Today’s post is from the fabulous Rebecca Leigh. Super interesting piece. Yay, Rebecca! And thank you! – Havi If you’re not failing you’re not doing right. That was a surprise. Permission to do something badly? And then to pat myself on the back for it? For a long-serving perfectionist this was (and still is) a [...]

Today’s post is from the wonderful Léan Ní Chuilleanáin. Super interesting piece. Yay, Léan! And thank you! – Havi This week I’m on a Get Back On Track kick, and as part of that I’ve done not one but two sessions of Shiva Nata. (Yes, dear monsters, I hear your comment on the inappropriateness of [...]

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?

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).

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.