I’ve been considering buying Havi’s Dance of Shiva Starter Kit for over a year now.

Yeah. Really.

Every time I consider it, all these voices pop up.

They say:

• But, you’re already working on your patterns.

• You already have tons of tools to help you through things, to help you gain awareness and insight.

• This is what your work is already all about. Why would you need this kit?

• You are already constantly processing stuff. You know what your patterns are, you know how to (and are) already working with them, interacting with them, learning and growing with them.

• How is this kit going to be any different from anything else you do? Or, even from the wacky animal-form line drills you do in you strange, unknown internal martial arts practice (xin yi) all the time?

  That gets you unstuck, gets you in your body, inspires you, helps you see patterns more clearly and re-wires your brain. Maybe that’s not how it’s marketed but that’s definitely what it does.

Here, a few voices, quieter than the first chime in:

• But, why wouldn’t you want something new and exciting in your toolbox?

• Especially something whose very purpose is to stimulate insight?

• Sure, you get that from your xin yi practice but that’s not ‘why’ you do xin yi. You do that because it is hard, it teaches you ‘relaxed suffering,’ it lets you do chicken and eagle and snake.

  It’s more about a mindful workout than about generating epiphanies and interacting consciously with patterns.

Of course, the louder voices quickly muffle these quiet few:

• You’re already doing your thing. You’re already working through all the stuff, all the fear and stuck that keeps you small and quiet.

• Patterns are what you work with every day with your clients.

  You help them become aware of how the patterns of tension in their bodies reflect patterns in their lives. You help them interact with themselves and their pain gently and kindly. How will this kit add anything to what you already know and practice?

• You’re already quite coordinated! (except for when I’m not, of course).

• You probably already know everything Havi has to say in the ebook. In fact, it’s all probably stuff you already tell your clients and that you want to write about yourself.

  Only, Havi will have already said it (and said it much better than you ever could). So, as long as you don’t buy it, you are safe. Safe from Havi and everyone else out there thinking you are copying her work. It can’t be plagiarism if you haven’t read it!

• Do you really need to be like everyone else who reads Havi’s blog? Wouldn’t it be better to be unique? To do things differently from all the rest?<

  p>

• You don’t really have the money for this thing, you know.

The voices go on and on and on. It’s exhausting, really. They are all so loud and vehement.

For the past year, these voices have been eating at me.

Never fully heard, always congesting my thoughts. So, tonight, I am letting them out. I am letting them reign free.

Because, tonight, I have decided to actually decide.

Am I going to do this thing? If yes, a purchase will be made. If no, well… it’s obvious, I guess.

There is a middle ground. A middle ground of, not now but I will reconsider in… (a certain amount of time yet to be determined-most likely 6 months to a year).

I happen to know this approach works for me. I’ve used it before.

For instance, growing up and into my early 20s, I didn’t want to 1) get married or 2) have kids. However, I decided that when I turned 30, I would reconsider both.

I turned 30, I reconsidered and decided that maybe, someday, I do want to get married. Regarding kids, I decided to reconsider that again when I turn 34. :)

So, tonight’s the night.

Maybe.

Over the past week or so, as this decision has loomed over me, it’s become increasingly obvious to me that I am terrified to fail.

Which leads to unrealistic expectations of myself, which leads to very little ever being accomplished. Because, dammit, it’s not good enough. Ever.

Now, this is a very old pattern and one that I’m quite familiar with and, in many ways, is no longer so totally controlling my life.

Except that it is.

Here I am, confronted with a decision to make a purchase them may lead to a practice that is all about (wait for it)…. failing. And, yeah, I’m terrified. Again.

Now, for all you shivanauts out there, I’m sure this is old news.

For me, it was a shivanata (less) inspired moment of bing to see (yes, see) all the voices fade away. And standing there, all alone, was my old friend, Fear of Failure.

So, hello friend.

It’s (oddly) a relief to see you again.

Will you take my hand?

Will you flail with me?

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Watermelon static
• The Flailing.
• Attention Idaho Shivanauts!

Learning how to practice.

I was reading a conversation at Havi’s Kitchen Table about how, if you’re used to being good at certain things right away, you might not have learned how to practice.

This makes me think about stretching.

Stretching and yoga. As a rule, yoga bores and/or frustrates me because I don’t seem to be any good at it off the bat.

In other situations, the thing I shine at from day 1 is being fast — and quickly becoming fast — at perceiving and sorting and connecting stuff. My mental reflexes and coordination are terrific, far better than their physical counterparts (but just wait til I shivafy some more).

Yoga is not only physical — it’s slow. Slow enough to notice my muscles spasming in “beginner” poses. To see that my strength and flexibility are so much less than what I fantasize or what I admire in others.

And for strength and flexibility there’s not going to be a mental or intuitive shortcut. If there were, I would find it.

But there’s not.

There’s just practice.

And that ain’t how I roll. At least, not without combining it with one of my non-physical strengths.

I do tango, which combines physical practice with social responsiveness — semi-mystically tuning in with what my partner wants — and with musical patterns. Plus physical patterns. Quickly, intuitively shifting ones.

I do Shiva Nata. Again with the kaleidoscopic physical patterns. Plus it has math.

Since forever, I’ve been thinking I should stretch more. No, literally. I can’t remember being able to touch my toes. This has been a Reason I Can’t Become a Real Dancer, which sucks. And of course all it takes is stretching more often, but I don’t.

Is there some sort of stretchy practice that would also let me feel cool?

There was that adult-beginner’s ballet class I took. Loved it. The music thing again. And the discipline thing.

Why don’t I still take ballet?

Money and time stuff.

And the epiphanies roll on…

Hmm.

Do I have to take ballet classes to practice ballet?


Would investing in another ballet class be a good way to change one thing in this situation?


Is there something about yoga that I’m missing?


Is there something I need to know about the money and time stuff?

Shiva Shiva, tell me more!

Thanks, Anna!

– Havi + Selma

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Ask A Shivanaut: mixing practices
• Ask a Shivanaut: Dance of Shiva before or after a yoga practice?
• Oh, and some more epiphanies.

Yay, Char! And thank you! I also dance in my sleep.

Insomnia

My revelation about Shiva Nata taking years or possibly a lifetime to learn was absolutely true (see “It only took a year“) — I learned that taking it slow and forgetting about mastering it was the idea here.

None of my traditional “hurry up and learn it” strategies would cut it.

As I was going to bed the other night, I remembered Havi’s Dance of Shiva ebook and decided to take a look.

In the past several months, I’ve had insomnia. Sleep affects everything in such a basic way. Those of you who don’t have sleep issues may take it for granted — maybe not.

When I go several days with disrupted sleep, I notice that I have more chronic pain, am prone to being tearful and irritable, and in general can’t accomplish much.

I’ve tried so many things to deal with this — everything works for a while, and then it stops. It’s gotten to the point that I don’t welcome bedtime anymore as I’m afraid I’m in for another night of sleeplessness — and how it will cost me during the day.

So it hasn’t been much fun being me lately.

Drifting off…

As I read the book in bed, I noticed that one thing Havi suggested was trying Dance of Shiva in the morning. I made a note of that one — and as I drifted off that was one of the last things I remember.

I tossed and turned, got up at 3am sleepless as usual — yet remembering that I had been dreaming of practicing Dance of Shiva. Eventually drifted off again thinking that I had a plan for when I got up — and somehow felt comforted by this. Hopeful that things may change with or without a good nights sleep.

The point of what I’m saying here is that that hope that things may change is what helped me wake up facing today in a different way. It helped me rest even when I wasn’t sleeping.

Having a plan. Remembering the power of possibility.

Just reading about Dance of Shiva and hearing the possibilities (that my brain can change, that my patterns can rearrange themselves) somehow changed my sleep pattern.

I know I’m not the only one who has mastered insomnia from time to time only to have it come back again. I’ve tried so many things to get me through this. It’s been painful.

But the promise of a different kind of pattern for rest through practicing Dance of Shiva — regardless of what actually happens during the night — gives me hope today and is helping me think more clearly.

And that the idea of practice could be so loosely interpreted as to mean reading about it, watching the DVD, or even just thinking about it — well, that’s just amazing.

Thanks, Char, for giving us more to think about. And for the reminder that intention is a plan. And that possibility is everywhere.
– Havi

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• It only took a year
• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.
• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.

And full of some really Useful Insights that I know you will get a kick out of. Yay!
Havi + Selma

Watermelon static

I started my Shiva Nata practice while the DVD was still in the mail, reading the ebook and perusing the Shiva Nata and Fluent Self blogs.

I was fascinated with the ideas, the powerful metaphors and the completely radical concepts of being friendly with myself, taking care of myself, and talking to my stuff.

Previously I hadn’t really realized that it was legal to get everything done without depriving myself of sleep, beating myself up, or at the very least pretending that I knew everything.

But I digress…

When I started my Shiva Nata practice, it was based on pictures of what arm positions looked like, how they should feel, and a vague idea of what a sequence would look or feel like.

And, just as Havi mentioned several times, Dance of Shiva works even (especially?) in that form — when you just put faith into the weird, and try something that, to an outside observer, might not make a great deal of sense.

The very first time I did my morning “flail my arms around practice”, I used sample pattern questions from the Fluent Self blog:

• What does my pattern (my problem, my block) look like?


• What does my pattern need from me?


• What do I need right now?


• What if I had permission just to do everything wrong


• What’s missing?

After shavasana, I sat down with my laptop and the answers just typed themselves up.

The most interesting part, for me, was the shape and look of my pattern — because it did not have a shape and it barely had any color.

In fact, it was more like a noise — something like “television static” — when a TV has no reception and there is “white snow” on the screen and the buzzing noise. (To me, waking up to this noise after accidentally falling asleep in front of a TV is a very unpleasant sensation, conveying a lot of loneliness and low safety).

It was fairly easy to translate this “static noise” pattern as avoidance, tuning out, fighting or running away from things that I did not want to experience.

But what to do about this pattern?

Or, more accurately, what did it want? It was the question that I never asked myself- in the many years that I’ve had the pattern, it never really occurred to me to listen to it. Instead, I wanted to resolve it right away.

The answer came immediately: the pattern wanted attention.

The situation literally reached the point where the pattern was knocking me on the head, desperate to get me to listen to it.

It was asking for help.

It just could not think of any other way to get through.

So the very first practice brought me two very useful pieces of information: the sound (and a bit of a look) of the pattern and the awareness that it desperately wanted to communicate with me.

That day, we did not have much of a conversation, as I promptly asked my static noise to take a break or a short business trip and leave me alone, so that I could move forward with my very important work project.

But my pattern was smarter than me.

A few days passed with me impatiently peeking into my brain, trying to find something interesting, and wondering why I was not finding anything relevant (of course I was not finding the big white elephant — it was off on a business trip as requested, too scared of me).

And then later that week, as I was again lying in shavasana, I became aware of a real-life noise, the refrigerator humming a few feet away from my head, which was very much like the static noise that was trying to tell me something a few days earlier. This time, I decided to listened and just tuned in, trying not to interrupt.

And then, a very cool thing happened.

I slipped into this cool meditative trip, where images unfolded one after another, and each image had a meaning that instantly became clear to me. My pattern, the static TV noise, became one with the humming refrigerator.

Once I was finally listening, I could actually see — I saw a metaphorical refrigerator and I saw all the cool, delicious things inside it. And the things in the refrigerator were waiting to be taken out of it. They might be cold, but this is what helped them to stay preserved.

One of my favorite foods that can often be found in the fridge is a watermelon. It’s heavy and green and hard on the outside, but it’s red and sweet and delicious and full of seeds on the inside.

Bing!

The static noise was the watermelon calling for me from the refrigerator, ready to be served. Listening helped me see, meeting the pattern rather than fighting took away its scariness, and my avoidance was actually my creativity trying to get out.

My creativity trying to get out!

I just love this. Avoidance as creativity trying to get out.

Thanks!
Havi + Selma

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Shivanautical realizations + epiphanies: take 1
• Too Terror-Struck to Fail (or flail)
• Shivanautical realizations + epiphanies: take 2

Still good reading, though. Yay. Yay!

I’ve got Dance of Shiva on the brain

I’ve got some confessions to make.

Even though it’s hard and Havi says I might hate it, my brain loves Shiva Nata; it just can’t get enough.

But sometimes it’s just not convenient to pop in the DVD and flail my arms, you know? Sometimes I’m in a public place, or sometimes I don’t have a DVD player or sometimes I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep. These times are just not conducive to doing the Dance with the DVD. But does my brain care? Noooooooo…..

Yes, I’d love to have a regular morning practice, but that’s not where my life is right now.

I’m prioritizing evening time with my husband and morning time with my toddler and sleep time for myself in between. I try to fit the Dance in wherever I can, and I’m looking for a good way to do it more regularly.

It’s still a pretty new thing in my life (Level 1 and proud), so for now I sometimes easily find the time and sometimes I go a while without flailing. And when it’s been too long my brain starts poking me.

If I don’t give it its Shiva fix, my brain will just start doing the dance on its own.

It’s like getting a song stuck in your head.

I’ll be lying in bed (for example) trying to fall asleep, when I notice that my mind is going through the paces: 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 …

And I say “Stop! Stop! I’m trying to sleep and Havi says Shivaing at night will keep me up!”

And sometimes my brain listens (it helps for me to cross-my-heart promise to do some Shiva Nata the next day and distract it with something else shiny), and sometimes I just do some mental rehearsal of the Dance.

Other times I just don’t have the will to get up and do the Dance, but my I can tell brain is craving it. So I’ll put the DVD in my computer and just watch the theory or some of the practice sections. If I’ve got just a teeny bit of energy I’ll actively try to pretend I’m mirroring the movements.

Often I can find an empty room at work for a quick Shiva break, but I don’t have the DVD …

So here’s my confession: I’ve spent more time practicing the Dance without the DVD than with it.

I really hope this is okay.

Oh, it goes so slowly, and I suspect I don’t fail enough (ah, perfectionism, you’re so cute. Even when the goal is getting things wrong you think you’ve got to do it better), but my brain wants its fix! A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

And once my brain was crying out for some Dance of Shiva and I just had to be sitting at my desk. So I pulled out a pad of paper and started writing out the numbers.

Warning! This was so much tougher than I expected it to be. But I did start noticing patterns I had no idea were in there before.

Here’s the thing:

I know my brain benefits from these too.

When I sit still and visualize myself doing the Dance some of the same brain circuits are being activated as if I were actually doing it.

When I watch the DVD I’m activating mirror neurons and, again, I’m stimulating some of the same neural circuits I’d be activating if I were moving like Mr. Lappa. Going slowly and thinking hard about the patterns gets them into your brain.

People who study brains for a living have spent years researching this stuff and writing about it in peer-reviewed journals. Okay, I don’t know if there’s research on Shiva Nata, but if we trust that the Shiva Nata is good for the brain (and oh, my brain certainly thinks it is), then these other forms must be good too.

Now if only I had a magic extra well-rested half hour to myself in the morning so I could just do it the “normal” way…

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Dance of Shiva, neuroplasticity and the brain.
• Punk Rock Shivanauttery: answering a bunch of questions!
• Help me out? Title for the Shivanaut Manual?

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.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Ask a Shivanaut: setting intentions
• Announcement! The teleclass! (NEW DATE)
• The colors of Dance of Shiva. With blobs and splotches.

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

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Slowly, but surely.
• Too Terror-Struck to Fail (or flail)
• Shiva Nata teacher training!

But that’s not the point. The point is actually: super interesting piece. Yay, Char! And thank you!
– Havi

If it works for Havi…

I ordered the Shiva Nata Starter Kit within a month of finding Havi’s blog. I figured “hey, if Dance of Shiva works for Havi — it’ll work for me”.

Honestly, I hardly read the sales page — just trusted that it would be a great tool.

I downloaded the material and almost instantly lost interest.

Too complicated! Why would I want to do something so frustrating — especially when it wasn’t going to necessarily improve my body? And this looks way too time consuming for me — humpf!

What I thought I wanted

I wanted to multi-task: improve my fitness, mind, spirit and bring emotional balance into my life.

But where I was coming from initially was that I wanted my results — all of them — easily and quickly.

In pursuit of my goal to figure this out right now, I jumped into the practice session rather than taking the sessions in order. It totally confused me, so I stuck the DVD in the drawer and decided to journal about wanting to learn this, but being so turned off at the same time.

I never actually got to the journaling — I didn’t want to think this through at all. Instead I brewed on it while walking the dogs and throughout my day — what was that all about anyway?!

That’s when I realized that I really didn’t want to be challenged. Wow — who knew? Wonder where else that applies in my life … hmmmm.

Realizing that was my first epiphany.

Epiphany number two: the slavedriver

Andrey said that if you don’t understand the movements right away, “be quiet, repeat it and go slowly to understand”. He then went on to say that he was sure we’d find some encouraging results. I replayed that section about 3 times — I knew it was something I needed to hear.

At that moment I had another epiphany.

One thing that I’ve struggled with my whole life is this “hurry up and get it done” slavedriver within me. That voice says “get this right now, start practicing already and let’s get on with it!”

The slavedriver perspective worked for law school. It worked during a huge health crisis. It worked as a caregiver to a certain extent and it often worked while raising kids as a single parent.

But as I get older, that “hurry up and get it done” method doesn’t work nearly as well as it once did. In fact, that mentality causes a lot of frustration and pain.

What I learned is that I won’t accomplish any of my objectives at this time in my life — improving my fitness, calming my mind, encouraging my free spirit or developing more emotional awareness — by hurrying.

A foreign language

Dance of Shiva is more like a slow steady study of life. Andrey says that through working with this material we will create new neural pathways — which translates to me as possibly creating different ways of approaching my life.

I want to be less reactive to the situations around me.

Less reactive and more reflective.

I find Andrey’s idea of going slowly to control the frustration with the learning process a good fit for me.

I know I’ve got some pretty ingrained patterns that aren’t working for me, so the promise of developing some new ways of looking at things is both exciting and scary. Using the body and the breath in an unfamiliar way to learn seems like a great challenge.

So. I’ve practiced yoga for twenty five years and love it.

But I’m not really in an active learning phase — if someone names a posture to me, I can do it or some variation of it. I’ve even become creative with my own personal practice, creating my own intuitive flow. The language of yoga is not unfamiliar to me.

Dance of Shiva, on the other hand, is a foreign language.

It is all new — I’m starting from scratch. Andrey suggests looking at the basic movements like the alphabet — that you can arrange them all kinds of ways and they are somewhat arbitrary at first — but they’ll make sense after a while.

Another epiphany here — I can learn a new way of communicating with myself.

It’s a slow process — but that’s okay

I may be learning the alphabet here — the basic movements — for a very long time. Or maybe not. Who knows?

What I do know though is that now I’m willing to do this. After having this material sitting around for over a year and being turned off because of the cover which looked way too complicated, I realize how judgmental I was.

I just wasn’t ready to open up to this material then — and that’s okay too. But judging too quickly is a pattern that I’m also familiar with — and willing to take a look at using Dance of Shiva as the language of change.

I’m only three days into this — and I’ve spent a total of maybe 45 minutes — but that’s a lot of learning for just getting through the introduction — for the first time.

Slow goes it for me — and I like it that way.

So long slavedriver!!!

Mmmmm. I totally appreciate Char’s honesty and clarity. As well as her ability to recognize which of her own patterns were getting in the way of her desire to interact with those patterns.

Speaking as someone who bought the DVD and then didn’t even take the plastic off for almost six months … it totally makes sense to me! Perspective. It’s awesome.
– Havi

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Why would you possibly want to do this?
• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.
• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.

But I’ll shut up now because this is not my post. It’s Gina’s and she rocks. Enjoy!
– Havi

So, you say Shiva Nata is about illuminating our patterns.

Okay, here’s one.

After going on incessantly about the Dance of Shiva to everyone and their rubber duck, I get an awesome email from Havi’s awesome assistant, Marissa, asking if I would be willing to write a guest post on her site, but, please, only if it’s comfortable, and it doesn’t need to be anything fancy, and….

Willing? Are you KIDDING ME??? Not only am I willing (and totally freaking honored) but this thing will practically write itself! Hell yeah!

I think you know what comes next.

What is it about the fact that, no matter how much I love something, how effortless it is to do otherwise, (and let’s not even talk about the stuff I don’t really want to do), as soon as a ‘deadline’ or ‘commitment’ enters into it, my brain turns to mush.

I will say that there isn’t the accompanying deadline dread… I think this is more about perfectionism.

Feeling like I’m not up to task of writing for someone else’s thing, for someone whom I respect, and who has shown a bit of respect for me.

Yikes.

I start to write. It’s really hard.

I spewed out a bunch of stuff, none of which I wanted to send.

Stuff about how this practice centers me, but more than that — it brings me a tangible feeling of being in control of my immediate space when I start to get overwhelmed (that cool vortex thing, no doubt).

About how I am all about making crazy connections … as I try to do with my own blog, in which I see shiatsu lessons as life lessons … and Shiva Nata just enhances awareness of those connections by like 300%.

And about how I come right smack face-to-face with that thing my brain does when it’s challenged by things like spreadsheets, or foreign accents, or driving directions dictated by my husband.

Yeah, there’s a thing my mind does…

It goes blank.

It drifts off. It finds anywhere else to be except here, where it becomes almost physically intolerable to sit still and muddle my way through to understanding.

I earned the epitaph, “Spacey” from my fourth grade math teacher. Like that?

I actually get a tightening sensation in my chest when I try to maintain my focus on something I don’t understand, and I’ve been known to cry when pressed too hard.

Sad, but true.

Shiva Nata … and my patterns.

That’s what happened after I started feeling pretty good with myself after getting the arm movements down in level one… until Andrey brought in the legs.

Shit. Oh, and have you seen my mind? It was here a minute ago…

I mean, I’m not an idiot. I will eventually get it, whatever it is, but I have to find my own way to understanding. Preferably with diagrams and other visual aids. I have to be patient with myself.

AND (I’m just realizing this now… holy crap, thank you again, Havi!) I have to be willing to ask other people to be patient with me as well.

Which I don’t do. Especially with my husband, who will keep asking me, “Are you with me? Do you get this? You don’t sound like you’re getting this…” And I’m like, yeah, yeah, and in my head, no, no, but I’ll figure it out somehow on my own. After I call myself an idiot and then cry.

I don’t yet know what the hard is behind the hard.

Why when puzzling out something even remotely challenging I have a sudden urge to attend to the laundry.

What I’m afraid will happen if there sit there past the point of agitation and gasket-blowing.

Why this post was so hard to write in spite of wanting so much to write it.

Maybe I’ll figure that out in Level Two.

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• Dance of Shiva on the brain
• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.
• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.

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

I don’t know about you …

… but I have a bit of a tortured past with exercise videos.

It always begins with the best of intentions … but after a handful of viewings I just can’t take the cheesiness or the repetitiveness or how disconnected I feel.

So these videos usually end up collecting dust.

When I stumbled on Havi’s blog last year, Dance of Shiva caught my eye. Intriguing!

I was knee deep in chiropractic school at the time and didn’t feel like I could start anything new, so I just started reading the blog and kept it in the back of my mind.

Now, I can see how starting this practice then would have helped me get through the final year of school with much more confidence and clarity, without taking any additional time but you know what they say about hindsight.

Given my history with videos, I was hesitant.

Not because I didn’t think it was probably total genius, but because of my own stuff.

I was at a point in my life where I wasn’t willing to pay for anything I wasn’t absolutely certain I would actually use. So I waited.

In the meantime, I really developed a trust in Havi and a deep respect for what she endorses and teaches. Even then I still felt like I didn’t have a lot of time to learn something new — especially something that is supposed to be hard.

Supposed to be hard?!

I mean, I just finished grad school and am SO OVER THE HARD.

But then I had some big massive anxiety-producing tests to take. And I have issues with test taking.

And I knew that Dance of Shiva would help me!

Actually, it kind of already was (just from engaging with the practice through reading the blog) so I resolved to give myself permission to take it really, really slowly.

And, that’s what I’ve done.

I can’t say that I’ve had any major hot-buttered epiphanies. But I can say that — and this is astonishing — I have had no sense of should at all at any step of the way during the process.

And I am a repeat offender when it comes to should-ing on myself.

I took it to heart when Havi said “Doing it is the mark of success, not doing it right”– which has made an important difference in the way I approach this practice.

But when I said slow, I meant slow.

At first, I read everything that came in the package but let the actual DVD collect dust for about a month. I did put it in a place where I could see it every single day.

I finally opened it and placed the DVD in the machine (that little bit can be a big step sometimes, am I right?) and watched all of the introductory theory stuff.

Then I followed Andrey through the first portion of level one. Then I put the DVD away and gave myself permission to play with what I learned for as long as I needed to.

I spent just a few minutes each day (or whenever else it would occur to me) trying to make sense of what I learned. Trying to see if I could do those arm movements on my own.

And I commenced studying, meditating and working on my test anxiety issues.

Four weeks later, I put the DVD back in to see how I was doing.

I had half of it all right and somehow totally skipped another part. Now I’m working on the other half.

No, really — slow.

Many weeks later, I’m still at the very beginning of level one. And I like it that way. I mean, I have spent the last seven years trying to shove an insane amount of information into my brain and in that process, I lost sight of the basics.

My intention in doing Dance of Shiva is all about laying a foundation and keeping my focus on the basics — letting the practice build as slowly as it needs to.

Does this count as an epiphany?

I just finished four years of grad school. Before that, I spent four years working and going to school — both full time. My to-do list in school got so insane that it left me completely dumbfounded at times. No matter how hard I worked, The List kept growing.

I’m not in school anymore (Yay!) but now I have a brand spanking new practice I have to plan for and blog writing to worry about — so The List is still in full force.

But there has been a huge shift in the way I interact with it.

You know the movie The Matrix, right? There is this point near the end where Neo realizes his true power and is able to suspend hundreds of flying bullets flying in mid air.

He looks at his nemesis (who is actually the dark side of himself, but that’s a whole other topic entirely) and cocks his head to the side as if thinking “Ah. Now I get it”, and then major badassery commences.

That’s how I feel now about my to do list. It’s like time has slowed down, each task is suspended in mid air and I can grab what I need to do.

The rest of the tasks patiently sit and wait while I commence with the whole changing the world thing.

I have also noticed a better ability to make sense of all of the random information in my brain. in school The Suits used the metaphor “drinking from a firehose” regarding the way they throw information at us and I would say that is a bit of an understatement.

The result has been an insanely foggy brain. Not just a little foggy, but maybe-I-should-see-a-neurologist foggy.

Now, I’m seeing patterns where I didn’t see them before.

I’m seeing connections in everything. And, I’m seeing how I process things and the steps I take broken down into smaller steps. My memory is coming back, clarity is coming back. It’s like my brain is being re-hydrated.

So, I’ve already had a sci-fi moment of clarity (which my inner geek loves) and I’m only still just flubbing up the first part of level one.

Oh, right. There is also the little detail about me totally rocking my exam. I focused more than I’ve ever been able to focus and I owned that exam.

If I was still should-ing on myself I’d be saying I should have started this practice the second I heard about it. But, I don’t do that anymore.

I think this is going to be a long and very interesting practice.

Thanks, Danielle!

If this seemed like your thing, you might like these too:

• The Flailing.
• Shiva Nata teacher training!
• Punk Rock Shivanauttery: answering a bunch of questions!