Oh, odds and ends from my Dance of Shiva practice journal.

Or, more accurately, a bunch of post-it notes.

But yes. Things I realized this week after Shiva-ing it up here and there.

Oh, bless your heart. Of course, sweetpea.

No one likes Shiva Nata. Well, that’s not true. Lots of people do. I have no idea what’s wrong with them though.*

* It’s probably the students who have done it with me in person when we get all silly. I’ll bet they like it. Ridiculous.

But really? Not liking it? So completely normal.

Thing 1: You might surprise yourself by having fun.

Sure, I have been known to say that it’s not fun.

But that’s my experience. And my particularly twisted sense of humor.

Don’t let me dictate or define your experience for you. It’s your experience.

Help?*

*Is there a word that goes in the blank? Am I even in the right direction? Is there a better title I’m not thinking of? Do I need to devote my practice for the next few days to finding a perfect simple solution? Brainstorm and namestorm with me, please!

Of course you’re nervous. You SHOULD be. This is some crazy life-changing stuff.

If you’re drawn to it, yeah that’s probably a sign that it’s something you need.

But scared? Absolutely.

Because internal space is infinite.

And since Dance of Shiva is all about the relationship between internal and external space, you’ll get so much good stuff from that practice too. Love it.

So this, of course, feeds right into the huge, huge, huge fear that 90% of my students have. Which is:

Oh no! What if I’m the one it doesn’t work on? What if it helps everybody else and it doesn’t help me?

I wanted to share a bit from an email exchange I had a little while ago.

Because it’s interesting, possibly helpful and also just really sweet.

So please enjoy this charming letter from Nathan in Scotland, who has kindly given me permission to reprint some of our correspondence here, in the hopes that my answer to him may prove useful to others.

And even if not, it will at least teach you something about the art of writing email subject headers:

Shiva Nata, ego pumping, expanding comfort zones and a disabled duck (that’s me)

Now that is a subject header. How can you not love Nathan instantly? I don’t know either.

Just a quickie, for those of you who don’t hang out on my Fluent Self blog.

Today is the first day of Non-Sucky Yoga Month — something I totally made up because I’m spontaneous and dorky that way.

Okay, so admittedly this site doesn’t get anywhere near as much love from me as my main home at The Fluent Self (and I apologize for that), so really I have no right to get annoyed by questions I don’t know how to answer.

Because I could just put up a FAQ or something. And yeah, I will.

Anyway, here’s the question that always baffles me:

“I want to learn Dance of Shiva — what do I do?”