The Body Awakens With Sounding, From Debbie Rosas.

I didn’t know there was a sound missing in The Nia Technique classes I was teaching until I found it when I heard my voice speaking the “my sound” part of the music I danced to. For decades, I danced to great music. I taught people to listen and dance to the music and musical detail in every Nia class. I created movement that opened bodies and changed lives.

But it wasn’t until I began Sounding that I discovered another layer of myself—deeper, more primal, more honest. It was as if a doorway opened, not outside me, but within me and I wanted everyone to have what I was having. Sounding is not singing. It’s not performance. It’s not meant to impress or entertain. It’s a practice of presence. And of revelation.

It is the sacred act of letting your voice emerge—raw, unshaped, and fully alive. Of personal sound resonance. Sounding first began quietly, in the middle of class, when I allowed myself to exhale not just air, but a sound vibration. A low, deep tone rose from my belly. It startled me with its honesty. It wasn’t pretty, but it was real. And it moved something in me.

I felt my posture shift. My hips release. My breath drop. A memory surfaced. A sadness I hadn’t named began to move—and then, like a wave, it passed. And I was lighter. That’s when I knew: the body doesn’t just move to music. It is music. And the voice is its instrument and a tool for conditioning, healing and blending movement with breathing.

I soon realized that every vowel had a home in the body: “Ah” would rise in my chest, vibrating my heart awake; “O” would echo in my belly, grounding me in my center; “U” would root into my pelvis, unlocking power and presence; “E” would lift through my throat, opening space for truth; “I” would spiral through my head, connecting me to the cosmos.

As I began teaching this, inviting students to make sound while moving their bodies and let their voice lead them—magic happened, and the results were extraordinary. I witnessed trembling voices become steady. Tears fell as a tone rose. Laughter emerged in the middle of a spiral and entire rooms vibrated with the sacred hum of people remembering their wholeness. 

Sounding is how we become music—not as a metaphor, but as a living truth. In Nia classes we use a mindful practice called RAW—Relaxed body, Alert mind, and Waiting spirit as a method that invites us into deep listening. In RAW, we don’t react. We receive. We don’t perform. We become present. And in that sacred space, we don’t use our voice—we become it.

In Nia classes, Sounding became a doorway to the embodiment of personal sound. When I am sounding now, I am not speaking to the space with students, I am tuning into the space with students. The space suddenly becomes sacred. The group becomes a field of frequency. The silence between tones becomes as powerful as the sounds themselves.

We’re not just making noise. We’re restoring harmony. At the end of our Nia classes, we often lay down, breathing with the Earth, letting our voices spiral into stillness. These are the moments I treasure most. When the music fades, but the resonance remains. When silence begins to sing. When we remember that we are not separate from sound—we are sound.

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