Nia’s Learning Lexicon, By Debbie Rosas.

I have always been interested in language, the human brain, and what enhances or limits thinking and verbal processing abilities. Today, the study of language concerning social factors, including differences in regional, class, occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism is even more important. As a child with speech and learning disabilities, I quickly learned the importance of differences, repetition, and cycles and how to “learn how I learn.” Most important was understanding how much information I could process within a given time.

Keenly aware of everyone’s unique method of learning, together with individual body and brain processing; I set out to create a simple map to blend The Body’s Way within a language of cycles.

Along the way in my learning journey, I discovered the window of time that my brain needed to process instructions and language. As it should be, my own window of time is different from anyone else. The Body’s Way design is also the same and yet different. Later in life, when I began creating The Nia Technique in 1983, which is now a global fitness, health, and well-being movement art helping people to live and move and function better in their body at any age and any stage of life; I integrated the science of learning and linguistic methodology.

First learning to read and working with a speech-language pathologist, I used regular and repetitive linguistic cycles with recurrent patterns. I also used the same words and phrases to help me remember while remaining relaxed in the process of learning and performing my speaking. This consistent structure gave me direction and provided me with time and space to construct my expression of speech. This experience also influenced me in creating the Nia Seven Cycles and the Nia Class Architecture used to teach Nia Classes, and a map I use daily.

Just as the language of Nia is in the52 Moves, I wanted the language of cycles to contain simple words and phrases together with a small number of words, to create a Nia lexicon that could speak to Nia communities around the globe.

Even as my speech therapist wanted to help me increase my phonological processes and make faster progress in my speech; I wanted to help people with their movement processes and make faster progress in shifting their attention from “on the teacher” to “on their body.” This gave students control of their movement expression. In speech therapy, where a cycles approach is meant to closely mirror the natural development of speech in young children, using this process gradually over time ensures success by mastering the easiest words first.

The Simplicity of the Nia Seven Cycles

For example in Cycle 1: Set Your Focus + Intent, the dynamic and sound is mentally active, personal, inquisitive, and introspective. In Cycle 2: Step In, the dynamic and sound shifts, into mentally focused, intentional, purposeful, physically grounded, and centered. In Cycle 3: Warm Up, the dynamic and sound are physical, sensed, perceived, and measured via the felt sense to know what needs attention and in preparation for more movement. In Cycle 4: Get Moving, the dynamic and sound increases while the resonance of the movement is louder and bigger. In Cycle 5: Cool Down, the dynamic and sound of movement begins to quiet down in preparation to move to the floor. In Cycle 6: FLOORplay, the dynamic and sound of movement is slower and deeper due to the relationship of the body with gravity. In Cycle 7: Step Out, the dynamic and sound of movement is the sound of self-reflection, review of outcomes, and recentering and preparing to step into life’s next activity with a renewed sense of holistic fitness, health, and well-being.

The Nia Seven Cycles approach is also meant to mirror the natural development of the body by starting slower and simpler and then increasing in speed and complexity. The trick is to use impactful words that can be intelligibly understood for stimulating specific energy dynamics, which is what I call the resonant speech and sound of your movement in a cycle. Through the seven cycles, the actual sound of movement begins as something silent until it becomes softer and yet quieter still, and then it slowly increases in intensity, and ends by returning to silence.

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