Shiva Nata: the Dance of Shiva
“Do men ever do Shiva Nata?”
Someone asked a really interesting question recently.
Interesting to the point that I was actually kind of taken aback.
And then I didn’t know how to respond and just kind of stuttered while making little phthlah phthlah phthlah noises.
Charming, I know. I’m just that way.
Except that — luckily for me — we were on Twitter so no one actually heard me.
Oh, right. The question.
Anyway, this totally counts as an Ask a Shivanaut question, so I’m going to answer it.
Do men ever do Shiva Nata?
I wish I didn’t, but I do worry about things like that.
And the answer.
The short answer is “yes”.
Unless you’d like a slightly longer answer.
The longer answer is this:
There is a weird thing that happens in the yoga world that has an unfortunate (in my opinion, of course) parallel in the Shiva Nata world.
And that’s the fact that — although there are far more female practitioners — most of the well-known yoga teachers and experts tend to be men.
Off the top of my head? I can think of far more men teaching than women.
When you look at who is teaching Shiva Nata*, you’ll probably find the same thing.
There’s the main teacher of the dance, of course — Andrey Lappa — but most of the other teachers are men too.
- Neil is teaching in Taiwan.
- Lars is teaching in Berlin.
- Honey is (or was?) teaching in San Francisco, as is Jamie.
- James from Adventures of a Shivanaut is in the UK … and if he’s not teaching, he should be.
And among my own students who have begun teaching classes of their own, men definitely outnumber the women.
Not by a lot. But it’s still significant.
In my classes and workshops however, there are often more women present than men. The opposite has also been true, but only on very rare occasions.
The workshop in San Francisco last weekend was composed of all women. And I believe that only three or four men are coming to the North Carolina workshop, not including Fred (yes, another Shiva Nata teacher).
*The same seems to also be true for other forms of Dance of Shiva. For example, Daniel Odier’s Tandava. Or Zhander Remete’s Natya Yoga.
An even more interesting question.
Why?
Why is it that more men teach than women? Why is it that more men feel comfortable moving up to the higher levels faster?
Why does the whole culture of the yoga teaching world result in men ending up at the top — when the vast majority of people taking classes are women?
Or … with that being the case, why would there be this perception that yoga is somehow a women’s practice?
There are the usual answers.
That men are (or tend to be) better primed through social conditioning to try things that are hard.
Or to have the testosterone-fueled confidence to push through to the next level — and to not get so caught up in the endless “who do I think I am” type of questioning that women often put themselves through.
There’s got to be other stuff going on too. And I don’t know what it is.
Let’s have some reassurance though, yes?
For our asker-of-the-question:
My dear, you are more than welcome to start Shiva-ing it up with us.
Seriously. We are always happy to have another Shivanaut on board the pirate ship of wackiness.
I promise that you’ll be in good company. Plenty of men around!
And I’m sure that — as a man yourself — you will be fabulously successful, and maybe even go on to teach it.
And I hope that you will also join me then (and now) in encouraging my fellow lady Shivanauts to feel strong and confident so they can get out there and teach teach teach!
Stepping off the soapbox now.
Whose turn is it?
Love this topic.
My brother started practicing yoga and this came up – how many of the teachers are men but more women make up the classes.
I’ve recommended Shiva Nata to male friends of mine and they just seem to go with it much more. Like you said Havi, they often don’t internalize the whole “who do I think I am doing this” sort of pattern we women do.
And then this post got me all worked up thinking that I would *love* to teach Shiva Nata someday. But of course question how I could ever actually do it.
How would I go about it? Could I ever be good enough?
I know my future will involve some form of teaching because it makes me happy and I don’t want to simply dismiss being a Shiva Nata teacher because it seems so impossible.
No real point here but if anyone has any advice on the whole teaching thing – please let me know.
*encouraging my fellow lady Shivanauts to feel strong and confident so they can get out there and teach teach teach!*
Me, me me!
I want to teach it. Here’s the first public place I’m saying this.
(Not sure how that’s going to work, but there you go.)
Love to you, and thanks for writing about this conundrum.
~E.
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Twitter: havi
Woooo!
That was just me being all excited that YOU (Lynn + Eileen) are thinking about teaching Shiva Nata.
ROCK. ON.
I love that!
And you totally should.
And of course you would be good enough. You ARE good enough. As soon as you can do something that someone else can’t (like remember the arm positions!) you can teach them.
Yay, both of you for going ahead and saying it out loud.
I repeat: Wooooo!
:)
Havi,
Thank you for taking my question seriously and not shrugging it off. I felt a little stupid asking that question because of course some men do it… this man just needs a little reassurance.
It was sooo exciting to see that you responded to something I asked in a whole blog post!!!! I’m not ready to jump on it yet, it’s still brewing in my head. I know if I order your kit before I’ve dedicated myself to trying it that it will sit in my closet and turn into an icky ‘should.’ And that is so totally not something I get from your blog (and so totally something I think you’d understand.)
Thank you Havi, you made my day.
Twitter: kimianak
From the moment I’ve learned about Shiva Nata, I’ve been wanting to teach it too. I don’t know if it will ever happen formally, but I’ve been getting my toes wet (not even the whole foot, but hey, that’s a start!) by helping my gentleman friend learn it. One day we were on a trip, and I made good use of a bit of free time we had by teaching him the leg movements – that was pretty cool! :)
You know, I can actually think of more women instructors than men instructors! I’ve only done one yoga DVD led by a man, David Swenson, and I did not like it at all. I’m looking into trying Paul Grilley’s yin yoga, as you recommended, though.
Wow – I did that exact thing. “This is cool. It’d be cool to teach it to people”. “Oh wait, how could I possibly do that? No one would want to learn from me – I’m a dumpy middle-aged woman!”
So. Guess I’ll push a little more into the “This is cool – I’d like to teach it someday” side of things. If only because I’d hate to be a stereotype.
Valid question, interesting answer.
I just bought the Starter Kit like a men buy this things: with expectation.
I would love to teach sometime, but even if I don’t, Havi presented this amazing thing so weel that just doing would be awesome.
Maybe this comercial from my country could add a little spice to the answer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nx7UaXP38g
Have fun,
Alvaro
[...] places like the yoga world or in Shiva Nata where the vast majority of practitioners are women, the men rise to the top and we never talk about why that [...]
Well, I can speak to why men feel uncomfortable about entering yoga in general, at least in the US. Why this may or may not translate to Shiva Nata is beyond my expertise.
The US yoga community has a very serious set of attitudes that in the end tend to push men away. I first started yoga as purely a physical practice to enhance my abilities at endurance sports. To say that my first class was a revelation, a sense that I belonged is an understatement. I immediately bought the biggest card (in terms of sessions) I could for the studio. I was doing yoga at the studio five or more times a week including a few twice a day shots.
Then, I annoyed with a statement, a woman who, with no exaggeration was a hostile, lesbian feminist out of a Rush Limbaugh monologue. What was the statement? I was discussing a friend in another city who was into yoga with the studio owner. She asked if it was one of a list of women in that city. I say, “no, but do you have their numbers?” in a joking tone. Immediately from behind me I heard, “Women aren’t just objects for your enjoyment” in a testy voice followed by two people slamming out of the studio in a huff.
At the time the studio owner just rolled her eyes. Two days later when I came to class again it was different. I was taken outside by her and lectured on violated a sacred space and all that. Apparently the woman and her partner had called to “apologize” and then complain about a tee shirt I had worn once. In retrospect I would have worn a better but my thoughts in choosing it had been “this is my own clean tee-shirt and I don’t want to upset others with an offensive smell”. That said, a hash run tee-shirt that said “Hard farts Hash” (we were the Hartford Hash) wasn’t a good choice.
I went to that class then one more. With that my card was done and what little practice I’ve had was on DVDs. I had been considering signing up for the upcoming first stage teacher training after only about three months of doing yoga (it would have been about nine months when the teacher training started). That was seven years ago. I’ve been in a studio once since and had a brief and, in my mind, probably exaggerated by me encounter that kept me out of that one as well.
My shoe-throwing had been unintended and born by accident out of a desire to be polite. The woman’s complaint were intentional shoe throwing beside I didn’t fit the yoga mold of the US. Men in yoga in the US need to be a subset of the metrosexual brand or they aren’t welcome in many, many studios (one male’s friend reaction to my story was “dude, what did you expect, it’s a yoga studio”).
I think that’s where questions like this come from. The model these men have of men doing yoga isn’t the well known teachers but the local wimps (or worse) who most men never want to be like.
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Reading this makes me wonder: So, anyone can set themselves up to teach this? I suppose I’d assumed that there was a need for acknowledgment from the Grand High Shiva Divas that This Person Is Not A Fraud. But if it’s just a case of the Dance itself sort of weeding people out, I can see that.