Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

Here's what I've put together to present in 2016. 1- AMAZING.   This routine is a fun celebration of collaboration. It was co-created with JAG and several different Nia communities across the USA.  It contains some familiar songs in a variety of genres, from country music, to disco.  Many of the songs are about the cities from which the creative choreography comes. The focus of the routine is on Connections and Directions and the intent is to Explore Something New and Return Home Renewed.   Read this blog entry for a full description of the story behind this routine. If your community is interested in participating in a choreography playshop exactly like the ones we used to create the Amazing routine, that can certainly be arranged. It requires about three hours.  Here is a sample of the flier for this class: **************** 2- ORCHESTRA.   This routine was co-created by JAG and Marcelle Rudnick, Brown Belt from Kansas City. It uses all Cl...

 As Nia teachers we like to be impeccable about our speech. To that end, we have a few words that we carefully stalk the use of: namely “Try" “Because" and “Hard”.  All three of these words have a weakening effect on our speech and our psyche as the speaker and as the listener.  We have declared these words as dangerous because of the messages sent by their use. “Try" is giving ourselves permission to fail. Instead of saying “I’ll try” we suggest saying “I’ll do it”   Saying “i’ll try” is almost the same as saying “I’m not going to do it.”  And we know how important it is to set our intention.   So we use this word VERY carefully, and for the most part, avoid it altogether.  “Because” can easily be abused in many ways. It often wastes time explaining ourselves when just the answer is sufficient.  For example, “I’m going to invite my sister because she’ll enjoy this.” Would be more impeccable as simply “I’m going to invite my sist...

AMAZING is the name of a Nia routine I'm going to be offering in 2016. Here is the story of how it came to be. First, a little background: I'd been holding between two and fourteen weekly Nia classes on a regular basis in Seattle, Tuscany and/or New York City, without missing more than a week, since I first became a White Belt in 1996. In 2010, I was living in New York and signed up to attend a yoga event in Santa Monica. I decided it might be fun to see if I could also arrange to sub some classes in the area while I was there. I made some phone calls and ended up booking gigs all along the coast. I flew from New York to LAX and did the entire trip on public transportation; planes, trains and rented automobiles. I took a few busses, too. I taught a newly created Nia routine of mine I called Bond Girls in Santa Barbara, Eugene, Portland and Seattle, and stopped to visit several old friends (I grew up in California and lived for many years in Seattle.)  It was so much fun. ...

I take lots of video of my dog, River, when we're on long road trips and then I don't do much else with them. Occasionally, I'll post a short video to Facebook, but other than that, I let them accumulate in my phone and watch them or show them to unsuspecting people at random times. I probably would continue to store all of the videos in my phone, rarely seen by most of the world, if it weren't for the fact that I eventually run out of disc storage. Yesterday, I got a message that I couldn't perform a simple function I was attempting because I had less than 500 MB of storage available on my phone.  So I deleted a bunch of useless things, but it only made a tiny dent. A more thorough investigation showed that the majority of space was being used up by two main things: my music library and my videos. I need my music on my phone for my work, so I couldn't really do anything about that, but I was able to do something about the videos.  I decided to dump all of...

My 49th birthday is June 15, 2015. Forty-nine is a big year for me because it completes the seventh cycle of seven years.  Every seven years I undergo a major shift in personality and perspective.  It isn't usually an instantaneous thing, but something that happens over a several-year period. The most recent change could be felt beginning in February of 2014 during my First Degree Black Belt training and continued throughout most of the year. And I feel like I'm still adjusting to the new me; I can't wait to see what I become this time. In the meantime, to celebrate this event, I'm inviting all of my Nia family to come and party with me. I have reserved the Century Ballroom on June 13 from noon to 4pm. At noon I plan to teach my latest routine, Frankie Say Nia.  I have taught it plenty of times in Seattle, but that was before I took it on the road. When I take it around from place to place, I get a chance to refine and improve it at every stop, based on how th...

I started this trip the next day after a Wisdom Comes Dancing playshop with Phillipe and Sabine. It was a beautiful send-off to a long and eventful Nia adventure. I taught my latest routine, Frankie Say Nia in 22 cities: Forest Grove, OR Eugene, OR Nevada City, CA Campbell, CA San Diego, CA Santa Monica, CA Phoenix, AZ Flagstaff, AZ Durango, CO Albuquerque, NM Santa Fe, NM Austin, TX San Antonio, TX Corpus Christi, TX Houston, TX Dallas, TX Kansas City, MO Lyons, CO Boulder, CO Boise, ID Spokane, WA Bellingham, WA Eight of the engagements listed above were at places I had never been before. The rest were return engagements. In addition to that, I taught my FreeDance Playshop three times and a Choreography Co-Creation playshop three times. In one city, I focused on teaching the local teachers my Rock & Roll Nia routine. In another city I participated in a teacher Jam and in another I battled it out with a fellow teacher, pitting my classic 80's songs...

Every day I have a special moment with my coffee mug. It is fleeting but important. And every morning on this last road trip, I took a picture of my coffee mug and posted it to Facebook so that my friend could get an accurate idea of the size of it.  Usually once it was posted on Facebook, I'd delete it from my phone, but here is a collection of coffee mug photos that, for some reason or another, didn't get deleted. Perhaps there is some special secret message in them, but I haven't found it yet. I'm posting them here in the hopes that one of my clever friends can decipher the meaning and let me know. Spokane, WA Thornton, CO Thornton, CO Salt Lake City, UT Denver, CO Lenexa, KS Tempe, AZ Addison, TX Dallas, TX Oklahoma City, OK Addison, TX Sedona, AZ Campbell, CA Medford, OR Jacinto City, TX Evanston, WY Salt Lake City, UT Spokane, WA Seattle, WA