Daily Inspiration: Meet Nina Be

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nina Be. Them and their team share their story with us below:

Nina Be (MA., .MED., E-RYT-500, DY-800, NCC #87024, C-IAYT) has been facilitating psychosomatic yoga therapy internationally for over 45 years. She is a certified yoga therapist, dance theatre artist, author and consultant with an MA in Performing Arts and an M.Ed. in Counseling, along with being the Director of Wellness at Burts Bees. With over 30,000 hours of study, she has facilitated mind-body meditation groups in the Plum Village lineage, enjoyed founding non-profit LiveGlobally and been Director of MindBody Centering Yoga RYT 200/300/500 trainings specializing in trauma sensitive yoga techniques since 2009.

My story began in the 50s, born into military royalty. My grandfather was one of the first directors of the CIA and he hand-picked the husbands for his two sheltered daughters. There were five children and we were poor; hungry and under-provided for. Nina began her love of movement, music and imagination as a child, wishing to escape hunger and violence. She danced through the studios of Ballet Russe teacher Perry Brunson and Gene Hammett, Maggie Black, Bobby Blankshine, the NC School of the Arts, Joffrey Ballet and as assistant to Lee Theodore at the American DanceMachine in NYC and Tokyo.

My work in the form of MindBody Centering Yoga was developed in 1979 as experienced guidance in Self-Mastery, using researched techniques in creative movement, ballet, hatha/raja yoga, neuroscience, alexander technique, music, chakra study, somatics, trauma resolution, psychology, ritual and applied mindfulness as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh.

In 2011, Nina finally had the resources for the life-changing experience to study directly with her teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. It is from the profundity of this experience at Plum Village that she is able to teach from the Truth of her direct experience with clarity, wisdom, humor and love.

The MBCY modality is a unique and cutting edge approach to living yoga; the accumulation of over 45 years of mastery, education, inspiration and international experience.

It is infused with decades of dedication and devoted practice and research from the arts and sciences of psychology, anatomy, neurology, creative movement, ballet, Hatha Raja Yoga, Ashtanga, somatics, meditation and Buddhist study.

MBCY is a mind-body centered modality, with programs curated for Burt’s Bees, the Boys and Girls Club, the Episcopal Church, Job Start for the NC prison system, and is currently being researched at Duke. This work awakens wisdom, stability and peace in any individual who gets to experience the rhythms of nature and its effects in classes, workshops, trainings, retreats, groups, private mentoring or corporate programs.

With the support of the MBCY community non-profit, LiveGlobally, MBCY offers Wisdom Circles, trainings and retreats for under-served populations such as the LGBTQ communities, prisons and for children and their families in slighted urban and rural environments, for transforming trauma around the world.

Nina Be is currently finalizing publications on the MindBody Centering Yoga Manual and users guide to Transforming Trauma through the movement, visual and verbal arts. She is deeply grateful for her work with 2500 clients and students around the world.

Nina Be thanks her daughters, Amelia and Aude, for being her greatest teachers.

What do the mind, body and spirit of the heart have to do with this human life? my questions take the form of calling together others into wisdom circles, performance art, process retreats and workshops, conversations as private yoga therapy sessions… all strung together to create a bridge that can support uncertainty as truth.

My teachers are my daughters, trees, bees, flowers, food, colors, light and darkness; my suffering and that of others. My biggest education is about dualistic distraction that creates reactive stances of exclusion and violence in the world. My wish is for a long life to be as effective on this path of grace for as long is as deemed.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
From the beginning, my longing was to cure suffering, from sensing the suffering of my two mentally broken parents. By five years old, my job was to care for my two youngest siblings, witness the inability of my mother to show up and to defend us from the rage and abuse of my father. My life was lonely but full of conversations with God. my playspace was down by the creek, where the spirit realm was magical, filled with color, the sounds of the natural world and peace. At ages 3 and 13, a vision came to me about being liberated from the home of my parents. Upon leaving home at 13, my intention was to pave a path of light for my four youngest siblings. My life was filled with a dream of becoming a ballet dancer to emanate grace and beauty to the world, but having no financial means to support my wishes proved too difficult. Living in NYC in the early 70’s, witnessing AIDS, Andy Warhol, studio 54, and the advent of multidimensional art come forward was well worth the many adventures close to the edge. My brilliant teachers were many and those lessons fill my shared works to this day. At every juncture, mental health has been the inquiry in relation to the breaking point…

The journey of childhood PTSD has paved a path of understanding and an ability to move within a culture that is violent and unreasonable, shaming and punishing. Inquiry is riddled with the details of nuanced broken grace and resolution, scarcity and generosity, status and humility, all gestured dialogues among all bodies across all realms of consciousness.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We, as the creators, created and creation, invite you to embark on a quest, an inner journey…

Awaken into your innate capacity and potentiality through your ability to respond and evolve into consciousness with sensitivity and vulnerability…

Connected to the living matrix as members of the flock, we focus on the process of finding the space needed so that we might connect and fly and dive with ease…

Defining our Selves thru our innate co-creativity, we change the world…

Allowing ourselves to be changed…

The field of knowing holding us as support; the Earth, breath, light and cosmos of the living matrix…the universe as a supercharged backdrop felt as resonance…

Meditation is the zero point in the field, where energy exchanges between subatomic particles creating the breath, the breather and breathing…

We are echos of THE BREATH.

Creative collaborators for qUest wiRx include dancers, musicians, performance and visual artists. Our cohort includes Nina Be, Isabel Castellvi, Rob Chamberlain, Jonh Blanco, Mindy Reaves, Shaleigh Comerford, Lindsey Elcessor, Catherine Howard, Stacey Kirby, Murielle Elizeon, Justin Tornow, COMPANY, and others. Together we will weave a multi-media experience, creating intentional work with a shared inspiration through practices of meditation, embodiment, imagination and craftsmanship.

What matters most to you? Why?
Non-violence as a unified field. Loved children. Gentleness. Self-realization that each one’s thoughts, words and deeds have an infinite effect on the whole. Sharing the experience of a relational reality where there is a field of consciousness to support the unique expressions of the galactic biofield of ever-expansive light and life… Beauty… Wonderment… Delicacy… Interest… Presence…

Contact Info:

• Email: nina@nina-be.com
• Website: mindbodycenteringyoga.com
• Instagram: mindbodycenteringyoga
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MINDBODYCENTERINGYOGA
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mindbody+centering+yoga

Image Credits
Hill Honeke