Lots of great Shiva Nata writing on the web lately.

I love how each one comes from a different — but equally unlikely — angle, and then just nails something that is so completely true.

Some stuff I thought you might like.

Off. Balance.

Casey wrote about being off-balance.

Sometimes when I’m doing the Dance of Shiva in the mirror, I feel like a fucked-up cheerleader. It’s hard to resist the temptation to snap into every position (three years of marching band in high school will do that to you). Most of the time when I start feeling really cheeky and flow-y, I throw myself off balance within moments.

My Stuck Is A Bear

Holly wrote about her stuck being a bear.

But this is important, important enough for me to haul my how-does-it-manage-to-be-both-flabby-AND-flat arse out of bed at this ungoddessly hour and risk the Wrath of Bob, so he’ll just have to put on his big kitty panties & deal with it.

All of that tension and a cacophony of tuning.

Eric wrote about the relationship between internal noise and internal information. And about pain, flailing, tension and listening.

One thing I learned from Tai Chi is that the best way to relax something that is chronically tense is to actually listen to what it is telling you.

All of that tension and a cacophony of tuning before the music begins.

Paper Fireworks.

Lots of great stuff at this paper fireworks tumblr blog that I am madly in love with.

Like this one.

And – when Havi says get lost she means get completely lost, I think, because I was floating on a log in the ocean a million miles from shore with how wrong I was doing it and had the best day afterwards.

She’s an anonymous brand new Shivanaut chronicling her thing and it’s awesome.

Show some support!

Group Blogging.

Yup. There’s a Shivanata Group Blog.

With so much goodness.

Like this piece from Elizabeth.

Anyway, after the practice, my About me page practically wrote itself into my journal. I have been trying to write this page for months and months – and here it just flowed out.

Even though I didn’t set an intention or anything. Hurrah!

It’ll probably be another many months before it gets posted, but hey, baby steps.

Oh, the epiphanies. They are many.

So.

As some of you know, I just came back from teaching a week-long Destuckification Retreat in California.

We did Shiva Nata every day.

Sometimes twice.

On the beach. To The Clash. With words and sounds and seriousness and silliness and transcendence.

And my mind is boggling at all the incredible things that came from practicing with this amazing group of (extremely brave and tolerant!) people.

So over the next week or so I hope to share with you some of the extremely weird and fantastic things I have realized, discovered, seen, re-seen, understood, processed or been given.

Because ohmygosh. Big big stuff.

Love to all the Shivanauts and the people who are just thinking about maybe eventually being Shivanauts and the people who are resting at a plateau or taking a break, and all my beloved Lurker Mice.

So good to be back. Kiss!

The DUST OFF THE DVD teleclass.

Twice a year I teach a class (by phone) where we talk about Shiva Nata wackiness and I answer questions. This has been going on for a few years now and it’s usually pretty fun.

We talk about ways to get back into a practice when it’s stuckified, ways for it to support you, and anything else you’d like to know/understand/untangle in relation to the madness that is Dance of Shiva.

This class is free to everyone who owns the Starter Kit and you can totally take it as many times as you like.

What kinds of questions?

Oh, let’s see. Theory, practice, random stuff you wonder about. It’s all good.

Surprise me. :)

Boring questions are welcome. Wacky and bizarre questions are welcome. It really doesn’t matter. My duck and I will do our best to help you out.

Details?

Here is the important part. We have CHANGED THE DATE of our upcoming class. So put this in your calendar!

It’s going to be:

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 16 , 2010 at 12:00 PM Pacific

And *not* next week as previously announced.

You can use the time zone converter to figure out what time noon Pacific is for you.

Expect to take notes, because scribbling happens.

And, as always, you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. If you’re more comfortable listening in than talking, that’s fine.

You can also make sure your Dance of Shiva questions get answered by leaving them here.

Leave your questions here in the comments and I can see to it that we cover them in class.

Shivanautical communal learning! It makes me the happy.

And if you aren’t already signed up, you can sign up here. If you can’t make the class, we’ll still send you the recording as long as you’ve signed up.

Awesome. Maybe we’ll get to talk to you then.

*blowing kisses*
Havi & Selma

So you may have heard that the Shivanauts are gleefully sponsoring Guns N Rollers — one of Portland’s extremely awesome Roller Derby teams (okay, the awesomest).

In case you were wondering what’s up with that, I thought I’d let you in on the secret Dance of Shiva Roller Derby connection …

Oh boy!

The Dance of Shiva Roller Derby connection.

Okay.

Dance of Shiva:

• is the fastest way I know of to become insanely coordinated.
• gives you just ridiculous physical agility, stability, speed of reaction.
• makes you graceful as hell.
• teaches you to completely own your own mental, emotional and physical space.
• helps you find that invisible crown of sovereignty.
• turns you into the one who cannot be shaken.
• launches you into a state of intense focus and concentration.
• lets you restructure the matrix and use the force.
• makes you the one who can dance between the rain drops, spot the openings, be untouchable.
• teaches you to see the connections, know the weaknesses and use the strengths.
• is like a wacky forcefield of awesome.
• is occasionally done while listening to The Clash.
• is really probably the only obscure yoga-based training about which you could easily say “that’s so punk rock”.

“That’s so punk rock!”

So it’s basically love at first sight.

Roller Derby is all about being agile.

Agile thinking, agile movement, agile reaction, agile being.

Sure, it’s also about being fast, hot, powerful and fabulous.

But it’s really about this core quality of agility in all of its possible forms.

Which means?

Having a mental map of where everything and everyone is, even when it’s happening behind you.

Being able to find the hidden openings at will. Always knowing what your options are. Knowing what to use and when to use it.

Your mind’s ability to be constantly tracking everything that’s important: moving people, moving targets and that steady flow of highly complex, constantly-changing information.

Focus. Serious, serious focus.

All that is pretty much what Dance of Shiva does best.

Because Dance of Shiva is the thing that trains your brain to see and understand the connections between things.

It’s liquid math, done with your body.

It’s the thing that lets you build and strengthen new neural connections so that you can think structurally and systematically, creatively and surprisingly, all at the same time.

It’s brain training that gives you the ability to react faster to whatever comes your way. Also scary triceps.

And it quiets your thoughts. Gets you where you need to go. Sets you on fire because anything is possible and possibility is the biggest high there is.

You can see possibility. You can breathe possibility. You can act on possibility.

Obviously, I’m pretty excited about us hooking up. Can you tell?

Why now?

Oh, I don’t know.

I’ve been teaching this stuff to yoga people and movement professionals for the past six years.

And then in the past two years I’ve been teaching it to entrepreneurs and creative thinkers and artists. And seeing crazy-wonderful things happen.

Derby needs Shiva Nata.

And the Shivanauts are ready to bring some of their power and love and silliness to Derby.

We also kind of have a lot in common. Like campiness, fabulousness and stripey socks. And drag names. Sometimes.

And we make up words! Like shivanautical or destuckification if you’re me. And brutalitarian dominatoration and butt rocking-est if you’re Guns N Rollers. See?!

So we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime?

Ass-kicking coolness on skates! Best. Sport. Ever.

My duck and l will see you at the bout! Or, you know, on the internets.

p.s. GUNS N ROLLERS! Rawr!

Or a lil’ Piph, as Kimberlee suggested.

Oh yes.

Background?

So two days ago I had a tiny sparkle of a post-Shiva-Nata realization.

Definitely not an epiphany. A gasp of a something leading up to one.

So.

It occurred to me after my practice that what I’m focusing on (or trying to emphasize) in my life right now has two parts.

It’s about grounding and stability on the one hand, and flow and movement on the other.

And of course both are related, blah blah blah.

The connection part wasn’t the realization.

The realization was more that I want to focus on this in my home. And that I wanted to think about bringing grounding and stability into my sleeping area (hence the new mattress obsession).

And about bringing flow and movement into my workspace.

But all that is the background to the actual moment of bing that has been sparking all kinds of things today.

Excellent.

So then yesterday morning I was doing my morning ritual of visiting each corner in Hoppy House and connecting to the qualities I’m working on.

Because, you know, wackiness is a great way to start the day.

And I had a total Shiva Nata moment. A mini-epiphany of the best kind.

A quick surprising rearranging of the internal matrix.

Just the way we like it.

Okay. Here it is.

I was standing outside the door of my bedroom. The space that I want to bring more grounding and stability to.

And realized it was flanked by trees.

There is a tree on the mezuzah (you might have to wikipedia that one, sorry). And a tree is the central theme in the gorgeous painting I bought from Leah Piken Kolidas, which hangs on the other side of the door.

Right. The space I want to ground is surrounded by trees on both sides.

Also the room itself has lots of wood. And a brown floor. And all the other colors are first and second chakra colors. Hello, grounding.

Why no, I’m not done boggling at myself yet.

So I went into the office, thinking about what would have to happen to make that space more about flow and movement.

And then realized that it’s all about flow and movement.

In fact, I have four separate pictures of boats in there (only one is a pirate ship, interestingly enough). Plus the walls are … blue.

Like water. And symbolically it’s the fifth chakra which is all about inspiration and connection and communication and various flow-centric stuff like that.

Oh, and I have a painting by Sarah Lacy of a seascape.

My focus: on something that’s already there. Awesome.

I’ve been spending a lot of time and money and energy on new and better ways to negotiate my relationship with space.

To get better at feeling at home in my space.

Wonderful classes with Jen Hofmann and Lisa Baldwin. Picking up on smartnesses from Cairene MacDonald and Janet Bailey.

And all of these things are helping. It’s all about incremental change.

But while all this change has been infusing my life, my brain hadn’t caught up with it.

Hadn’t internalized just how much has actually shifted. Or just how much of what I was looking for was already present.

The conclusion-ey bit.

So yeah.

Obviously the “everything you need is already inside you” thing is a coffee mug slogan a known spiritual truth type of thing .

But it was pretty cool to trip over the reminder that it really is.

Because everything I needed was already there. In seed form.

My job isn’t to bring grounding in or to make flow happen. It’s just to notice what is and attune to the qualities that are already there.

It’s about moving from what I’d thought was the question:

“How do I bring more of these elements and qualities into my space and into my life?”

… to the real question:

“How do I notice and remember that my space already contains what I want and need from it?”

It’s about moving from the old thing of bringing something in to the new thing which is accessing something that’s already present.

Bonk bonk bonk.

Off to play with Captain Obvious. And to do another ten minutes of Shiva-ing it up. Because I can’t wait to find out what’s next.

Back in July, before I had ever met the wonderful Briana of Blisscovery, I got a letter from her and thought she was awesome.

Because the letter was … pretty remarkable. So in my mind Briana was already a Pretty Remarkable Person.

Then she came to my Biggification Day in Sacramento and ohmygosh I was right.

Short version? We like Briana. A lot.

And I wanted to share (with permission, obviously) some of her words because I thought it was big. And useful. And extremely interesting.

Well, I thought that you guys might find it inspiring. Because I did.

Here it is.

The Letter by which I was introduced to Briana (and let the record show that I did not find her even slightly crazy).

Oh, Havi, my dear,

No, we’ve never met, but I just have to address you like that because of the experience I’m having.

Wow. Here’s the thing:

I got my Dance of Shiva dvd in the mail yesterday at about 5 p.m. — and I’m writing you less than a day later, and hoping that doesn’t earn me lunatic status.

I am blown away & completely overwhelmed. In an absolutely lovely, delighted way.

I had been reading through the reports since I ordered the Starter Kit last Wednesday, trying to learn all I could and reviewing the arm movements. When I got the DVD yesterday, I watched the intro and then went through the first five-ish short segments in level one.

Yesterday had been a pretty huge day for me before that.

Without giving you a ton of background, I’ll just say that I launched a website and blog and shared it with a few actual real live people. Aaack!

So I was feeling very self-conscious and vulnerable. And if I’m honest, I might have felt a squidge worse about all of it after Dance of Shiva. So I made some soup, parked myself on the couch with a cozy blanket and a good book, and tried to just BE.

The dreams.

Then last night I had what seemed like hours of very vivid dreams. And I remembered all of them which is very unusual for me.

And I know that hearing a detailed play by play of someone else’s dreams can have a pretty soporific effect on people, so I will spare you all the boring details.

The important thing is that the dreams had big, whack-me-over-the-head, obvious metaphors.

But of course you have to hear about this.

Like, first, there was one where I was getting on a white, antique, double-decker bus. And for reasons probably only clear to me, climbing the stairs to the second level looked a little like, um, ascending into heaven.

And second, I was taking a shower, outside on some kind of main street, completely naked. And I seemed altogether much too comfortable with this. Like, shampoo commercial comfortable.

And for the finale, I was carrying around a ton of baggage (think roller suitcase, carry-on, big tupperware thingy, and purse). Carrying this stuff through places it shouldn’t and couldn’t be carried – up and down stairs, through deep sand, down streets and through neighborhoods.

And finally I got really tired of the burden, and just put it down. And yes, this worried me a little. But when I came back later, it was right where I left it, and I knew I could pick it back up if I really wanted to.

Is there a more embarrassingly obvious metaphor for my own stuff than heavy, cumbersome, baggage?

And then it happened.

This morning, I did about 10 minutes of Dance of Shiva and then meditated.

Then I took my dog for a walk and it felt like the spigot had opened and some truth elixir was pouring out.

Really, I feel like nuggets of bing! are raining down from the sky, and I am holding out a blanket and trying to catch as many as I can.

I’m not really looking for you to tell me I’m normal, I think this decidedly proves I most certainly am not.

But maybe it would be nice to be reassured that I’m not stark raving bonkers.

One last thing…I think I may want all of these synchronicities to be related to Dance of Shiva. Because I want it to work, I want to have hot-buttered epiphanies. But in the past I would have resisted that about myself and now it feels amazing to just own it, to know that it’s true for me – I want things to work, I want enlightenment, and that’s who I am right now.

Ever freaked out and grateful, and just thanking you,
Briana

And here we are now.

I can say – this is Havi writing now, yes? — with 100% certainty that no, this doesn’t sound even slightly not-normal.

Dance of Shiva does all sorts of weird stuff. Odd, obvious dreams being extremely normal (though if you practice in the morning instead of the evening, they shouldn’t be too crazy).

And the spigot of truth elixir? I get that whenever I seriously challenge myself to do a part of the dance that absolutely cannot be done. At least by me. Yet. Now.

So no. Not stark raving bonkers.

And yes, these understandings probably are all related to Dance of Shiva.

Maybe some more directly and some more indirectly, but hey, you’re messing with the brain. In a good way. In a systematic way.

Which means that your everything you perceive is being filtered through this new internal structural knowledge of how things are connected to each other.

It’s not as weird as it sounds. It’s just what happens when you introduce systems of patterns into a doo-hickey (okay, the brain) that likes trying to figure out patterns.

Anyway, I thought this was awesome.

And so much so that I asked Briana if we could share it with you. Especially now that she’s been Shiva-ing it up for half a year already.

Here’s what she said :

Sure! Yay for wackiness!

I don’t feel super vulnerable about it, which is a little weird considering the naked part, but who hasn’t had a public nudity dream, right?

Mostly, just thank you. Thank you, thank you for introducing me to Dance of Shiva. Because I wouldn’t have jumped on board for wacky brain training advocated by just anybody. :) And the practice has become such a treasured part of my life so quickly and smoothly.

Right. I forgot about the naked dream part.

So yes. Now I have to share one of my own.

In my post-Shiva-Nata naked dream, I am flying over mountains.

And I have this huge cloak. But wearing it gets in the way of the flying. It slows me down.

So I toss it.

And I also had this experience in reality. Except I wasn’t flying. And there weren’t any mountains. It’s complicated.

There.

Hope you love this as much as I did.

Thanks Briana for letting me turn her fabulous letter into a guest post!

And thanks Shiva Nata for being weird and wonderful and full of miraculous, unexpected strangeness.

Today’s post is from the fabulous Anna Barnett (she’s @annabarnett on Twitter).

Super interesting piece. Yay, Anna! And thank you!
– Havi

Intentions and Epiphanies

When I started The Flailing a few months ago, my mind and I would often play this game about intentions and epiphanies.

If you have a dog, you’ve probably played something similar. It’s the one where you fake the dog out, and the dog goes racing off after the tennis ball that you did not throw, but then it stops and turns around and gives you this look -– confusion, unflagging eagerness, a touch of anxiety.

I’m the dog.

I ask a question, I do my practice, I sit down and close my eyes and wait to see if the answer will appear. And then I go tearing off after every notion my mind throws out, because maybe that’s it!

And then I stop and get that look: This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Something is clearly happening after my practices, during shavasana. There’s the swirly, buzzy, crunchy-peanut-buttery sensation. The weirdly addictive mental fatigue. I love it. The thing is, it’s hard for me to put up with it.

Here’s how I realized this.

Once after a short and furtive lunchtime Shiva Nata session on a public footpath, I was leaning against a wall for a minute or two. I wasn’t expecting any big results, since I was doing it so haphazardly. It occurred to me that I didn’t want to pull out of shavasana just yet.

Then I thought, “Huh. That seems to happen a lot.” And it did seem to. More and more, shavasana wanted to snuggle in with me.

But typically I practice before work, and as the buzz lingers on I start hearing from part of me that has things to do and wants to know –- unless I’m going to start having epiphanies right about now -– how soon I can get going.

It was four days later that I thought of this again, and then I realized. Oh. OK, very funny. It’s a pattern. It’s a pattern I’d normally roll my eyes about “realizing”, because it’s old and familiar and I’ve tried to break it before.

The pattern:

I don’t want to take time to rest.

Shavasana interruptus is a cousin to the sickly feeling of working half the day before I break for a drink of water, or web-surfing myself into a daze because I’m too tired to do anything but unwilling to not do anything. Rest: I fight it.

So I already know this.

But what I now get -– I get it! -– is that since I noticed it happening in the dance, the dance can be a tool for playing with the pattern.

Oooooh, experiments!

Maybe I could try to give myself one more minute of rest even when I’m antsy about moving on, and see what happens. I could do two minutes of movements and ten minutes of shavasana instead of the other way round. I could go outside and lie down in the sun and call that my practice for the day.

It’s a metaphor -– resting in Shiva Nata practice represents resting in life at large –- but better than that, it’s a lab.

Basically, I had an epiphany about something that was going on in my struggle to have epiphanies. And about what I can do differently now that I know. Pretty cool.

This didn’t make me suddenly ditch my restlessness. And I have to admit that lately I’ve been avoiding the pre-practice asking/intentioning because I don’t want to play the fake-out game.

But what I like is that in a lab, it’s easier to mess around with these things and poke them and stretch them.

Especially in a lab where everything is supposed to go wrong.

Mmmm. What a great realization. And what a wonderfully scientific and completely Shivanautical way to approach this stuff.

I love it. Thank you beautiful Anna!
– Havi again

Oh, odds and ends from my Dance of Shiva practice journal.

More Shivapiphanies. Oh boy! (or gee whiz, if you’re my nephew-in-law.)

Oooh. Interesting observation that completely surprised me.

These were mostly work-related this week.

About why I have trouble taking time off.

About why I get sucked into things that I don’t want to get sucked into.

Got some more information on something that scares me. Useful.

Posts aplenty!

Shivanautically relevant ones, that is.

A useful piece in Psychology Today on the neuroscience of mindfulness.

“When you focus your attention on incoming data, such as the feeling of the water on your hands while you wash up, it reduces activation of the narrative circuitry.

This explains why, for example, if your narrative circuitry is going crazy worrying about an upcoming stressful event, it helps to take a deep breath and focus on the present moment. All your senses ‘come alive’ at that moment.”

The trouble, of course, as we all know from meditation and yoga is that — while it’s awesome when we can focus on the present moment — sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to just do it.

That’s what’s so genius about Shiva Nata. It neatly circumvents the thinking parts and gets you into that quiet here I am headspace.

So being all present moment-ey is just something that happens, instead of something you have to remember to make happen.

And then Pearl started a blog called Shiva Nata Callings & Pearl is NOT having a mid-life crisis. You should read it.

I’m really looking forward to following her practice. Brilliant!

Other people’s cool stuff.

Some super interesting results from some of the people who got to do Shiva Nata with me at the Sacramento Biggification workshop last week.

One of the themes we were working with was finding out what our internal resistance has to say.

I’m just going to put some of it out here because it’s so beautiful. And so familiar.

When the stuck stops talking and starts watching.

“One of the things I noticed about my resistance is that in the beginning of the day, it was muttering ‘hippie shit’ into my ear and in the early afternoon, it was “worried” about the car.

But halfway though the Shiva Nata session, it shut up entirely and was just watching me to see what I was doing.

It went from a child having a tantrum to a curious child learning.”

Uh huh. I know that moment too.

Or how about this …

When you find out what the resistance is really afraid of.

“It seems like most of the time, my loudest resistance or critic is about not being good enough — what if people don’t like my thing, what if I have nothing to offer, blah, blah, blah.

So it kind of feels like standard old news.

But after Shiva Nata I also became really aware of the part of my resistance that’s really scared of being too good… that if I’m too good at something (or maybe too successful or whatever), then people won’t like me and it looks like a very lonely place.

This other quieter part felt more emotionally charged, much older and sadder.

Discovering where your resistance lives and what it needs.

“I learned that my resistance needs to feel safe, and to feel like safety is as important to me as it is to it – and that maybe it would do well with a job, a way to protect me that is acceptable to the both of us.

Not sure what that is though.

Also discovered that it lives in a dark place in the back of my head behind logic and intuition – but it wants light and openness so it can dissolve, because it’s not really happy in there. This makes me happy somehow.”

Discovering why your resistance is unhappy.

“My resistance was craving safety, too!

I also discovered that it was living in a smelly hovel with no space.

And possibly not much to eat. No wonder it was pissed off.

Now wondering if I can work towards creating a safer, more comfortable environment for my resistance and where to start!”

Chills.

That’s mostly it.

In the land of the Shivanauts, that is.

Nu?

If you have Shivanautical realizations and epiphanies of your own to share (even tiny ones), you can totally leave them in the comments.

Or — if they’re super personal and you’d like me to post them without using your name — send them to Marissa with first name only.

Unless you have a super-unusual first name like me and then just make one up.

Talk soon!

Got a question from a woman who wants to know if it’s okay to do Shiva Nata while pregnant.

Excellent.

Oh, why don’t we just start this off with a bunch of disclaimers?

Okay, the usual stuff:

I’m trained as a yoga teacher, not as a doctor. So you should see my extremely boring official disclaimer-ey thing and always consult your physician, etc.

And then I will also have to add what Marissa (my First Mate on the pirate ship and a fellow Shivanaut) said, because it was so funny and sweet and her-ish:

“I couldn’t think of any reason that it wouldn’t be okay, but I figured I should check with you, just in case it does anything to the energy channels in the body such that questionable things might occur, or something.

(And now that I think about it, ‘Questionable things might occur!’ is now the warning label I think I will attach to… everything. I rather like it.)”

Good. Now that we’re all disclaimerized, let’s talk about contraindications and General Stuff To Consider if you’re pregnant.

Or if you’re thinking about maybe eventually getting around to that at some point).

General stuff to take into consideration with Shiva Nata and pregnancy.

• You might want to avoid doing the leg movements as they place pressure on the belly.
• Of course, very gentle leg movements can be used to strengthen core muscles, so they might even be good for you over the first few months, but after that you might want to ease up.
• Short sessions. Don’t tax yourself. Five minutes at a time is great.
• Make sure you take time to rest and process after your session. Shavasana: highly recommended. For everyone, not just pregnant chicks.
• You want to take time to ground yourself (spread your toes, anchor your feet, bend knees slightly) so that you’re steady and comfortable.
• If at any point the spiral movements of the arms are putting undue pressure on your back, stop. It’s probably a sign that you’re not standing correctly, but, you know, erring on the side of caution isn’t the worst idea in the world.

Those are pretty much the only things that are coming up for me at this point.

Reasons why Shiva Nata would be an awesome thing to do during pregnancy.

• It gives you information about your patterns.
• Since becoming a mother is a big, crazy, wonderful, scary, intense thing, your stuff is probably coming up all over the place. Having useful information about what that’s all about and why seems like a good idea.
• It brings you into a state of calm and peacefulness (okay, not always while you’re doing it, but once you’ve stopped flailing and are transitioning into stillness).
• It’s amazing exercise for the brain. Keeps you quick.
• It’s fun, it’s quick and it doesn’t require props, space or stuff.
• It doesn’t involve any of the yoga things that are generally not recommended during later stages of pregnancy (inversions, forward bends, back bends, pressure on the abdomen).
• Epiphanies and moments of bing are always useful. But while you’re going through a big transitional identify shift, this might be especially useful.
• It’s a great way to practice breathing exercises.
• You’ll have gorgeous triceps.
• Mental agility and physical coordination will come in handy after you’ve given birth. And really also during the next few years while you’re running after your schweet little rugrats.

So … opinions?

In general, I’m for it. Yay, Shiva Nata! I think it could be a wonderful experience.

But, as always, it’s your body and you know best.

So exercising caution is definitely not a bad thing. This is all about you developing a healthy relationship with yourself, which is basically the most yoga thing you could be doing.

Hope that helps! Thank you for the question — it’s a good one. :)

Anyone else? Thoughts on this? Experience with this? Ideas one way or the other? I’m off to start a doo-wop quartet called Questionable Things May Occur.

Oh, odds and ends from my Dance of Shiva practice journal.

More Shivapiphanies. Oh boy! Or gee whiz, if you’re my nephew-in-law.

Report from the front.

So Selma and I taught some Shiva Nata twice this week.

Once at the fabulous Sacramento Biggification Day and once at the yoga teacher training (they’re the ones who flew me out to teach non-icky business concepts to the new yoga teachers).

Things we noticed:

• It’s really fun teaching people who have zero expectations. The yoga teachers had, for the most part, no idea I was going to throw this at them. They just played. They were awesome. It was beautiful.
• Actually, teaching is fun. Period.
• Shiva Nata is soooooo different with music. I played wildly inappropriate things with my biggification mice, and more traditional stuff with the yoga people. But either way, having music changes the experience completely.
• Teaching without a stage (or some kind of raised platform) is ridiculous. I generally remember that but it totally didn’t happen this time.

Found a pattern. Moved the pattern.

This week I was dealing with all these (annoying) systems issues in my business.

Like, certain things happening that I hadn’t prepared for, and then not knowing how to respond.

Then I remembered that all that structural thinking stuff hurts my brain too much if I don’t do my own shivanautical tangling-detangling stuff first.

So my big plan had been to do ten minutes or so of Dance of Shiva on that particular problem yesterday when I got back from California.

But guess what?

It got solved while I was teaching. I’m not sure what happened, but by the time class ended Sunday, I knew exactly how to fix the stuck.

Nice.

Other people’s cool stuff.

There’s all kinds of amazing things in last week’s comments.

Like Bess and her sad hedgehog.

… the hedgehog told me it didn’t want to be smart anymore because being smart keeps people away and it’s lonely – like playing alone at recess.

I got chills.

That’s mostly it.

I’m still processing some other stuff, but it’s not even slightly coherent, so maybe I’ll save some of it for next time.

Lots of ideas buzzing around and I’m just letting them settle. Yay. Settling. With, not for.

Nu?

If you have Shivanautical realizations and epiphanies of your own to share (even tiny ones), you can totally leave them in the comments.

Or — if they’re super personal and you’d like me to post them without using your name — send them to Marissa with first name only.

Unless you have a super-unusual first name like me and then just make one up.

p.s. Teaching Shiva Nata to the Roller Derby girls this weekend. Will report!

p.p.s. Beautiful post from Elizabeth about how doing Shiva Nata helped her see energy. For the second time ever. Very cool.

Oh, odds and ends from my Dance of Shiva practice journal.

Or, more accurately, a bunch of post-it notes.

But yes. Things I realized this week after Shiva-ing it up here and there.

Oooh. Interesting observation that completely surprised me.

So. My fear of conflict is … not the fear of conflict itself.

Which is weird.

I thought (and I have always thought this) that my fear is of other people being angry with me or saying harsh things.

But my fear is actually of myself — that I will blow my top. That I will say the really mean things that only live in my head. In the heat of anger, I will tell someone that I think they’re a fraud or a jerk or a horrible excuse for a human being.

And that will make me co-conspirator in a world of cruelty.

When the people I’m avoiding confronting are awake in the middle of the night, their agonizing self-doubt will be reinforced by the opinion I couldn’t keep to myself because I got mad and started saying what I think. Ugh.

This is a relief to know, because I’ve spent my whole life trying to get over the thing that makes me avoid conflict.

But it’s really about having clean, clear ways (hi, NVC) to express myself. Because the thing that scares me is not the thing that scares me.

The thing that scares me is internal, not external. Which means I can work with it. Phew.

Found a pattern. Moved the pattern.

I have serious workaholism issues, yes.

And it’s no big secret that a huge part of that is fear of depression. That if I stop working myself to the bone, it will be agony to get out of bed, and I’ll spend the whole day just trying to get my act together to the point where I can do laundry and come up with something to eat.

That’s the stuff I’ve been working on in various forms for however many years.

Boom. Five minutes of Shiva Nata today and I realized that that each of those roles (the workaholic and the depressive not-able-to-do-things person) are really the two life roles that were consistently modeled for me while I was growing up.

It’s the kind of thing you’d come up with in therapy, over the course of a few months. And it was just there. Right in front of me. Completely obvious.

Along with the reassuring piece of information that I don’t have to live the lives of other people just because that’s what I got from watching them.

I don’t have to work myself to death.

And I don’t have to fear the not-doing, because my [insert non-cheesy word for "path" here] is different than theirs. Sigh of relief.

That’s mostly it.

There were a few other things about movement.

And I got a couple of completely genius business ideas.

If you have Shivanautical realizations and epiphanies of your own to share (even tiny ones), you can totally leave them in the comments.

Or — if they’re super personal and you’d like me to post them without using your name — send them to Marissa with first name only.

Unless you have a super-unusual first name like me and then just make one up.

Talk soon. I’m off to sunny Sacramento tomorrow — will be teaching Shiva Nata all weekend there.

p.s. my big Destuckification Retreat in January (where we’ll be doing Dance of Shiva every single day for a week, along with Old Turkish Lady Yoga) is more than half full.

If you haven’t applied, do it!