Nia blends dance, healing techniques and martial arts
Use bones, muscles
By Chuck Kirman
ckirman@VenturaCountyStar.com
Monday, February 11, 2008
Eighty-five-year-old Dee Volz of Ventura rocks and rolls to the music with her back flat on the floor and her legs raised toward the ceiling. She wiggles feet, arms and hips. She stretches and smiles with the enthusiasm of a child.
Kate Nash, a certified black belt instructor and owner of the Ventura Nia Center, commands the attention of everyone in the class. She holds up five fingers and talks about the five sensations of fitness: flexibility, agility, mobility, strength and stability.
Nia got its start in 1983 when Carlos and Debbie Rosas, then certified fitness instructors in Marin County, were questioning traditional ways to exercise. They created Nia, which blends movement forms from the martial arts, dance arts and healing arts.
The Web site
http://www.nianow.com defines Nia as a "body-mind-spirit fitness and lifestyle practice." The organization has headquarters in Portland, Ore.
"We move the body's way, which is 200-700. That's 200 bones and just about 700 muscles. We use all of them. Lots of extension and contraction of energy. This stuff is really magic," Nash said.
"It's exercise that's really fun, rather than drudgery," said Camarillo resident Susan Richter, who has four years of Nia experience.
Gary Tollison, 60, of Ventura was soaked with sweat after the one-hour nonstop class.
"It's real maintenance. That's the thing for me," said Tollison, who has been taking Nash's class for four years. "You can go at any level. The next thing you know, you're sweating real good."
Nash, who worked in the entertainment business for 20 years, mostly in live theater, has always been interested in self-awareness, expression and healing. In 2001, she became a Nia instructor and opened the Ventura Nia Center in 2004.
Rone Prinz of Woodland Hills has high praise for both Nash and the practice of Nia. "I adore it. It's like I found an awakening," she said. "It's like falling in love."
On this day, Prinz brought her friend Cindy McGee of West Hills for a first visit.
McGee said, "It's freeing. My body is being released from injuries." She asked Prinz when they were coming back. "Monday," Prinz said.
"I love what I do because I feel this is one way that people can achieve more than what they want for themselves," Nash said.
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Originally Posted by GeneChing
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), and has been utilized extensively by, among others, the PT profession to generally positive effect; the "problem" is that in order to become a certified Feldenkreis Practitioner, one has to undergo 3 to 4 years of very intensive training, and there is a very high level of internal oversight, including membership in a 
it is certainly a great exercise class, if a touch over-sold imho...but what practitioner does not oversell their own system?