Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

Any time you come to a Nia class, you have the opportunity to heal yourself. In Nia we are very aware of the power of Attention. So, we make a conscious choice to pay attention to our own self-healing, and that's what makes Nia such a profound form of therapy as well as fitness. By the way, when I say "healing" I'm referring to any act of consciously making yourself feel better. Healing could stimulate or relax you physically, mentally and/or energetically, strengthen your muscles, increase your flexibility, reduce or remove your aches and pains ...etc. As long you feel better after you do the movement, you have self-healed. Scratching an itch is a simple example of an act of self-healing. So is rubbing your cold hands together until they are warm. Some other examples could be squatting down deeply enough to stretch that tight hip muscle, or throwing your arms open, looking up to the sky and taking a big deep breath of fresh air. The carefully composed movements o...

October marks ten months since that fateful day I went too far in the gym and injured my shoulder. I rarely feel pain anymore. It's been about four months since any of the pain was present. Although, after a particularly vigorous workout, I do experience some pain in a similar pattern as the progression of the first time: the insidious ache that starts in the middle back near the inner edge of the scapula and moves deeper in towards the head of the humerus and finally becomes a spasm in the belly of the pec minor. But that only lasts for a few days at a time. I've regained a lot of my symmetry and my shape, but I'm still a bit asymmetrical as you can see in the photo. My right shoulder, arm and chest are slightly smaller than the left. It takes a discerning eye to see, though, because it's much better than how I was in June. Click here to see Before Injury pictures and how I looked in June and then compare to how I am now. This shot was taken in September 2009: Durin...