To the untrained eye, the scene unfolding in the pen looked simply like a horse cantering around the fence line, ignoring the woman in the middle trying vainly to corral the recalcitrant mare.
By Greg Farrar
Caanie and her owner, Randee Fox, bond in the corral after the quarter horse has spent about 10 minutes running on her own in the enclosure of Fox’s ranch in Sammamish.
But then the amazing occurs — the horse stops, as if noticing the woman for the first time. The woman turns her back to the mare and the mare walks up to the woman’s side, as if it were a remorseful puppy remembering that it indeed was taught to heel.
The onlookers are astonished as the duo are now moving as one — the woman leading the horse as if with an invisible rope, the mare keeping within half an arm’s length as they move about the pen.
The woman is Randee Fox. The mare is Caanie, a 15-year old quarter horse Fox trained using the principles of Nia. The onlookers are her students, fresh off their latest Nia cardio workout, witnessing the possibilities of the next level of attuning their bodies to the natural world.
Fox explained how it works to her students.
“Using chakras, I’ll stay inside myself, and the horse will see it come and go, just like a normal human would, she’ll see it,” Fox said.
But you never know how they’ll react, she added. They’re animals. Caanie could totally ignore Fox and enjoy a canter in the afternoon sun, or connect its chi with Fox’s immediately.
“Once she’s connecting with my energy, you’ll know it,” Fox said.
Fox’s students have witnessed the only person in the world who trains both horses and humans using the principles of Nia.
By Greg Farrar
Randee Fox leads her students during a Nia cardio workout at an exercise studio building on her Blue Heron Ranch in Sammamish. Above, Ken Kirkpatrick, of Sammamish, mirrors an art piece on the wall during a Nia cardio workout class, a sensory-based movement practice promoting physical and spiritual health and wellness.
It’s about movement
Fox, 63, has a 22-year history in dance. But it wasn’t until 2000 she discovered Nia while living in Austin, Texas. Think of Nia as a new-age aerobics class. Fox said Nia is “a sensory-based movement practice that leads to health, wellness and fitness. It empowers people of all shapes and sizes by connecting body, mind, emotion and spirit.”
“I feel better now than I did 10 to 15 years ago,” Fox said, a former graphic journalist who did a lot of sitting in her profession.
By 2004, she was teaching her own Nia classes. She now teaches from her Blue Heron Ranch in Sammamish and from the YMCA in Bellevue.
Students move in classes barefoot to soul-stirring music. Experiences are adapted to individual needs and abilities. Fox said she has one student in a wheelchair.
“She can still move around. Move her feet, even sitting,” Fox said.
“I have another student who was like this,” she added, demonstrating slumped shoulders, “who couldn’t lift her arms above her head. Now she feels great.”
If other aerobics classes have mottos of “no pain, no gain,” Fox’s motto is “no pleasure, no gain.”
By Greg Farrar
Ken Kirkpatrick, of Sammamish, mirrors an art piece on the wall during a Nia cardio workout class, a sensory-based movement practice promoting physical and spiritual health and wellness.
A great feeling
Sammamish resident Sue Campbell has been in Fox’s Nia classes for eight years after discovering it while looking for something different on Google.
“It sounded playful and fun, so I decided, ‘OK, I’m just going to show up.’ I didn’t know anything about it, but connected immediately. It gives you such a great feeling. You can walk in feeling kind of off. But once you start dancing, you forget everything that’s outside,” said Campbell, 68. “I feel playful again. My slogan for this year is, ‘68, don’t hesitate, celebrate.’”
Fox said her classes are for all ages, but many are discovering them later in their lives.
Sammamish resident Ken Kirkpatrick, 61, is in his second year of classes with her. He’d had brain cancer surgery and was unable to drive because of all the anti-seizure medications he was prescribed.
“I couldn’t hardly get up off the sofa,” he said.
Kirkpatrick said his wife was taking Fox’s Nia class and said he should, too, thinking it would be good for him.
“I gave it a try and from the first time I loved it,” he said. “I could feel myself getting better and better. It’s all about energy, positive energy. The first year I couldn’t even get up off the floor on my own. Now look at me.”
Principles for horses
Kirkpatrick said he hasn’t tried Fox’s course with horses yet, but was amazed by her demonstration and wonders what else she could do.
“We do have a llama. I’d love to see how she’d do (Nia) with llamas,” he said.
Fox doesn’t have experience with llamas, but she does with horses. She entered showing competitions as a youth, and really without realizing it, was using the principles of Nia.
“Before Nia, I worked well when I danced before a show,” she said. “The horse itself, if I got up and danced, felt more centered. The horse could sense it, and I came home with ribbons.”
By Greg Farrar
Randee Fox patiently reaches her chi energy out to Caanie, who is unleashing her own pent-up energy by taking laps around the corral.
By 2006, Fox had incorporated horses lessons with Nia principles with her riding students.
“I had great success. I’d tell them, ‘Just wiggle your toes in your boots, or listen to birds. Stay physically in your own sensations and horses will come to you.’”
When the horse connected with the student’s chi, then it was ready to be ridden.
“I believe in my heart that horses have been with us for tens of thousands years. We have only not needed them the last 80. So it’s in our cellular memory,” she said.
So, when a student expresses a modern fear of the four-legged friend, Fox believes there’s a century-old bond trying to get out.
“If I was a horse, I wouldn’t want someone to get on my back. For a horse, that’s their fearful spot. All the lessons, even traditional, can go a whole month before a student can maneuver the horse, leading a horse’s energy,” she said. “But once there’s a connection, that’s when they’re ready to get on a horse’s back.”
A profound change
Fox has trained three horses she uses on her ranch. The first classes last July were designed at first to help train other Nia instructors.
“It was too long. I was exhausted. People were exhausted. It was too much energy. So I pulled it back,” she said.
By Greg Farrar
Sue Campbell (left), of Sammamish, and Issaquah native Stephanie Rostad, join other students working out in pairs as their Nia aerobic exercise takes them across the studio floor together.
Rather than for just prospective instructors, Fox opened the sessions up to regular students and shortened them to three days. Each horse was assigned its own natural herd of three students. The change was profound.
“What if the class was for anyone in position of power? I asked, because we are naturally the CEOs of our life. I found we can use horses to mirror where you are energetically,” Fox said.
The therapeutic properties of Nia in the classroom also works in the corral. Fox recalled the time one of her students was failing to connect with a horse. It would not follow her, wouldn’t move, when her husband had already bonded quickly with the mare he was paired with.
Sensing there was something blocking the bond between her student and horse, Fox led them aside and asked what was wrong.
“Are you OK? Is there something emotional you’re withholding?” I asked her. “With that she broke down in tears, just wept, wrapping her arms around horse’s neck as she revealed she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was torn between chemotherapy or a mastectomy.”
Fox said the horse took all the anxiety and the block in the bond was suddenly gone.
“Holding onto an emotion can’t work. So it was so profound to me that the horse mirrored that emotion,” she said.
You got me
Nia’s creator, Debbie Rosas, recently invited Fox along with 50 of the world’s pool of 3,000 instructors to an event to teach other teachers. Fox said no thanks.
“I said, ‘I love my life. I’m painting. I’m teaching Nia, Nia and horses.’ So she said, ‘What if you were the only one teaching Nia and horses in the world?’ I said, ‘Now, you got me.’”
In addition to the course Fox teaches from her Sammamish ranch, she’ll travel to Tuscany, Italy, in September to pass on her personal experience with horses to other Nia instructors. She invites everyone to get in touch with the Nia phenomenon.
“Some people say Nia is soft. It’s not — it’s kicking and punching. The more I do it, the more aware I become in the moment,” Fox said. “I call it the sweet spot. Whatever it is, I invite you to find yours.”
