Body, Mind, Emotion and Spirit Connection
Nia • 13th Apr, 20
I have been doing and teaching Nia Dance for the past 8 years. Nia has a belt grading. White Belt, Blue Belt, Brown Belt, Black Belt, 1st Degree Black Belt, and 2nd Degree Black Belt and there is a Green Belt. This belt is done to enhance your knowledge of the movement and music of Nia.
I recently completed my Black Belt and did the Green Belt during the first year of completing my White Belt.
During the training of these belts, I was taught of the body, mind, emotion and spirit (BMES) connection. How these 4 were interconnected.
I always referring to the BMES connection, but I never really understood the concept until know.
During the National Lockdown, to keep myself occupied I decided to go through all my Nia literature.
I am a very good student when I put my mind to it, I decided that each belt had 13 principles to them, I was going to study daily one principle from each belt.
What a journey it turned out to be. When it came to the section of the BMES, it seemed as if Pandora’s Box had opened.
Since the morning of rediscovering the BMES connection, I have been living true connection. How do I do that?
This is my version of how BMES works. There are 4 layers to a human structure:
- BODY - This is the physical body, it can be felt, touch and seen.
- MIND - The mind is where the thoughts, imagination and visulation are created
- EMOTIONS - Feelings.
- SPIRIT - Intuition and the unknown.
How does all of this work?
I decided each day to work with each structure individually. I chose the same music and danced with each of them. Length of music 8 minutes.
The first day I chose to do the Body. I really battled with staying in my body as my thoughts kept on coming in and I drifted into useless and frivolous thoughts, which was not even worth it. This I did about 4 times before I could give 8 full minutes to my body. By doing this I discovered too many niggling issues with my body. For example I over extend my knees, which I in the past did not realise.
I did not have any problems with my MIND, thoughts is something I easily created, most of the time negative things about myself. I used this 8 minutes to let my imagination go and filtered it through, my physical body.
Dancing with my emotions was a bit of a problem, I discovered that I have difficulty expressing my emotions. I chose one emotion PEACE and let it consume my entire body. It was such an exhilarating feeling.
Then came SPIRIT, with this I am still a work in Progress.
I took my BMES concept a step further, each day I use a scale to monitor my structures and see where I am spending most of my time in. Scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.
I have discovered that I hang out a lot in my MIND, which is not healthy. I drift into useless thoughts which not worth wasting any energy on.
Maintaining a balanced BODY, MIND, EMOTION AND SPIRIT connection is hard work but I intend to develop a greater connection to them.