calif. He was 96.

The cause was respiratory failure resulting from pneumonia, said his son Dan Doyle.

A self-described emotional and physical wreck while growing up in the San Francisco area, Mr. LaLanne began turning his life around, as he often told it, after hearing a talk on proper diet when he was 15.
He started working out with weights when they were an oddity, and in 1936 he opened the prototype for the fitness spas to come — a gym, juice bar and health food store — in an old office building in Oakland.

“People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” he remembered. “The doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” But Mr. LaLanne persevered, and he found a national pulpit in the age of television.
“The Jack LaLanne Show” made its debut in 1951 as a local program in the San Francisco area, then went nationwide on daytime television in 1959. His short-sleeved jumpsuit showing off his impressive biceps, his props often limited to a broomstick, a chair and a rubber cord, Mr. LaLanne pranced through his exercise routines, most notably his fingertip push-ups.
He built an audience by first drawing in children who saw his white German shepherd, Happy, perform tricks.
“My show was so personal, I made it feel like you and I were the only ones there,” he told Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1995. “And I’d say: ‘Boys and girls, come here. Uncle Jack wants to tell you something. You go get Mother or Daddy, Grandmother, Grandfather, whoever is in the house. You go get them, and you make sure they exercise with me.’ ”
His show continued into the mid-1980s.

“He was perfect for the intimacy of television,” Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, told The San Jose Mercury News in 2004. “This guy had some of the same stuff that Oprah has and Johnny Carson had — the ability to insinuate themselves in the domestic space of people’s lives.”
Long before Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda and the Atkins diet, Mr. LaLanne was a national celebrity, preaching regular exercise and proper diet. Expanding on his television popularity, he opened dozens of fitness studios under his name, later licensing them to Bally.

He invented the forerunners of modern exercise machines like leg-extension and pulley devices. He marketed a Power Juicer to blend raw vegetables and fruits and a Glamour Stretcher cord, and he sold exercise videos and fitness books. He invited women to join his health clubs and told the elderly and the disabled that they could exercise despite their limitations.

At 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat. At 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor.
He ate two meals a day and shunned snacks.
Breakfast, following his morning workout, usually included several hard-boiled egg whites, a cup of broth, oatmeal with soy milk and seasonal fruit. For dinner he took his wife, Elaine, to restaurants that knew what he wanted: a salad with raw vegetables and egg whites along with fish — often salmon — and a mixture of red and white wine. He sometimes allowed himself a roast turkey sandwich, but never a cup of coffee.
Mr. LaLanne said he performed his exercises until he experienced “muscle fatigue,” lifting weights until it was impossible for him to continue. It produced results and, as he put it, “the ego in me” made the effort worthwhile.
The son of French immigrants, Jack LaLanne was born in San Francisco on Sept. 26, 1914, and spent his early years on his parents’ sheep farm in Bakersfield, Calif. By the time he was 15, the family having moved to the Bay Area, he was pimply and nearsighted, craved junk food and had dropped out of high school. That is when his mother took him to a women’s club for a talk by Paul C. Bragg, a well-known speaker on health and nutrition.
That talk, Mr. LaLanne often said, turned his life around. He began experimenting with weights at the Berkeley Y.M.C.A., tossed aside cakes and cookies and studied Gray’s Anatomy to learn about the body’s muscles. He graduated from a chiropractic school, but instead of practicing that profession he became a pitchman for good health.
He opened his first health studio when he was 21, and a decade and a half later he turned to television. He was first sponsored by the creator of a longevity pill, a 90-year-old man, but it sold poorly and he obtained Yami Yogurt as his new sponsor. “It tasted terrible, so I mixed it with prune juice and fruits,” he told The New York Times in 2004. “Nobody thought about it until then. We made the guy a millionaire.”
Mr. LaLanne, 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds or so with a 30-inch waist, maintained that he disliked working out. He said he kept at it strictly to feel fit and stay healthy. He built two gyms and a pool at his home in Morro Bay, and began each day, into his 90s, with two hours of workouts: weight lifting followed by a swim against an artificial current or in place, tied to a belt.
“The Jack LaLanne Show” may have run its course in the mid-1980s, but it had a second life in reruns on ESPN Classic. “We have over 3,000 shows,” Mr. LaLanne said in 2004. “I own everything.”
In September 2007, “Jack LaLanne Live!” made its debut on the online VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Radio Network. He appeared on it with his wife and his nephew Chris LaLanne, a personal trainer.
In addition to Dan Doyle, he is survived by his wife, Elaine; their son, Jon; and a daughter, Yvonne.
Mr. LaLanne promoted himself and his calling into his final years, often accompanied at events by his wife, a physical fitness convert but hardly a fanatic. He brimmed with optimism and restated a host of aphorisms for an active and fit life.
“I can’t die,” he most famously liked to say. “It would ruin my image.”

The Low Density Lifestyle Book is Here and On Sale for the Holidays!!

Just in time for the holidays, and to help you, your friends and your family live a healthier and happier life, from now until Dec. 31, the Low Density Lifestyle book and ebook are on sale!

When you buy one copy of the Low Density Lifestyle book at the regular price of $19.95, you will get a second copy free! And the ebook, normally $12.95, is on sale for $9.95.

Don’t delay – get your copy now, and make your holidays a Low Density Lifestyle one! Just scroll down to the order info below and you’ll be able to make the purchase.

Get your copy now of The Low Density Lifestyle, in book or ebook format!

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Low Density Lifestyle Book Excerpt

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The Low Density Lifestyle is the revolutionary new book by Dr. Michael Wayne, author of the groundbreaking book, Quantum-Integral Medicine: Towards a New Science of Healing and Human Potential.

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The goal with this book is to help you become a more complete human being. We are meant to live a healthy life, a more fulfilled life, a conscious life, and a more awakened life—this is what it means to be a complete human being.

And this is what is meant by living a Low Density Lifestyle: it is a model for living.

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Download and read a free sample excerpt from the book by clicking here:

Low Density Lifestyle Book Excerpt _____________________________________________________________________

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Our holiday sale: Now through Dec. 31, the price of the ebook is $9.95. Just click on the button below and fill out the info and you’ll pay just $9.95!

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How to Increase the Sex Drive

During this discussion on sex, as part of the topic on Relationships, Love and Sex, one of the points I’ve made is that the sexual experience is an intimate one that can help you to be fully human and to live your life to your fullest potential.

There literally and figuratively is nowhere to hide during sex – you are there, warts and all. Which means it can be a profound tool for self-growth and development.

And as I said before, the more healthy and happy a person is, and the more of a Low Density Lifestyle they lead, the better will their sex life be.

That being said, sometimes, for one reason or another, the sex drive is low.

Menopause is one instance. Many women experience a loss of sexual desire and/or the ability to achieve orgasm as they age. One reason is scientifically linked to a waning production of the hormone progesterone, which is instrumental to relaxation.

This is just one of the many reasons why the most important organ for having great sex is the brain: if you can’t relax and turn off your brain, how will you be able to turn yourself on?

Men also are affected by this, because men go through their own type of menopause.

It’s never too late to improve your sex life, because an aging body and an aging brain can be reversed to a younger, more vibrant state. For all of us, sex can be decoded into four distinct phases, and each is directly correlated to one of the four primary brain chemicals, and the hormones associated with them:

***Desire and libido is created in the brain by dopamine; when you are low on dopamine your energy for and interest in sex wanes, as well as your performance

***Arousal is initiated by acetylcholine; when cognitive functioning and internal moisture goes awry and your acetylcholine becomes depleted, you will not be able to focus on sex, let alone maintain your attention and stimulation.

***GABA is your “get started” brain chemical. It controls your anxiety; you will not be able to achieve an orgasm if you are tense. GABA and progesterone are intricately linked.

***Resolution is related to serotonin. If serotonin becomes depleted, your timing is off. You’re either coming to the party too early or too late.

Through eating a more organic, whole-foods, plant-based diet, and cutting out the chemicals and junk; and through exercise and building muscle mass, you can increase the sex drive, no matter your age, by increasing the production of brain chemicals.

A recent study showed that building muscle mass leads to both neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells, and angiogenesis, the increase in the amount of blood that flows to the brain. And the more new brain cells and amount of blood that flows to the brain, then the more chance that there is that the brain can trigger heightened sensations and arousal during intercourse.

Another way to increase the sex drive is to increase your connection to the spiritual dimension.

New research has found that spirituality has a greater effect on the sex lives of adults than religion, impulsivity, or alcohol.

“I think people have been well aware of the role that religious and spiritual matters play in everyday life for a very long time,” said Jessica Burris, one of the study’s researchers at the University of Kentucky. “But in the research literature, the unique qualities of spirituality — apart from religiousness — are not usually considered.”

According to a research measure known as the Spiritual Transcendence Scale, those qualities are connectedness, universality, and prayer fulfillment. But the data found that of the three, connectedness plays the largest role in spiritual sexuality and leads to more sex with more partners.

“Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself,” Burris writes. “In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners.”

And in a separate review of studies last year, it was found that sexually unsatisfied women who practiced mindfulness and yoga reported improvements in levels of arousal and desire, as well as better orgasms.

Top Ten Ways to Live a Long Life

Today the series on longevity concludes with the video above on the top ten ways to live a long life.

You’ll instantly recognize the music – it’s the Beatles’ “When I’m 64.” Of course, from a longevity perspective, 64 is still just a babe in arms, but I guess when the Beatles first wrote the song, since they were in their early 20’s, 64 seemed really old.

But as you’ve seen from all the masters of longevity featured during this series, 64 years of age is just the beginning.

So enjoy the above video, and don’t forget to sing along while you learn the top ten ways to live a long life. All of them, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, are also ways to live a Low Density Lifestyle.

In other words, as I’ve pointed out during this series, if you live a Low Density Lifestyle, you’re also going to be a master of longevity, just like all the folks profiled in this series.

See you next time with a new series…this next one will be on Relationships, Love and Sex – now those are some hot-button issues.

The Heavy Metal Great-Grandma

Winifred Pristell is 70 years old and lives in the Seattle, WA area. Three days a week she gets up at 3:30am in order to be at the gym by 5am.

Winifred has a reputation to uphold. She’s a great-grandmother who they call “Heavy Metal” because she’s a competitive weightlifter with two world records and aspirations for more.

When you watch the above video, you’ll learn more about Winifred and see her in action.

But she wasn’t born into a fitness type of lifestyle, nor was she on the Longevity track. Winifred was living quite the High Density Lifestyle, and things were looking pretty bleak.

At 47, the 5-foot-5-inch-tall woman was dangerously obese, weighing 235 pounds, with a body mass index of about 40. A body mass index of 25 is considered overweight; obesity starts at 30.

Since then, she’s dropped five dress sizes. The weight just crept up on her, she says. She was working long hours, eating poorly and drinking and smoking too much.

One day while taking a bath, Pristell remembers feeling as though she was dying. She asked her daughter, Cynthia, if she would walk with her.

“I couldn’t walk but a block that first time,” she said.

Every morning the two walked together, a little farther each day. Within a year, Pristell was up to three miles, five days a week, she said. That’s about the point she walked into a gym for the first time in her life. She tried aerobic exercises, stationary bikes, and other machines and contraptions.

Years would pass before she tried free weights and more than a decade before she began lifting weights competitively at the age of 60.

At 68, Pristell set world records for her age in bench press, 176.2 pounds, and in dead lift, 270 pounds, for her age group and weight class, according to World Association of Bench Pressers & Deadlifters. And she’s set scores of other state and national records.

Because of her unhealthy background and where she is now, sometimes Winifred can be a bit blunt. On a recent day at the gym she told a teenage boy who works there that he is too fat. She’s not trying to be mean, she says. Sometimes she just says things without thinking first.

After all, she is a retired barber who was blessed with the gift of gab, so she just likes to talk it up. And she figures if she can do it, anyone can.

After all, she’s a world record holder.

“Sometimes they call me a freak,” Winifred Pristell says. “That’s OK. I like being called a freak sometimes. It’s kind of unheard of, a person being my age doing what I can do. For me, the older I’m getting, the stronger I’m becoming.”

How was it possible for Winifred to so drastically change her life? What lessons can be learned from Winifred that can help you lead a long and vital life?

• Her incredibly positive attitude: Her trainer, Andrew “Bull” Stewart says of her, “She has no limitations.  Mentally, physically, she just has a spirit about her, an attitude that she can do anything.”
• Her perseverance: Three days every week she is up at 5:30am and goes to the gym to lift weights.  She has integrated exercise and healthy eating habits into her normal routine of life.
• Her belief in herself: Even though she has arthritis in her hands, feet, and back, Winifred believes she can overcome her challenges.  “We are all dealing with something.  If you let whatever you’re dealing with control your life, you have no quality of life.”

These life lessons from Winifred Pristell are lessons that can help anybody live a long, vital and happy life. These are also the longevity lessons that we can learn from Joe Rollino, who just passed away at age 104; 95-year-old Jack Lalanne; 83-year-old Bette Calman; and 98-year-old Shigeaki Hinohara.

The Yogi Grandma

Over the last few days in this series on Longevity, I’ve told you about two amazing masters of longevity. One was Joe Rollino, who unfortunately passed away on Jan. 11, 2009 (having been hit by a car) at the young age of 104; and then I told you about the amazing Jack Lalanne, who at 95 has proclaimed that he plans to live to 150.

So let’s look today at another person who is an amazing example of someone who is experiencing a long and vital life, and has not allowed age to slow her down.

This person is the Yogi Grandma, 83-year-old Australian yoga instructor and grandmother Bette Calman, who is still bending over backwards to spread the benefits of the ancient Indian discipline.

Bette has been teaching yoga for 40 years, and still is extremely flexible. She’s the author of three yoga books, including one called Yoga for Arthritis.

She can do all the difficult moves including the agonizing “peacock” where the body is held in a horizontal position by the strength of the arms alone; she can also pull off a tricky raised “lotus,” “bridge,” and a headstand with ease.

She can also put her head between her knees and hold her ankles, putting her inflexible grandchildren to shame.

On top of all that, she still teaches up to 11 yoga classes a week

“I’m proof that if you keep at it, you’ll get there. I can do more now than I could 50 years ago,” Bette Calman said.

And she has no plans to give up and retire anytime soon. “You’re never too old. The body is a remarkable instrument. It can stretch and stretch, and get better all the time. Forget age,” she says. “Even a basic posture, or just going to a window and breathing deeply, can have big benefits.”

It’s that spirit that has made Bette Calman a legend in her native Australia.

She was a pioneer of yoga in the 1950’s, ran yoga centers for 33 years, and made regular TV appearances in the 1970’s.

She then thought she would retire, and moved to be closer to her daughter, but the call of yoga was just too much for her to ignore, and here she is now, teaching 11 yoga classes a week, and looking like she’s not planning on stopping anytime soon.

Living a Low Density Lifestyle – especially as a longtime yogi/yoga teacher – has made Bette Calman a model of longevity. As she says, “Yoga keeps you young.

“Never have I gone to a yoga class and wished I was somewhere else, because I know I’m going to come out feeling on the top of the world. There’ll always be yoga.”

Top Ten Ways to Start Living a Low Density Lifestyle Now

In yesterday’s article I explained What the Heck a Low Density Lifestyle Is.

When you read the article, you should be able to wrap your mind around the concept pretty quickly, and I think you’ll agree with me that it makes a lot of sense.

Tomorrow I will begin the first series of the year, and it will be on Longevity. As you probably know, once I begin a series, I spend a few weeks looking at the theme of the series at an in-depth level. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about Longevity than you ever thought you did.

But before I begin the series on Longevity, let’s examine the top ten ways you can start living a Low Density Lifestyle right now.

Yes, right now. Not tomorrow. Now. So let’s begin…

1) Open your mind. When you talk to someone, do you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to what they say? Open your mind to the possibilities that are out there, because it could cause you to change your thinking and expand the way you see the world. When you are closed minded, you shut off 99% of the world.

2) Listen to others. Don’t just be the one talking…listen to what others have to say – you will learn a lot that way.

3) Watch your expectations. It’s easy to expect others to do what you think they should do, or what you think is the proper way for them to behave and act. But everyone is different, and you should never impose your beliefs and standards on others. If you think someone is acting improperly, be aware if your perception is clouded by the way you expect them to act.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t act like an expert, even if you know everything about the subject at hand. This ties in with the first point, to open your mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” You may know a lot about a subject, and may be the go-to person on the subject, but at the same time, it’s best to be humble about your knowledge, because there is never an end to what can be added onto the subject. For instance, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.” And if anyone had the right to claim firm knowledge on a subject matter, it was Richard Feynman.

5. Laugh. A lot. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously. When you laugh you start feeling lighter of body, mind and spirit. You can just feel yourself open up.

6. Move. As often as possible. Especially in ways that accentuate flow. Try this: when you’re home, turn some music on that has a good beat to it, and start moving to it. In whatever way feels right. It doesn’t matter if you have two left feet, just visualize you’re channeling your inner Fred Astaire. Or inner Michael Jackson. Or better yet, inner you.

7. Dream. Dream big. Or even dream small. But just dream. John Lennon once said, “The dreamer lives forever.” And Mick Jagger, in Ruby Tuesday, said, “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” We all have great dreaming capabilities, but it gets suppressed. You can dream at night during sleep, or during the day, in what gets misnamed daydreaming. It’s not daydreaming you’re doing when your mind wanders during the day. Instead you’re doing what we all have as an innate quality: seeing ourselves in a greater capacity, seeing ourselves in the life we were meant to live.

8. Think abundantly. It’s easy to think from a scarcity perspective, in which you see a world in which it’s every person for themselves, and you have to get yours before someone takes it from you. But what if you perceived a world in which it was ok to share and be generous and be compassionate with others? Remember the popular best-seller called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum? That was the gist of the book, that what we all learned in kindergarten – to share, to play, to have fun, to enjoy each others company – are really the true lessons of life.

9. Live and practice a healthy lifestyle. Eat a whole foods oriented diet. Breathe deeply and relax. See a health provider who helps you to cultivate and enhance wellness. Don’t take drugs, or take as bare minimum as possible, and see them as a temporary bridge that you take only until your health is much better. Instead of drugs, take herbs and supplements.

10. Sign up for the free email course on this site. See the sign-up box on the upper right, below the video, or you can put your name in the pop-up box that shows up when you first come on the site. The course will help reinforce everything written about in the above list. And keep coming back to the site to read the articles. There are new articles on this site four days a week – Tuesday through Friday – on different aspects of living a Low Density Lifestyle. The different aspects are covered in a series format, and each series is written about for a few weeks. You’ll be glad you did.

It’s the Food, Not Lack of Exercise, Causing Teen Obesity

For the last two days I’ve been talking about obesity in children, and the fact that in the U.S. nearly one in three children and teens are overweight or obese.

I discussed in yesterday’s article that one of the key causes of this obesity epidemic is sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

Many say that another big cause of obesity in younger folks is their lack of exercise.

Most American teenagers are not as active as they should be, but a lack of exercise does not seem to be to blame for the rising rates of teen obesity, according to a U.S. study.

According to a recent study published in the journal Obesity Reviews, researcher Youfa Wang of John Hopkins University said that a lack of exercise was not to blame for the rise in U.S. children and teens.

Wang and his research team, using government survey data from 1991 and 2007 that tracked the health and lifestyle of U.S. high school students, found the amount of physical activity among U.S. teens has not in fact changed significantly over the past two decades while the population, including children, has gotten heavier.

“Although only one third of U.S. adolescents met the recommended levels of physical activity, there is no clear evidence they had become less active over the past decade while the prevalence of obesity continued to rise,” said Wang.

He said there was no evidence that teens’ exercise levels had changed appreciably at any time during the study period — even though those years saw an increase in teen obesity.

Overall they found only 35 percent of teenagers surveyed in 2007 met the current recommendations for physical activity — performing activities that gets the heart rate up at least one hour per day, five or more days out of the week.

But there was no evidence that teenagers’ exercise habits shifted significantly during the study period.

In 1993, for example, 66 percent of teens got enough short bursts of vigorous exercise — 20 minutes of running, biking or other heart-pumping activity at least three days per week. That figure was 64 percent in 2005.

When it came to moderate exercise which should, according to guidelines, be performed at least 30 minutes per day, on five or more days per week, only 27 percent met that goal in 1999.

That figure was unchanged in 2005.

The researchers also found a decline in teenagers’ TV time, which is interesting, because it has been widely believed that an increase in TV time is one of the causes of obesity.

In 1999, 43 percent of students spent three or more hours watching TV on school days but this figure dipped to 35 percent in 2007. Wang said these findings suggest that waning exercise levels are “not likely the major explanation of the recent increase in obesity among U.S. adolescents.”

He said other factors, like unhealthy diets, may be the driving force.

And that is the truth. It’s the high consumption of junk food – sugar/high fructose corn syrup and fatty foods – that are the culprit.

Sadly, the desire for the junk foods is pretty much an addiction. Studies of the brain function of people with substance addictions has found that junk food triggers the same activity and response in the brain.

And a new study by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found similar reactions in rats. Pleasure centers in the brains of rats fed high-fat, high-calorie food became less responsive over time – a signal that the rats were becoming addicted. The rats started to eat more and more. They even went for the junk food when they had to endure an electric shock to get it.

“Your brain reacts almost identically to that of a cocaine addict looking at cocaine,” said Dr. Louis J. Aronne, a clinical professor at Weill Cornell Medical School and former president of The Obesity Society. “And the interesting thing is that someone who is obese has even more similarity to the cocaine addict. In many ways, they can be addicted to junk food.”

And even more sadly, food companies know this and create their food products with this in mind – they want people to be addicted to their products, because then they have a customer for life, regardless of the consequences.

And the consequences are that these junk food addicts will be caught in the treadmill of a High Density Lifestyle unless they break their addiction.

Join the conversation – I invite you to join my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter!

Movement: Feeling the Pulse of Life

To close this series on movement and exercise, I offer you this video montage that I have put together.

It’s called Movement: Feeling the Pulse of Life, and it sums up the essence of everything I’ve tried to explain about movement and exercise and its ability to help us feel lighter of body, mind and spirit.

Watch the video and as you do, see if the spirit moves you to get up and start moving. Even if you don’t start moving, see if you start feeling the flow of energy through your body as you watch it.

Movement can help you live a Low Density Lifestyle because it helps you feel the pulse of life course through your body, and can help you get in the zone.

We are all kinesthetic.  All you have to do is find what type of movement fits your temperament, and then just go do it.

Maybe it’s yoga, maybe it’s tai chi, maybe it’s Nia, maybe it’s running barefoot, maybe it’s singing and dancing like Elvis.

But whatever it is, just remember to move. Cause then you’ll be feeling the pulse of life.

Dancing Through Life with Nia

In this series on movement and exercise, I’ve written about yoga and tai chi, two movement forms that fit in well with a Low Density Lifestyle approach to movement.

Another movement approach that is oriented towards enhancing the flow state, and as such is another Low Density Lifestyle movement approach is Nia, which is a lifestyle and movement practice.

Today’s article is guest

written by Katie Capelli, who is a Certified Nia Black Belt Instructor and who has been sharing the joy of Nia with students for 11 years. She has created a holistic movement studio, Bloom, that offers classes in Nia and other movement techniques. She is also a Certified Nutritionist and co-owns a Natural Foods store with her husband in upstate NY.

Here is Katie’s article:

In contrast to a fitness philosophy that pushes us into pain and discomfort to achieve results (“no pain, no gain”), sits the choice of Nia. An expressive movement and lifestyle technique based on a philosophy that Through Movement We Find Health, Nia is guided by the sensation of pleasure.

Nia embodies “The Body’s Way” – that is, everything we do in Nia is supported by the unique design of the body’s own elegant neuromuscular systems. Through this practice we learn how to foster our own body awareness to make movement choices that let the body say “aahhh” in response.

As a unique blend of technical precision and free-form expression, Nia offers the body, mind, emotions and spirit an integrated balanced state of health and is based on nine traditional movement forms: from the healing arts (Yoga, Alexander Technique, The Teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais), from the dance arts (Modern Dance, Duncan Dance, Jazz Dance) and from the martial arts (Aikido, Tae Kwon Do, T’ai Chi).

The goal is not how deep, how fast or how much we can do in class but rather how aware we can become of our own physical sensations. We become our own personal trainers.

As this awareness or inner voice begins to direct our movements, we then are free to adapt the movements to our own body potential. We explore how it feels to move from sharp to fluid, from large to small, from high to low. We learn to listen to our body while having fun, as it tells us how to adjust the movements so we will feel pleasure and joy.

Nia is adaptable to meet the unique needs of all ages, sizes, shapes and fitness levels and acknowledges that the body requires movement and energy variety. Practiced barefoot to all kinds of music, Nia is truly designed for every body.

Through Nia, it is possible to achieve mobility, flexibility, strength, cardiovascular conditioning, agility – all of the components that lead to whole-body conditioning. Most importantly, Nia leads us to a loving, sensory relationship with our own body, a body that holds an innate intelligence on how to live and be healthy.

To learn more about Katie’s Nia work and her studio, check out Bloom, A Movement Space.

And here’s another video that shows you Nia in action:

Nia Promotional Video 2005 from Nia Technique on Vimeo.

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