Hadia's International Belly Dance Academy

Today I am celebrating a beautiful warm and sunny morning, sitting on my deck, sipping my MUG of espresso and looking over the first week of autumn’s abundance from my organic garden. I am also celebrating more than 40 years of dance in my life and the beginning of my fourth year living in my little village of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. This Unesco World Heritage Site is snuggled in a cove on the wide open edge of the Atlantic Ocean and if I was to jump in a boat and sail straight south from our Harbour, I would end up in Venezuela with nothing with water in between. Now THAT would be an adventure and a half…!

There have been so many changes since my move here; learning how to garden and loving it, refocusing on my profession as a massage and manual therapist, adapting to the sloooooow and easy pace of life in Atlantic Canada and exploring all the exciting possibilities of sharing my love of dance, movement, health and fitness, with the world in new, very different and updated ways.

I will be sharing all of these developing changes with you here in my new blog. However, it will be dedicated to bringing you all kinds of helpful, informative and inspiring news about all of the 1,001 wonderful benefits, surprises and secrets you can discover within the world of Oriental “Belly” Dance and Baladi, also known as Raqs Sharqi. Here’s my list:

✓ Regain and Maintain a Happy Healthy Body
✓ Turn Artistry through Movement into Therapy
✓ Surprise Yourself by Thinking and Dancing Diagonally
✓ Can Fitness REALLY be Feminine?
✓ Kiss your Sweet Pain Goodbye!

In closing I would like to introduce a tasty concept.  Our dance has often been compared to fine wine. The finest, most delicate and surprising develops its bouquet slowly and gradually over time. Then it shares its delights with the palate slowly and gradually as it seeps through the entire body taste by taste. It leaves its warmth and afterglow to be savoured. But this slow and gradual discovery doesn’t happen overnight, it doesn’t happen in a year, or in 5. It is a lifelong exploration….so let’s get going!