So I was teaching about how Dance of Shiva is all about the relationship between deconstruction and rebuilding. Create and destroy. Take something apart and then build something new with the old components.

That’s why Andrey calls it the liberation of consciousness. Because you can take any pattern — physical, energy, emotional, mental, spiritual — and use the parts of it to bring in the new pattern.

And the new pattern heals the old pattern. Patterns rewrite patterns. It’s like homeopathy but bigger.

So it’s really, really important that you keep reminding yourself that you’re paying attention to them right now.

You’re paying attention to them by noticing when the guilt comes up. You’re paying attention to them by acknowledging your stuck. You’re paying attention to them by agreeing to take your time with this.

And then when you have five minutes for some disoriented flailing around, maybe you’ll end up doing it.

And whenever that happens, it’s a good thing. Even if it’s not right now.

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.

This knowledge brings all sides of me into harmonious alignment.

Now during Shiva Nata when my leg spazzes forward when I meant for it to go back, and I experience that delicious brain-scramble feeling, my internal dialogue goes something like this:

Airy-fairy-side: Ooh fun!

Intellectual-side: Aha yes, neuroplasticity at work.

There is no glory in getting it right. It’s all about taking on the challenge and stepping up to the yeah, I’m ready to shift stuff and it’s kind of going to suck for a while point.

Not that you can’t rest into the dance sometimes. Because you can.

Because the practice will carry you. It’s strong enough to hold you in complete safety while you do this wacky, hard, frustrating transformational work.

But ultimately you’re going to have to invite yourself to find the next challenge.

And I’ll be there to help you.

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.

This comment on the last post (part 1) is from Jennifer Louden who is just completely awesome and has been on Oprah and I love her madly and you should all be reading her books or taking her classes and just thinking about her results in my writing ridiculous run-on sentences.

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?

Yes, they’d mixed up the Jewish ritual of mourning the dead with the mythical Hindu dance of destruction and new creation.

It happens.

So at least a couple times a month someone sends me an email that says, “What do I need to do to master the Dance of Shiva?”

Or sometimes they just report that they’re trying to master it. Or thinking about trying to master it. Every once in a while they actually apologize to me for not yet having gotten around to mastering it yet.

Okay. I really only have one response to that.