About Nia
Nia is a mind-body-fitness program. You will sweat and burn calories. Yet, it's holistic approach allows you to work out, not burn out. By combining the power and precision of the martial arts with the grace of dance and the concentration of the healing arts, Nia helps you connect to your body, mind, and spirit.
Created in 1983 by Debbie and Carlos Rosas, Nia is movement integrated from nine traditional movement forms. It delivers cadiovascular, whole body conditioning while creating a loving relationship with your body.
Debbie and Carlos Rosas celebrating Nia's 25th birthday at Dance Underground (Jeff Stewart)
Nia moves are simply designed and repetitive so that they are accessible for people of all ages and all fitness levels. Learn to move in a way that is healthy for you by choosing your pace as the music carries you through the hour.
Discover joy in your fitness class where feeling good overrules looking good. Kick off your shoes and find the Nia in you!
The 9 Movement Forms
How is Nia influenced? *
T'ai Chi
"T'ai chi is a 'slow dance' that focuses on efficiency of movement. T'ai chi movements are all centered around the body’s inner core. They create grace and strengthen the mind-body connection."
Tae Kwon Do
"Tae kwon do is an aggressive, physically demanding martial art that employs powerful kicks, blocks, and punches. Its stances and kicks are the cornerstones of Nia leg work and create physical strength, and psychological confidence. It is the dance of precision."
Akido
"Aikido, which emphasizes harmony in movement, focuses on finding resolution in conflict, through the blending of apparent opposites. Using spiral motions to create force, it evokes connectedness, gracefulness, and wisdom. It is harmonious spherical motion."
Jazz Dance
"Jazz Dance is all about fun, showmanship, and expression. It develops rhythm, coordination,and cardiovascular fitness. By replacing the rigid movement of traditional exercise with jazz movements, Nia facilitates the dialogue between the brain’s two hemispheres."
Modern Dance
"Modern dance is creating shapes in space. With its emphasis on dropping and then recovering the body’s own weight, it’s an elegant way to direct muscle loading."
Duncan Dance
"Duncan Dance is free-spirited, honest movement. The most liberated, self-directed form of dance, it develops gracefulness, strength, flexibility, balance, and expressiveness. It can be as easy or as physically demanding as desired."
Yoga
"Yoga is all about conscious connection. It’s an inner-directed dance of bone alignment that allows the joints to achieve maximum efficiency. By redistributing chi energy, it increases awareness, relaxation, and balance."
Alexander Technique
"Alexander Technique is movement from the top. It places primary attention on the position of the head, especially its carriage by the neck and shoulders, because so many people store tension there. It also emphasizes paying more attention to the quality of movements than the quantity."
Feldenkrais
"Moshe Feldenkrais' teachings are about the conscious sensation of movement. This non-workout movement reprograms the nervous system to change physical habits. By enabling people to become aware of subtle physical movements, it increases control over voluntary action. Moshe Feldenkrais described its linkage of mind and body by saying that it “straightens out kinks in the brain."
* Rosas, Debbie and Carlos, The Nia Technique (New York:Broadway, 2005), 88-89.