Healing Dance Has Right Moves

Jamie Wilson sways like a wheat stalk in the wind. Her arms stretch toward the ceiling and her fingers flutter effortlessly. Her head tips lazily toward her right shoulder, then toward her left.

She shouts a brief order to the eight women behind her, then collapses as if someone punched her in the stomach. Her knees bend, her shoulders round and her arms fly forward, but she pulls them back, straightens her torso and again stretches gracefully toward the ceiling.

The routine grows as its rhythmic African accompaniment crescendoes. A mirror across one wall of the dimly lit workout room multiplies Jamie and her students into a dancing force.

They plant their bare feet firmly on the wood floor, punch the air and yell, “Ha.” They cha-cha. They grind their hips like strippers and shimmy like it’s 1967.

“This is the part we call kindergarten,” dancer Rosemary Schadel calls out as Jamie tells them to dance freely. They gallop, writhe and spin with their arms flying.

“Jamie, you’re sure energized for a hot day,” someone gasps as the music dies. Everyone heads for towels and water bottles, except Jamie. Her limber body already is swaying to the next rhythmic piece.

It’s hard to believe she’s suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for 20 years.

“I come in here on my dark days and my attitude switches,” Jamie says. “I can be stiff and do Nia and I loosen up. It gets things moving, flowing around.”

Nia is short for Neuromuscular Integrative Action. It also means “with purpose” in Swahili. Simply put, it’s a low-impact physical workout that works magic on the mind and spirit.

Jamie needed magic. Rheumatoid arthritis is a nasty, chronic inflammation in the lining of the joints. It causes pain, stiffness, warmth, redness and swelling. It flares without notice and disappears as suddenly.

More than 2 million Americans - 1.5 million of them women - suffer from it.

“There have been times when I cry getting dressed in the morning or I bump a swollen joint and it takes my breath away,” Jamie says.

The pain and swelling began in her feet and hands. Her wrists no longer bend. Her knuckles are knotted as pine.

Anti-inflammatory drugs reduce the swelling enough for her to function. She’s explored pain relief through diets, herbs and behavior changes.

“Over time, I’ve learned to speak up for myself, say no when I want to,” she says.

Her attitude has helped. Jamie, 47, is endowed with a brightness that lifts her above the trials that drag so many people down.

“I’m just walking the balance between accepting that I have it and not letting it depress and immobilize me,” she says. “At the same time, I’m not trying to deny it’s there.”

She grew up playing tennis. Giving up physical activity after her arthritis diagnosis was unthinkable. Luckily, doctors told her exercise helps. She tried Jazzercise in her 20s, then hardcore aerobics, but the pounding hurt.

Her sister introduced her to Nia in California five years ago. Jamie liked the music. It was African, Middle Eastern and South American, rich, driving and energizing.

The barefooted moves required her to shift her weight rather than bounce. Routines blended tai chi grace, martial arts explosiveness and modern dance flexibility. Direction was offered, but freedom was encouraged.

Nia was the brainchild of Carlos and Debbie Rosas.

“I had to do more,” Jamie says. “I loved the freedom. I felt my self-expression. Once my body started to move in different ways, it needed to move.”

Nia was unavailable in North Idaho, so Jamie trained as an instructor. Nia instruction follows a martial arts model. Jamie has earned her white and blue belts.

“It’s changed me a lot,” she says. “I feel lighter, freer, less inhibited. I feel like I can be a kid.”

She didn’t plan to teach. Jamie is a certified public accountant in Hayden. But three years ago, Nia headquarters referred a Coeur d’Alene woman to her. The woman had read about Nia in Good Housekeeping magazine and convinced Jamie to start a class.

Now Jamie teaches four classes a week and has about 20 students. She’s as flexible as Gumby, except in her wrists. She exudes joy on the dance floor and off.

“It’s reconnected me with inner joy,” she says. “There are things I do now I never thought I could do.”

Her students are just as passionate.

“I get goose bumps just talking about it,” says Peggy Jackson, a 58-year-old grandmother. “It works the body, spirit and mind. I feel like a ballerina.”

For information on Jamie’s classes, call 772-3634.