FAQs

What is this class you teach?

I teach a mindful dance fitness class that benefits the whole person: body, mind, emotions and spirit. My classes are based on NIA Technique (™). NIA stands for “Now I Am.” NIA emhasizes sensing your body and feeling your feelings in the now moment, while you move and sweat. Watch my 3-minute video: https://youtu.be/4R6Z-gdb6zI.

I have two left feet. Can I succeed in your classes?

Yes. If you have a body and can move anything at all, you can succeed in my classes. With regular participation, you will see improvements in your balance, coordination, agility and many other movement skills and sensations. My classes will make you a better mover - but as a side effect. Pleasure is the goal.

I’m pretty unfit. Are your classes too hard for me?

No. Each participant moves in their own way at their own level. There is no pressure to over-exert. You can start where you are, in your today body, moving small and easy. You can even start in a chair and see how that feels. No shame in dancing from a chair, or even from the floor.

I am fit. Your classes are too easy for me, right?

Nope! You can wring yourself out like a washcloth in my classes. It depends on how you do it. Add energy to the moves. Do them bigger. Engage more muscles. Make sounds. Go all out. Learn how to sense your body even deeper and develop the Five Sensations of Fitness: Flexibility, Agility, Mobility, Stability and Strength. Learn how to seek, sustain and increase pleasure. You will do moves that you’d never get to do in other practices.

What does “24-hr replay” mean?

All Zoom classes are recorded, and everyone who signed up for that class automatically receives a link to the recording, good for 24 hrs after class ends. If you can’t dance live, you can dance to the replay later that day or the next morning. Even if you did dance live, you can do it again! Double your money!

Will other Zoom participants be able to see me?

Not if you turn off your camera. It’s good to have your camera on during conversation time before and after class, but you can turn it off during class, no problem. Even if you do leave it on, relax, nobody is watching you. They’re all focused on themselves. :-)

Where are your classes located?

My in person classes are located in Occidental, California. Zoom classes can be taken from anywhere.

Hey, are you the same Paula Chambers who founded Versatile PhD?

Yep, that’s me! All those years while I was saying to graduate students, “Look to your hobbies for clues about your next career,” I may as well have been speaking to myself. I started teaching these classes on the side in 2015, while running Versatile PhD, and loved it so much that I eventually decided to sell VPhD and become a movement professional. Looking back, I see how much sense that decision makes: when I became a movement teacher, I’d already enjoyed dancing for 35 years, working out for 25 years, taking mind-body movement classes for 10 years, and taking mindful dance fitness for 5 years. What do you have infinite energy for? That might be your next career!