Yesterday morning I woke up and there it was.

A perfect, simple solution. I knew exactly what needed to be done. The business challenge was not only resolved, this particular solution also solved problems I hadn’t even thought of yet.

It was such a completely typical Shiva Nata moment that I laughed for about ten minutes straight.

Classic Shivanautical epiphany.

Oh, there are so many.

Though if I had to choose one?

I would probably have to go with the miraculous series of understandings that allowed me to stop smoking.

Because that was really the very first big Shivanautical thing that happened to me, and it was completely unexpected and it just blew me away.

• We notice things.
• We experiment.
• We take notes.
• We ask questions.
• We make a point of doing things differently next time.

If people in the call only took away one thing from the themes we played with — sovereignty and “Check your patterns!” — I hope it’s this:

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! Thanks for the question.

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.

Every few months I get a question from someone who is worried that the Dance of Shiva is a form of avodah zarah (idolatry, the worship of false gods).

And even though a lot of you have no connection or concern with this specifically, I know there are also many people who need reassurance that this isn’t going to be some wacky religious practice.

I mean, it is wacky. It’s just not religious-wacky.

So I am going to bring a couple of these questions in here and do what I can to answer them.

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.

Epiphanies on the emotional level.

Realizations about how your patterns work.

About what elements they’re composed of.

You remember things.

You dream things.

You notice things.

All of a sudden, you know why you do something the way you do it. And you know how to do it differently if you want to.

And I haven’t the foggiest notion of how to answer this.

Other than renting the film in question …

So I’m putting this out to you guys. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?*

So here it is:

Is “coordination” a pre-req for Shiva Nata?

The short answer is: “Oh dear God, no!”

But it’s the longer answer that’s more interesting.

But Shiva Nata? Hahahahaha, no. You won’t be good at it, and moreover, you can’t be good at it because it’s all about making sure that you’re always doing it wrong.

In other words, the only way you can be good at it … is by being bad at it.

Which kind of ruins the whole “good at it” part.