If you don't start as a fit kid or young adult, even it's really too late to pick things up, don't you think? Yeah, but we're going to take a look at that. But also another thing, because if you need to exercise more is better. And as things that you might get addicted to go, I mean, they're worse things than exercise, right?
Maybe not the way you think. So we're going to look at both of those things on today's episode of the movement movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet versus those things are your foundation. And where we break down the propaganda, the mythology and sometimes the flat out lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or cross-fader, whatever it is you like, you pickleball, fast-growing sport in America. Did I mention enjoy bleeds?
It's a trick question. I know I did because I always say that first. But the point is if you're not having fun, do something different so you are because if you're not enjoying it, you're not going to keep it up. And we call this the movement movement because we are creating a movement, more about that in a second, natural movement letting your body do what it's made to do.
And that first part, the movement is just spreading the word. So here's how you can do that. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com, no cost to join, no obligation, no secret handshake, just where you can find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can find our podcast, all the other places you can engage with us on social media, for example. And you know what to do, like and share and thumbs up and hit the bell icon on YouTube and subscribe so you can hear about the upcoming episodes.
And most importantly, I mean, the gist is if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. And last but not least, if you don't know, I'm Stephen Sashan from zerohears.com, host of this very entertaining thing we've been doing for a long time. But now let's jump into the fun. Jennifer Hicks, do me a favor.
Tell people who the hell you are and why God's anger here. Of course. So I am in Toronto, Canada. I am a NIA fitness instructor and trainer.
I'm going to pause right there. So spell NIA, and some people will hear that as KNE and wonder why you say NIA, like your Canadians, like, you know, which is a weird thing. So I'll let you dive into that a little bit. We don't have to do it now, but let's just say we'll come back to explaining that we're not talking about your knee is when you say NIA.
No, no, we're talking about a barefoot movement practice. Yeah. And I'm also a personal trainer and I'm also a speech language pathologist. So I have a lot of variety in terms of how I spend my time.
And so I did a little teaser at the beginning about two different things. One is just, you know, starting fitness at whatever age you may happen to be in where it does or doesn't work and the other part about exercise and more is better in getting really attached to that, etc. Let's start because I know this is what we talked about in the 30 seconds prior to hitting record. But what would you like to start with that?
Well, you know, growing up, I was let's just say my body image was not very healthy. Surprisingly, no one back then taught or spoke of anything related to body image. And coupled with the fact that I was not at all athletically inclined. I was terrified when it came to sports situations.
I failed swimming lessons. I got to move from. Hold on. You would think that if you failed swimming lessons, that would mean you drowned.
Well, I mean, I could tell you a funny story about that, but you don't have. Oh, no, come on. You honestly think you could set me up with like a funny story and then not tell me. Well, I didn't ever get the hang of breathing underwater and, you know, taking a breath when necessary and, you know, blowing out through the nose and so on.
And so my idea of swimming laps in the pool was to use one arm to plug my nose while the other bread crawl and I didn't point work out. Were you swimming in circles? It was kind of a diagonal circular on an arc. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I remember when I was learning, trying to learn how to swim.
I was having a very hard time with this as well. I don't remember why, but then I felt like I was kind of getting it. And the next day when I went to the pool, my mom was there and I was like really excited to show her that I'd figured it out. And I jumped into the pool and they had over the weekend raised, added water and raised the level of pool by about six inches.
And so instead of hitting the ground or hitting the bottom pool, like I thought, I kept going and like inhaled a whole, you know, long full of water and that was, that terrified me about getting back in the pool for like a year. So, and then I'm curious what happened for you, if anything, what happened for me as I went to a day camp right down the street from where I grew up, where they had a teacher. I literally don't know what he did, but he instilled such confidence and calmness in us that I picked it up like nothing, you know, when I met him and had a good time. So how did you ever get over swimming in a circle with one arm?
Well, I eventually learned I taught myself how to breathe properly. I even went so far as to do a triathlon and conquered my fear of swimming in open water. So people like on top of you and yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Arms and legs fluttering all around. Yeah, I can think of very few things less enjoyable than being in the water and having someone just swimming on top of me. I mean, that could be fun actually, but that's all different story.
All right. So you started out, you were not ever going to fly to you or swimming in circles and please continue. Well, I really got into fitness starting out when I was in grad school as a way to manage stress. I would go to the gym, but never really enjoy it.
And then when I graduated and the stress had lessened a little, so I started doing more enjoyable things like running outside instead of on a treadmill. And fast forward a few years, my father-in-law got very ill and I unknowingly at the time, you know, the stress and anxiety related to that, I unknowingly developed what's called orthorexia, which is a hypervigilance around nutrition. And subconsciously, I think I was so focused on fitness and nutrition as a way to protect myself in this situation that was absolutely no control over it. This was my way of controlling things that very quickly led into anorexia.
Can I pause for a sec? So can you describe, I mean, I get the general idea of what you described for orthorexia, but I'm really curious if you could tell me, and I know we're diving into something personal, so please tell me to shut the hell out of the fit. That's relevant. What that actually looked like?
I mean, if people were watching a video tape of you, how would they know that this is what you were doing? Sure. So without getting into any specifics so that I don't trigger any of the listeners, essentially, whatever Runners World magazine said was the way to eat was the way I ate. But then I took that to an extreme in that whatever Women's Day said I did that as well.
And this is back in the days of magazines, pre-internet, pre-social media. So it was really just, it was involved restricting portion sizes as well as entire food groups. And yeah, just taking away any sense of balance. And eventually, that led to sort of a fear of certain foods for the fact of, at the end of the day, what was I afraid of gaining weight being the person I was as a kid, which was the chubby kid, which had a real snowball effect, because in there was also the exercise, and that became addictive.
And just like any other experience might become addictive, it's all I thought about was exercising and eating. I left the house in the middle of the night to go out and work out. I would lie to my husband about where I was going. I was having an affair with exercise.
And I would leave work. My behavior became completely uncharacteristic. I would just leave an exercise when I was meant to be working at a hospital. I'm, oh, geez.
But again, I have to admit, I'm dying to know what lives did you sell your husband? What did you say you were doing when you were going out in the middle of the night? Oh, well, at that time, again, back in the day, it was, there was in our neighborhood at 24-hour coffee shop. And I said, I was going to read at the coffee shop.
And he, like, I think he knew before. He got a little sweaty. It's like, what kind of coffee did you have? Well, I actually poured it all over myself and had to dig a shower.
The idea of someone, like it would be easier to say, yes, I'm having an affair than yes, I went out to run five miles is, of course, a horrible, but also hysterical. Well, and yeah, it was a desperation. Like, how can I get my next fix? Air quotes, you know, how can I satisfy?
It was really, I guess, the endorphins I was after, right? Oh, interesting. Medicating, some people self-medicate with alcohol, self-ukiting with exercise. You said something about control.
I mean, was there something that you thought, like a specific thing that you thought by going out and doing this or keeping that routine that would either keep it based on some thoughts, some feelings on something? I'm just really fascinated. Like, again, I'm getting kind of granular just because I find it interesting if you don't want to go there. No, and it's a great question.
I think there was a little bit of diet culture in there. There was fat phobia. There was self-esteem. There was, yeah, being with my thoughts and emotions.
But I also had this, you know, excess amount of energy and this sort of complex that I was better than anyone else. And, you know, just full disclosure, in the years since then, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. But the many medical professionals that I saw thought, oh, you can't have bipolar disorder. You're not sleeping with random people.
You're not stealing from stores. But mine played out. My knee, hypomania played out in that I just had so much energy. I was just like shooting on all cylinders, right?
I had to do something with that energy. And along with that came a whole behavioral thing around not trusting people. I remember when my doctor said that I had anorexia and I accused her of being jealous of me. Oh my God.
I mean, again, it's not funny, but that's hysterical. I love to be thinking, right? Did you actually say that out louder? Yeah.
Oh my God. What'd you say? How'd she respond? I, you know, very compassionate woman.
I can't remember exactly what she said, but she, yeah, she put me in my place for sure in a very dignified way. I mean, the manic part of bipolar is very tricky, of course, because, hey, you feel like you're invincible and have all this energy and have all this creativity and have other, and sometimes the other side of it is, you know, people respond accordingly. I had a roommate who was bipolar and there was times where he, and he had been medicating, like legit at lithium, et cetera. And there was times where he'd forgotten to take his lithium and we'd be having lunch, you know, me and all our friends.
And the guy was hysterical when he was in a manic phase and we knew how bad it was going to be afterwards. And literally we'd have conversations going, all right, do we give him five more minutes? This is really fun. Or do we just get his lithium in him right now?
Yeah. And that's what we did. But it was literally one of those things where it's a tricky thing because people don't get it. So alluring as a person having the, in my case, hyper manic episode because I was invincible, right?
Was better than me. Like, why would I want? Why it took me a long time to get diagnosed because I was like, why would I want someone to take this away? Like, this is great.
And I had a sort of slow and steady, I didn't have a huge peak and then a crash. Right. And it's sometimes, I think it was mixed as well. Sometimes I was depressed, but, you know, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Yeah. And then there's a very interesting thing where when you're in go, go, go mode, you can't tell someone you're depressed because the presentation doesn't look like that. And yet they can be very tightly entwined. Oh, for sure.
Yeah. So, all right. So thank you for indulging in that. I'm just totally fascinated with how minds work, especially around these extreme situations because they're very rarely, it's very rare that someone attends to them by with curiosity is the simplest thing I can say.
Just to take a mild tangent, my mom has to mention Alzheimer's in the phase where she was still able to have seemingly a conversation. I interviewed her to ask her what her experience was because it was so fascinating. And she said to me at one point, she's in an assisted living facility and they had some soprano singer come in and do show tunes. And at the end of this hour, she says, I haven't felt this good in days.
And I said, oh, so you can remember how you felt over the last few days and compared to how you felt now. And she goes, oh, no, I just say things like that because it makes people feel better. I thought that was fascinating. So when I interviewed her about her experience, I couldn't tell if it was an accurate reporting or just what her brain was doing to try to make sense of this completely irrational kind of behavior and experience where she didn't recognize herself in a mirror and couldn't understand why that lady only stayed in the bathroom.
And she would talk to that lady and didn't understand how photos worked. But it was so it was really intriguing to me. And I never heard anyone dive into that. So yeah, I actually also do work with people with dementia as well.
So I'm familiar with what you're talking about. Well, then I've got to give you this one. So my sister and I, when we would go to visit, we'd kind of check to see how she was. So we sit down in front of her and my sister says, hey, do you know who I am?
And my mom says, no, I said, do you know who I am? She goes, oh, I think so. My sister asks again, do you know who I am? She goes, you're kind of familiar.
I feel like I should. But no, I said, do you know who I am? She goes, are you Mark? I said, no.
My sister says, do you have any children? My sister says, do you know their names? And she says, Ellen and Stephen? Like, oh, so I said, oh, yeah.
So do you know who I am? She goes, no. My sister asks one more time. Do you know who I am?
And then my mom looks around conspiratorially to make her know what can hear. And she leans in and looks at us and says, do you know who you are? You're giving you a piece of your own medicine. Exactly.
It was brilliant. It was brilliant. So anyway, pardon the attention. So back to you for the win.
So all right. So the orthorexia led to anorexia. I can imagine that transition of just, you know, from the obsessive part to just, you know, once it's really doesn't seem like it's a very large step. Well, and in fact, you know, this happened in the days when orthorexia was not even mentioned as a risk factor for anorexia.
So it's only in hindsight. Have I been able to say, oh, that's what was happening? You know, and yeah, it was it was terrifying. As I mentioned, there was a fear of certain foods there.
I had a very rigid list of foods I could eat and could not eat. And yeah, and was there was there also a ritual around eating them? I'm remembering someone with a college. Eating in private when I did eat.
And also a lot of I can remember shopping and buying a lot of food and cooking and making things for it was just me and my husband and making things for him that he didn't want. You know, I made it. I guess I really wanted it, but that's how I was acting. Right.
So, you know, the cupboards were bursting at the seams. I wasn't eating any of it. And so obviously the question of how you came through that is pressing and even more interesting. Is there anything we need to address before we get there?
You know, it always seems like my life is just the opposite of what might be considered normal. And in some ways, I really embrace that. But the way the way I overcame all of that is quite frankly, extremely unorthodox. And would you like to get into that now?
Oh, yes, considering a number of, you know, comical things. I'm thinking of what unorthodox could sound like. So I got to the point where I was put on a medical leave from my work as a speech language pathologist. And that was like beyond humiliating for me.
But I did instead of, you know, there was a recommendation from the medical side that I attended a treatment program for people with eating disorders. But I knew that would be the end of me because it's a very clinical, restrictive formulaic kind of program that that they were asking me to be part of. So someone checking how much food I was eating, measuring things. And so I chose.
I mean, ironically, it sounds like more of the same. Well, yeah, and just to me, it always seemed like a very punitive. Yeah. Like, I mean, I guess in that program, they also have psychotherapy and other services like that, which I was already doing on my own.
But yeah, it just it didn't feel like the right approach for me. Yeah. So I instead sold my car and bought a ticket to India with. As one does.
As one does. For someone in the middle of a major health and psychiatric crisis is probably not the best idea. Like a fine place to go. Yeah.
And so my husband, God, love him said he insisted on going with me. He was not going to let me go by myself. So he did. He came along and we stayed for a month and at the end, and it was I was depressed as I'll get out the whole time there, but really appreciating the culture and all that India has to offer.
So he at the end of our month said, OK, you know, we're getting ready to go. And I said, I don't think I'm ready to go home yet. So I say he left, which was a risky move on his part. And while I was there, I kind of engaged in some like not like some self harm.
Let's just put it that way where I really should have been really sick based on what I was doing, but someone something was looking out for me. So when I returned from India, which by the way, I was not doing yoga classes. I was not going to temples. I was not.
I was just there. Like you talked about being curious about people and people's minds. That's that's what I was there for. I was almost like studying how people lived in India.
You don't have 40 different kinds of coffee. You can order, right? It's so much simpler. It's like sugar or no sugar.
That's it. Well, and you know, people who are living in what we think of as shacks, where that's their home, that they're OK. I mean, you can't I spend a bunch of time in India. You can't apply your American thinking to what's happening there because it's just not the same world view.
And I mean, I absolutely adore it for all of those paradoxes among other things. I mean, we were staying in an area where there weren't a lot of foreigners. I was there for a friend's wedding. And so he was in a neighborhood where you wouldn't go unless you knew people who there.
And I remember fewer people who were begging, but we got hit up by like these five kids who were asking me for money. And I said them, just so you know, I'm not going to give you any money. But if you want to go do something fun, I'm your man. And after two days, I went, OK, let's go.
And I just hung out with those kids. I had a blast. Yeah. Yeah.
And I just appreciated to how people were happy with what they had, which in cases was very little, you know, and would give you all of it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just a very special place. I've been now three times since that time. But yeah, so after returning from India, I was like, now what?
Because I had no job and I was supposed to be rehabbing. But the opportunity to take a knee fitness training came along. And so my I'll call it lovingly, my disordered brain thought, this is great. I can become a fitness professional and hang on to my eating disorder.
Like this is fantastic. And so I took this training and that is not what the universe had in store for me. So you know, in fact, the opposite happened. It was a major part of my healing process because Nia is a fitness practice that first and foremost asks you to pay attention to your body, to your sensation, and to listen and respond to your body so that you can make choices about moving in ways that feel good.
So what I had been doing previously was pounding the pavement and any kind of hard work, weightlifting and you name it where the harder the better, the more it hurts, the more effective it was, you know, so this was a revolutionary revolutionary way of thinking for me. So it, while it started out as my quest to hang on to this eating disorder, it was eventually responsible for eliminating it. So needless to say, that one sentence has a whole lot of frames in it. If we were looking at a film, can we break that down?
I mean, what was it like when you started to pay attention to these sensations? It's interesting to say that because I know a treatment that's been affected for some people at anorexia is compression clothing because it makes you feel things in your body that gives a sense of control as well that people, some people respond well to some really and having done, I mean, spending a lot of time in my past doing meditation practices that involve paying attention to the body. And so I'm dying to know when you had that invitation, what was that like at first and how did that then evolve for you? Yeah, well, sensation is a complicated animal, right?
We have this gift of being able to sense and feel in our body. And then if we've experienced trauma, I can shut down and just numb ourselves. And so that's what I think I was doing. And there was a lot of unresolved grief around my dad died by suicide when I was two and a half.
So some trauma living in my body. And not to mention the fact that no one had ever told me that I deserved to feel good in my body, that if I paid attention to how my neck was feeling, I might prevent headaches. You know, like that kind of how to live in a body lesson, I might have missed. I don't know.
No, they don't teach that one around here. Just FYI, it's not like you skipped the class. That's not part of the curriculum. Yeah.
So it was both terrifying and illuminating to be given this invitation to listen to my body. And yeah, and to feel you've heard, you know, I feel fat is not a feeling, but as a kid, I would feel fat. And I didn't like that feeling in my body. Like my body was more.
It wasn't something that people paid attention to or wanted, you know, on their softball team or whatever. It was growing up. It was my brain that allowed me to get good grades. And so I kind of always lived.
Is there someone who calls it a brain taxi? Like my body was my brain taxi. So yeah, this is so learning and being introduced to this idea was, yeah, interesting. And it was it was really scary in that I started teaching.
And as I was practicing, okay, I'm listening to my body. That started to help me pay attention to satiety signals and know when I was hungry and know when enough was enough and all that complicated business. And as I was teaching, I was practicing this learning to sense and feel. And the irony again, everything is opposite with me.
I started teaching fitness and I gained weight. I needed to get I was a scrawny little thing. And as I was feeling and like just letting myself become more human and experienced pleasure and not deprived myself, I was gaining weight. And so that in itself was another psychological barrier.
Because again, that's that's what I was holding on to the eating disorder for. So it was a long and complicated process that I still continue to learn about. And I still continue. It is a practice for me to sense in my body and not in the mouth.
I think there's two parts to that. One is the continual invitation to pay attention or the opportunity to pay attention. And the other I imagine is that many of those thoughts have not gone away, but the relationship you have with them has probably changed or to them. Yeah.
And the more I have to tell you, the more I learn about capitalism and racism and all the oppressions, I'm like, these are not my thoughts. This doesn't belong to me. Like I'm not using what I was given, which is my only intuition, my own sense of what's right and what's wrong. For me, I'm still unlearning all that.
And so I've been teaching now 16 years and this is still an ongoing practice for me to reframe thoughts. Yeah. I'm going to share a funny one with you. So when my wife, Lana, and I first met, I'll do the very abbreviated version of this, she avoided me like I was going to say the plague, but let's say like COVID now.
She avoided me like COVID for I think maybe three and a half years. She was living with a friend of mine, so she couldn't avoid me entirely. But she basically just brushed me off as much as you really possible for at least three years. And at one point, when she deemed me acceptable as a friend, at one point, I asked her, I think I asked her, she found me even remotely.
And she said, oh, no. And I said, I was like, oh, OK, so I get it. I'm like mad about this woman who really has no interest to me. So then I basically got OK with that.
In fact, I was dating someone who knew Lana and we had the three of us had lunch together for some reason. I can't remember why. And my then girlfriend said, are you in love with her? I said, well, yeah, but she wants nothing to do with me.
So it's one of those unrequited things. And my then girlfriend said, OK, she was cool with that. So here's the kicker. We've now been married for coming up on 19 years.
We've been a couple of three and a half years before that. We knew each other for, I mean, we've been together a long time. To this day, there are times where I think, I don't think she really wants to be here. And I have to remind myself that that thought is flat out of absurd.
But more importantly, is that it is not supported by the evidence in front of me. And in fact, it's almost inevitable that when I have that thought, if I'm lying in bed, if I wake up before she does, and that thought comes up, it seems like a magic trick, where that's the moment she'll lean over and start cuddling with me. And I go, OK, you're a complete idiot. I'm thinking myself because the evidence and reality are, you know, arguing with what you believe that you know has been factually an accurate for years, but it still comes up.
So I don't really care. I find it fascinating that it comes up. I don't pay attention to it so much. Or I mean, I notice it, but it's like, but I know that it's silly.
It's sort of like, it's no different than trying to convince myself if I looked in the mirror, that I'm a six-foot-tall black woman. It's like, that ain't what I see. Yeah. Exactly.
The power of our thoughts, it's like they dig deep trenches, right? Yeah, literally. I mean, literal neurological trenches that it's kind of we go down like a water slide. Right.
And that's really why it's so important to expose myself to different ways of thinking different schools of thought, different approaches to living, right? Well, which brings us back to Nia, which we never bothered spelling. So let's do that. OK.
Could be more complicated. I know for you, N-I-A. Here we go. I only know this because I have a friend from decades ago who was an early Nia teacher.
So let's dive into that. I'm curious. I'd love to hear more about the evolution of you teaching that and what happened for you, but I'd also like you to tell people what Nia is. And if you can get anyone something that we can do in real time to have, you know, like the bears have an experience so they can get some flavor that would be dreamy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Nia originally stood for non-impact aerobics. So it was the first barefoot non-impact aerobics, basically. It's coming up, I think next year is the 40th anniversary.
So it's a four year old practice. Now, by the way, we don't refer to it as non-impact aerobics in that it's just so much more complex than that. You save Nia, just like Pilates or yoga. And it was developed by two people, Debbie Rosas and Carlos Rosas, who were really big in the fitness industry in the 1980s.
And they were doing the whole aerobics thing and then noticed that they were not having fun and their teachers and their students were all getting injured. So they decided, you know, there's got to be a better way to move and to have a sustainable movement practice. So the I have a funny thing to that. So our chief product officer, Dennis Dristle, was one of the guys who co-founded a VF where and what made a VIA was they made the first aerobics shoe and they brought it around to aerobics teachers and it was a padded motion control art supporting like, you know, quote, normal shoe.
And they didn't know any better, but they were the first ones to think, let's target this particular market and make something for this market, which then they got bought by Reebok. But to hear that people were getting injured in a quote, you know, normal shoe made for this is not surprising to he or any of us. Yeah. Now makes sense knowing what we know.
For sure. So yeah, so they stepped away from that traditional aerobics and kind of started researching what are other movement practices that already exist that are respectful of the design of the body so that don't ask the body to put pounds and pounds of pressure on the joints. So essentially, Nia is three different movement arts. So we've got the jazz, excuse me, the dance arts.
We've got the healing arts and the martial arts. I don't know why I'm hesitating on that. Are you going to be editing this? No, it's fine as is.
It is interesting to me again, we're diving into the interesting thing of minds, but it is interesting to me when there's a word or phrase that we may have said thousands of times and it just suddenly is like, it's not shown up. I have a weirder one, we're living in an area, we got a dog or first dog ever. And people asking where do you take him and we have a, say, I can't even do it right now. It's a street hockey rink.
And I've only said this a thousand times, but every time I have to pause and go, what the fuck is that? And you know, I'm a speech pathologist, right? I work with people who are finding problems. So when it happens to me, I start to freak out a little bit.
But yeah, so dance arts, martial arts and healing arts. So there are a number of movement forms within those. So jazz dance, modern dance, yoga, Tai Chi, Taekwondo, Aikido and so on. And those are blended together into what a class looks like is a barefoot movement experience.
So it's low impact and the movements are movements that respect the design of the body. So there's, you know, we're not jumping up and down, but we're reaching up high, we're getting down low, we're using the floor, we're using space around us traveling. So it can be the beautiful thing about it is that it can be very energetic, which some days my body loves and it can be very gentle, which other days my body really appreciates. And it's taught me the value of not judging movement, because we all have different ways and preferences and body situations that desire and need different movement practices.
And in this case, there are nine different movement forms that we use. So the variety of movement is endless, which stimulates my creativity. Like it just gets me so excited. So can you give us an example so people can get a flavor for this?
Yes. So since we're your specialty is feet, we have I never thought I would say that in my life, but yes, I guess that's true. We have eight different foot techniques. So it is called the Nia technique.
So it's not a lot of people think it's free form or just flowing and do your own thing. It's not ecstatic dance like that. There is a technique and we want to use our body in the way it was designed to be used and to use all of it. So we have foot techniques that allow us to move from the bottom up to be aware of our feet.
We do all kinds of things to strengthen the ankles and the feet like we do a duck walk, which is where the toes lift and lower. We do a swish walk where the heels lift and lower and swish down. We rock around the clock. So we're doing kind of a circular motion with our feet and so on.
Can you pick one of those and give us an actual instruction so people can try something? Sure, absolutely. So do you want me to step away? Because I can whatever you need to do.
Yeah. And of course, since some people are only listening to this, you'll have to describe what you're what I'm saying, what you're doing. Yeah, let me move my screen here a little bit. So a duck walk.
So feet are about hip distance apart. We call it open stance and the toes are just lifting and lowering up towards the shins and I'm spring-loading my joints, meaning my knees and my hips. I have imaginary springs in them. So I'm letting the energy move from the feet up and then I can swing my arms, picturing my head, moving up like a helium balloon towards the sky.
This is really actually beautiful to watch. So for people who are, first of all, I encourage you to go to our website and so you can watch this video. But to describe that again, you were doing like just spring is just a great example. Mending your knees and hips slightly and just kind of getting this feeling of just kind of lightly bouncing almost being kind of supported by the air, kind of coming down and then as you're coming up as you're straight in your legs, taking one foot at a time and lifting the toes towards the knee, one foot, then you come back down flat footed.
The next time you come up, lift the other foot and then it does have this rhythm where I can see and you start doing it. You do want to kind of get your arms involved and your back involved and your neck involved and it's a movement that starts from the ground up and then takes you over. It's the whole it's your spine is sort of flowing forward and back. Your knees and hips are really soft.
You can picture like when you see in the water, something bobbing in the water. That it's kind of that idea too that you're springing up and down and it's just yeah, it feels so good. And that's a great analogy because we've all done that where we've been in a swimming pool and just slightly kind of bounced it a little bit and having that feeling in the air in the without the water. That's a really great.
Well, that's a beautiful image, but it's also more importantly, the feeling goes along with that is really sweet. Yeah. And what's beautiful is it's asking me to be aware of my entire body. So what are my feet doing?
What are my knees doing? My hips, my spine is kind of got that bobbing motion. And then my head, my head is reaching up to the sky. So I've got this bungee cord effect.
Feet are grounding me and my head is elevating towards the sky. And can I tell you, this is so exciting. When I started teaching, I'll say two to three years in, I went to go for my annual physical height, wait, well, they don't weigh me anymore. They took my height.
I had grown two centimeters, which is, I don't know what that is. And I just imagine. Yeah. Okay.
You know, most of us are shrinking with gravity. This attention to moving up and out had, I'm resisting gravity. Do you have any idea what actually physically changed? And before you answer, I'll tell you, I had a weird experience.
I won't get into all the details where I was growing and shrinking, like every 10 minutes, like I walked up to my refrigerator and I could see over it. This is a small refrigerator, but I could see over it, which I couldn't ever do before. And I thought that was weird. And then a few minutes later, I looked at the refrigerator and I couldn't see the top.
And I realized only years later when I had a spinal x-ray that I had a scoliotic curve, not a big one, but enough that basically the muscles around my spine were releasing and contracting, making me taller and shorter. I have no idea why, but that's the what of what happened. Do you have any idea what might have happened for you? Well, one of the movement forms that I didn't mention is called the Alexander Technique.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but essentially it's about creating more space and volume in the body. And when you go, I have gone to Alexander Technique sessions and there's some mysterious handling of the head and the and I don't know exactly what they're doing. But what I believe with Nia and this is just me is that the intention to take up more space to really resist gravity and to let almost like picture being a puppet. And having more space just in my neck, not letting my, you know, my, I love my mother, but you know, she's got the kifonic shoulders and that, you know, that head leaning forward.
It's attention. It really, I think it's attention that it's possible that when I went to have my height taken, I was and now, you know, I was hunched over and now I'm a little more aware. I don't know. I'm wondering the psychological role late component of that.
And what we're making me think of is someone who I friend of mine, someone who I'd know to that point for about 20 years called me and said we need to have lunch and in the conversation he was going to strive. What was a major change in his life? But before he could tell me about that, I said, I don't know what's going on for you, but I'm kind of freaking out. He says, why?
So well, in the 20 years I've known you, A, this is the first time you've ever looked happy. You're normally sort of a kind of misanthropic guy, but more, I thought you were five, eight, maybe five, nine. And he said, I'm six feet tall. I said, I see that now.
But in my brain, you were like five, eight, five, nine because you were just kind of depressive. So whatever's going on about this happiness thing has made you made it so that you look your height, which was fascinating to me. Well, you know, there could be a component to that as well. I don't know either way.
It's, you know, like I have an identical twin sister and I'm taller than her now. She doesn't practice Mia. That's a hoot. How she would then issue.
Yeah. That's an whole interesting thing about the twins and whether they're competitive or not. I've won some of my oldest friends or twins who one of them became a lawyer and the other just refused for 15 years until he went out of the lawyer because it really wasn't the right thing for him to do, but he just was competitive and couldn't have anything else. So it was pretty entertaining.
So I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, even though I've just been, I would say sitting, but that's not quite the right term. Cause I'm sitting on a thing that isn't like a chair, just kind of moves around. It's not a ball. It's a, it's a chair called Core 360 QR, QR 360.
So I'm always kind of moving a little, but nonetheless, I find myself feeling that sense of that kind of bobbing in the water thing just from the little motion I was doing while sitting watching you do it. And I'm really having a good time with that. Yeah. It's, it's very liberating.
I'd say like all that sensation that was like a sleep, all that information that was asleep for me, just letting my body move in these ways. And that's the other thing too is Nia is, although it's a technique, everybody looks, moves, feels different and we never want to censor anyone or have anyone look identical to anyone else. So when you see a Nia class, people take that movement into their body. It looks different from one to the next.
That's really interesting. Are there times though where either you as a practitioner or you as a teacher see some, I'll say a movement pattern or something that looks like it's restricted or something that looks like it's kind of habitual or, you know, something where there's just a sense that something could change, something could open up, something could be more free, more fun, whatever. And either as a practitioner or as a teacher, what do you do then? Well, it's not corrective.
You know, it's not a corrective movement practice. We actually are encouraging people. We say we want people to be their own personal, excuse me, conscious personal trainer so that they're turning on their, you know, sensory hat, their, their intuition and they're saying, what's right for me? And all of it was right for me.
Now the issue in, in, in some cases, we don't know necessarily that we could be doing something different, which is why I have, it furthered my education as a personal trainer. And in those cases, yes, I, I love to show people, here's how you can have more freedom, you know, here's how you can stop your neck pain, move your eyes. We do that in need. We do eye movement and people sometimes restrict their own, they get in their own way.
I think, you know, as, as we do sometimes, but you know, just moving our eyes independent of our head or moving our head and then our eyes, like there's so much power in what that can do not only for muscle tension, but neuroplasticity and neurodevelopment. Well, like we said before, we get into these grooves and don't know it. Because I mean, one, the one thing human beings are great at is habituating, even to things that are not beneficial. But we get you after a while, we get used to it, and then we stop paying attention to it.
And then it's quote normal. And to do something where you can bring awareness to that thing that suddenly becomes semi, you know, semi clear that it may not be the only way or may not be the way that's the most enjoyable or whatever it might be, how it become aware of it. And that's a very profound moment. Yeah, no, absolutely.
And it does take people like I work with a lot of people who have lived many years in their body and haven't turned on sensation and are not aware. And sometimes it's extremely difficult even for them to hear the words that I'm saying, you know, do it this way. The joke is that I'll have a substitute teacher come in and after I'll come back and the students will say, she said this. And I'm like, I'm saying this for 10 years.
But they just heard it differently. You know, yes, it's one of those things where like you hear the story of some parent who is, you know, like, I don't know, let's say massively overweight in some situation and then they one day had that realization, oh my God, if I don't do something I won't see my kid graduate from high school. It's like, why do you have that thought that day and not the day before the day after, you know, these show up when they show up? What was the thing you just said about that?
Someone else said it, someone else came in. Oh, I had another question. I was going to ask you just about that experience of something new. And what goes along with that?
But I lost it. So I mean, you're going to have to fill in for here. Well, one other thing I really love about Nia is the creativity is that we can blend. We have all these movement forums.
We have 52 different moves that we use in different combinations. So really the possibilities are endless. And as you just said about us being good at getting into habits, that we're constantly talking about how can we break a habit? What's a new to me move?
How can I do it differently so that I stimulate so that I give my whole body, my whole nervous system, a new experience, you know? How has that translated or taken, you know, how to say this? How has what you've done while doing Nia translated into things that you're doing when you're out of that, when you're just in the rest of your daily, whatever? Well, my practice as a speech language pathologist is let's, I want to choose my words carefully here of more creative than than it has been.
So I'm a little, I'm able to see things a bit more holistically and be a bit more present and focused and customized treatment for individuals. But I'm constantly, like in movement throughout life, I'm constantly thinking about how I can do something different. How can I get out of the car differently? How can I push my shopping cart differently?
How can I cross my life? Well, cross about the bad extent. No, no, no, it's not. I mean, I mean, I do cross my arms.
So once I realized one day how I crossed my arms, this years ago, I thought, can I do it the other way? And now I can't remember which way I started with. I actually, I've been talking about this on the last few podcast episodes. A couple of months ago, I realized that I always put my pants on left leg first.
So I spent a couple months really paying attention to right leg first. I didn't get it perfectly every time because the habit of left leg first was very strong. Now I'm realizing that I have to get back into remembering that I can do left leg first. And so it's...
Right, which leg do you leave with going up the stairs? Um, you don't... I have no idea. That's going to be late.
Wait, hold on. I mean, I have to pay attention to that one. Yeah, and it's just about that's a way to stay present and aware and to give, like, I truly believe that our bodies love new information. They otherwise, you know, where you just get stuck in a rut and nothing changes and bad movement, not bad, poor movement, habits become worse.
You know, so I just love giving myself those little challenges. It's a fun one because it is, of course, tricky to become aware of something to which we've become unaware. But when you start to look for these things, I found that you you bump into more and more. There's a funny one that's been going on lately, I think, because of what people are watching on television.
And this is my favorite one. If you watch British television shows and how they use a knife and fork compared to how they use a knife and fork in America. Okay. Very different thing.
So the fork is pointed down left hand and stays in the left hand and never becomes a scoot and never becomes a spoon. And if they're going to scoot something, they scoot onto the back of the fork, which seems a little out of whack. Not that I go to a lot of restaurants, but now I start watching more American TV shows. And I see people who are not British people with American accent, but but actual Americans, they're starting to do that same thing on these shows.
And I see it out in public as well as people are changing the way they're using a knife and fork influenced by British television, it seems. And I, it's a wacky one. That it's interesting. And what I would say to that is it's great to do things differently.
And does it feel better when you do it that way? Like that? No, for me, for me, the whole thing of like, so when the fork is pointing down, it's like about a 45 degree angle the way it hits the plate and to kind of scoop things onto the back of that seems completely wrong to me. And so I mess around with, you know, trying to do it that way and I have a couple friends who are British and I watch them do it.
It's like, how do you do that? They go, what do you mean? How do you do that? This way?
You use a fork. It's like, no, it's not how you use a fork. And so I find that all very, very interesting. Similarly, back to your comment about me and feet, when I got into this business, I did not think I would discover that there are about 100 different ways to tie your shoes.
I assume everyone did it the way I did it because why wouldn't you? And I've seen literally at least 30 different ways and I won't do any of them. They're completely wrong. But in fact, I have my shoes set up so I tie them once and I pretty much never need to do it yet.
But nonetheless, that was shocking to me. Oh, I know what I was going to say before about paying attention to sensations. Have you ever had one of these where in fact, I'm very curious for you, given your history, I remember the first time I was teaching a workshop and I was asking people to pay attention to sensations. And I and someone said, I just don't understand what you mean.
And it was about, you know, noon or like getting close to one o'clock or something. I said, well, it's time for about a lunch break. Are you hungry? And he said, yeah, I said, how do you know?
Expecting he was going to describe some sensations around his abdomen, holiness or emptiness or something. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, I mean, are you feeling anything that lets you know you're hungry? He goes, no, I'm just hungry.
And I went, but how do you know? He goes, because I'm hungry. And he didn't have some connection to some sensations. Now, I don't I'm not making that wrong.
I just went, oh, there may be our people who can tell if they're hungry, not through a completely different mechanism. And maybe he needs to or I don't know needs to do maybe he'd be find some benefit for discovering there were some sensations that he was not noticing. Maybe not. But I mean, that one, especially given your history, I'm curious if you had any experience with that one.
Well, you know, when I came into Nia and even as recently as like last year, I remember speaking to one of the senior trainers and saying, I still struggle a little with sensation, you know, I still, whether it's my busy brain, or whether it's this numbness due to trauma, or I don't know, I don't know. But interestingly, I was co-facilitating a workshop last week with a colleague of mine. And we said, show of hands, who has difficulty with this idea of being in relationship with sensation, and nine out of nine people put their hands up. So I think part of it could be we just don't learn about it.
We don't talk about it. And sometimes we get shut down when we talk about it. Like as a kid, you know, I remember having pains in my joints. Oh, that's nothing.
You don't have pain, you know, or yeah, that's not a real headache. Just get on with life or, you know, this idea that you should ignore your body was a message I got a lot as a kid. Right? Yeah.
Well, I'm going to do one that's the sort of counter argument in a way, which is that in some circles, the there's a way of dealing with sensations that gets a little mythologized. So and what I mean is I was in a thing, it was a thing for a bunch of CEOs to get together. And first of all, it was all dudes, which I thought was really ridiculous. But at all middle-aged white dudes, I think maybe one or two black guys.
And there was a woman who was a therapist who was leading this event. And she said, let's go around and just talk about, you know, just one word. What are you feeling? And I happen to be the second to last person to go around the circle.
And by the time I got to me, I was gone, I don't had to answer this question, which is what we mean. That's well, because by the time I pay attention to it, it's turning into something else. So I don't have a label for anything. She's, what are you feeling sensations in your body?
I said, well, yeah, anywhere you ask me to put my attention, I will feel sensations. What do you think those mean? Because I'm not linking them to some thing. And she thought I was just being difficult, but I was really just being as precise as I could.
Like I can literally, I can find a sensation anywhere. But now you're attaching meaning to it that I don't necessarily attach. And so that's a whole other play or way of playing with this whole idea. Because for her, it was like, oh, that sensation, if you're feeling that, then that definitely means this.
And the fact that that meant something means something else. It's like, yeah, I just can't go there. Yeah, it takes away the personal experience of it, like the ownership of it, if it is given a label by someone else. Well, even if it was given a label by me, like if I'm paying attention, and I feel something, if I call it a particular name, it kind of solidifies and ossifies and makes it a noun instead of a verb, it makes it a thing rather than something that really, if I pay attention, is actually changing.
And or at the very least doesn't necessarily mean what I think. Like it doesn't, if I have something, let's call it a headache for lack of a better term, it doesn't mean that I'm going to have this forever. It doesn't mean that I'm going to have it a minute from now. It means right now I've got this thing going on and I can either choose to do nothing and then maybe notice a little while later that I it's gone, or I can choose a popatiol.
I mean, I don't have a thing either way. Yeah, and it's I see what you're getting at with the whole idea of attachment and then there is a possibility that you that I might misread a signal that I've got made, right? And that do something that's harmful or unnecessary in the end. As we wrap this up, a weird question just occurred to me.
Is there anything that you find yourself food-wise enjoying now that was off-limits before? Bread. I love you. I think it's so ridiculous how, I mean, I'm so anti-diet culture now because I just see through it.
But just how we demonize foods and how that just, it's ridiculous. It's just so harmful. And so yeah, I stay away from any, any you should eat this or you should meet that that is not part of my life. There's a science researcher mostly about food named Denise Minger.
Had you bumped into her? She wrote a book called Death by Food Pyramid. That's very interesting. She's also written a couple of like very long, like 10,000 word blog posts about what she discovered after that book.
But I'll cut to the chase. She has in not too recent past said that she's no longer planning on writing about food and health and knowing how what a meticulous researcher she is, I can only conclude that she has found that there's no direct correlation between what you eat and something like longevity. And I may be wrong, but just the way she talks about it seems highly, it's a really good bet that that's what she found, which is why I was hanging out a bunch of healers of various kinds, therapists, physical therapists, psychotherapists, psychotherapists, they were all talking about different diets they were on. And I said, ever break in the conversation, I said, yeah, I'm on the I don't know when I'm going to get hit by a bus diet.
Yeah, I'm on the I don't want to pay people to make me feel bad about myself. We did this weekend. We had a friend, it was her birthday. And so my wife and I and she and her boyfriend got together.
And we went to a restaurant that is famous for their desserts. So we had a couple of appetizers not feel completely hedonistic. And then we just ordered like all the desserts we wanted and just ate them all. And it couldn't have been more enjoyable.
And that was a most important part. We just had a blast. That's it. Enjoyment pleasure.
That's what life is all about. And you know, and the next day, none of us wanted to eat for like 24 hours, because we just eat and God does how many calories did not care. But for all of us, our body was like, right, now that was good. Now we're going to take a little bit of a break and then do it again.
So it was, it was fascinating. Yeah, again, it's about listening, right, listening, tuning in for sure. Anything we left out? I don't think so.
Other than I would love to have people join me for a NIA class to learn more. This is where I was going next. So how can people find you? You can find me at my website, Jen JNN Hicks, H I C K S dot C A.
You have all this stuff. C A people she's Canadian. So Jen, this was a total total pleasure. And I really do hope people take you up on that offer.
And actually, say a little more when they go there, you said, join you for NIA class. Same word about how they can well, they'll be able to do when they go to your website. Well, fortunately, I kind of forgot how did I forget the last two years of COVID that have changed my NIA practice dramatically. So it I teach virtually right here.
And that means my classes are accessible to anyone anywhere. I'm in the Eastern time zone, but also have recordings of classes if if that time zone isn't working for you. I love the number of ways and people, the way things have changed for people, thanks to the match of COVID, not obviously the people who suffered dramatically in various ways, but it has opened up possibilities that we just didn't think whatever happened. And so I applaud you for taking advantage of that or discovering that.
So for everybody else, once again, thank you very much, Jen and for everyone else. Like I said, I do hope you take advantage of that opportunity to go play and feel and sense and move and have a good time and discover what NIA is all about. And again, a reminder, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com previous episodes, all the places you can interact with us, including the email. If you have a request, a suggestion someone you think should be on the show because they offer something valuable or someone who thinks should be on the show because they think they tell me I have a case of cranial repple reorientation syndrome, whatever it is, you know, I'm open.
So you can drop me an email, just just set it to move, m-o-v-e at jointhemovementmovement.com. And of course, if you're looking for amazing footwear that lets you move and have a natural experience, well, that's what zero shoes are all about. I'm not going to do a bigger plug than that. You know how to find us at xeroshoes.com.
Until then go out, have fun, and live life-y first.