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.