Can the relationships we depend on for love, safety, and connection also be making us sick? And what happens when loving someone means losing ourselves?

We spend so much time thinking about what we eat, how we exercise, and what we need to do to stay healthy. But how often do we consider what our relationships are doing to our bodies, our brains, and our overall well-being?

In this provocative episode of GET IN, I welcome two physicians and authors, Dr. Lissa Rankin and Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, for a deeply personal conversation inspired by their new book, RELATIONSICK: Why Putting Yourself Last Is Destroying Your Health, And How to Heal.

Together, we explore the relationship between love, health, illness, and healing. What happens inside our bodies when we continually put others first, silence our needs, avoid conflict, or carry the emotional responsibility for keeping a relationship alive? Can chronic relational stress contribute to illness? And how do we recognize when caring for someone else has become a form of abandoning ourselves?

Our conversation moves beyond identifying unhealthy relationships to explore what makes love truly nourishing. We examine the importance of emotional safety, personal boundaries, shared responsibility, intimacy, and the freedom to remain ourselves while deeply connected to another person.

Can commitment and freedom coexist? Have we confused sacrifice, loyalty, and dependency with love? What happens to intimacy as we age, when illness changes our roles, or when one person becomes a caregiver? And perhaps most importantly, can we learn to put ourselves first without putting the people we love last?

Drawing on more than four decades of teaching people to listen to their bodies through movement and sensation, I bring a unique somatic perspective to this conversation. I invite us to consider how our relationships affect us physically and emotionally through breath, tension, energy, comfort, and discomfort, and how our bodies respond to feeling safe, supported, respected, and loved.

RELATIONSICK is more than a conversation about what makes relationships unhealthy. It is an invitation to rediscover love as a life-giving experience, recognize the wisdom of our bodies, and explore how healing ourselves can transform the ways we love and relate to others.

Because loving someone should never require losing yourself. And your health, your needs, and your life belong in the relationship, too.

Learn more about Lissa Rankin:

www.lissarankin.com

Learn more about Jeffrey Rediger:

www.drjeffreyrediger.com

Read their new book:

Relationsick: Why Putting Yourself Last Is Destroying Your Health―and How to Heal

Learn more about Debbie Rosas:

www.debbierosas.com

www.nianow.com

www.niaondemand.com

What is it about dance that makes us feel so alive? And why, after decades of fitness trends focused on strength, endurance, and physical conditioning, are we rediscovering the power and pleasure of dancing?

In this episode of GET IN, I sit down with dancer, movement professional, and former Nia teacher Kevin VerEecke for a lively and thought-provoking conversation about dance, Jazz, fitness, and the extraordinary relationship between movement, the body, and the brain.

Drawing from Kevin's professional dance background and his experience teaching Nia, barre, kettlebells, and other fitness disciplines, we explore the connection between dance artistry and physical conditioning. We discuss how Jazz brings rhythm, personality, musicality, coordination, improvisation, and self-expression into movement, and why these qualities matter to anyone who wants to stay physically fit, mentally engaged, and fully alive.

Our conversation raises intriguing questions about what it really means to be fit. Is physical strength enough? What happens when we invite the brain to participate through rhythm, memory, coordination, and creative decision-making? How does learning choreography challenge us? What can making mistakes teach us? And what happens when we stop trying to get every movement right and begin discovering the pleasure of moving in our own unique way?

We also reflect on the evolution of dance fitness and the role I helped create through Nia. When I co-created Nia in 1983, bringing together dance, martial arts, healing arts, music, sensation, physical conditioning, and personal expression offered a radically different approach to fitness. More than forty years later, as interest in dance and its potential benefits for brain and body health continues to grow, I see how relevant these founding ideas remain.

At the heart of our conversation is a shared appreciation for dance as something more than exercise. Dance invites us to listen, respond, play, learn, connect, and express who we are. Jazz reminds us that movement can have attitude, character, freedom, and soul. Through Nia, I have long explored how fitness can become a pleasurable, meaningful, and life-enhancing experience.

This episode is my invitation to reconsider what we ask of fitness, what we can learn from dance, and why the human body has always been drawn to music and movement.

Perhaps dance fitness isn't simply making a comeback.

Perhaps we are remembering something we have always known: the body wants to dance.

Learn more about Debbie Rosas:

www.debbierosas.com

www.nianow.com

www.niaondemand.com

What if dance is not something you learn, but something your body already knows?

In this solo episode of GET IN, I share the personal story of how Duncan Dance entered my life in 1983 through O'Eloel Braun, an 80-year-old master teacher from the Duncan Dance lineage. Her extraordinary freedom, vitality, and lightness profoundly influenced me as a mover and ultimately shaped the development of Nia.

I explore the revolutionary movement philosophy of Isadora Duncan and the powerful parallels between Duncan Dance and Nia: barefoot movement, natural human design, breath, rhythm, sensation, imagination, emotional expression, and the belief that technique should serve the body rather than require the body to conform to technique.

Through stories, teaching, and simple embodied invitations, I explore Walk. Run. Skip. Rise. as natural movement intelligences already living within us. I share how Duncan Dance can help us rediscover levity through gravity, allow breath to become movement, use imagination as movement intelligence, and experience strength without hardness, structure without rigidity, and freedom without abandoning form.

This is not a history lesson, and it is not about becoming a dancer. It is an invitation to remember that movement belongs to everyone, and that your body has been breathing, reaching, rising, walking, playing, and responding to life long before anyone taught you how to exercise or dance.

I also introduce some of my Nia Duncan Dance Skillshop experiences: Walk, Run, Skip, Rise, an embodied exploration of Duncan Dance through the lens of Nia Movement Artistry. The podcast gives you the story and the ideas; the Skillshop invites you to put them into your body.

Listen. Breathe. Sense. Imagine. Reach. Rise.

And perhaps, somewhere along the way, your body remembers how to dream.

Learn more about Debbie Rosas:

www.debbierosas.com

www.nianow.com

www.niaondemand.com