The baseball diamond.

I was maybe eight years old.

My parents had invited a visiting professor to dinner and he was explaining something about his work (which I assume was in the field of psychology or sociology).

It was about how people find things.

About tracking what we do when we look for things, and what the most efficient or rational methods are.

I may be missing all sorts of important aspects or implications here. But then again, I was eight.

Imagine you’ve lost a button on a baseball diamond.

That was the exercise.

The professor asked people to map out how they’d go about looking for the button.

Some people start at home plate and pace counter-clockwise around the edges.

Some people go up and down in lines.

You know, people vary .

But not that much.

My mother took the pen and the drawing of the baseball diamond…

And covered it with chaotic incoherent scribbles.

The professor looked at her, confused.

“I’ve never seen anyone do that before,” he said. “Probably because that’s not the most efficient way to do it .”

“Yeah, but she’d find the button before they would,” my father pointed out.

And anyone who knew my mother knew that this was true.

Patterns.

There are patterns in the shapes things take.

Patterns in the way we relate to the shapes things take.

Patterns in what we think is relevant to our relationships with the shapes things take and with our own patterns.

There is a genius in being able to operate in chaos.

To operate only in chaos? Not so good.

But to be able to operate in chaos is one of the things that Dance of Shiva gives you.

Order from chaos.

And new chaos from the order you just created.

That is Shiva Nata.

You can’t bring things into being without having a little bit of comfort with chaos.

Fortunately, doing Shiva Nata will untangle whatever internal patterns you have that make it uncomfortable for you to be in chaos.

Or uncomfortable to be in structure.

There is always another pattern within the pattern. And there is power in intentionally going to the places where you can’t see the pattern.

Because you are the pattern.

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

• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.
• Why would you possibly want to do this?
• Shiva Nata: odd and unexpected side effects

Very intriguing. Lots of possible useful applications.

And stuff that is especially interesting to Shivanauts.

The concept.

It’s about the patterns that emerge when you chart something that seems to be totally random.

The Levy flight is a variation on what’s called a “random walk”.

From Wikipedia:

“A random walk is a mathematical formalization of a trajectory that consists of taking successive random steps.

For example, the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas, the search path of a foraging animal, the price of a fluctuating stock and the financial status of a gambler can all be modeled as random walks.”

So it’s about mapping the way we do things. Especially when we think we aren’t following any particular pattern.

Why I love this.

Well, mostly because working with Dance of Shiva has resulted in a slightly obsessive fascination with patterns, especially with ones that are unlikely or unexpected, but turn out to have their own intelligence.

So.

Here is what we’re actually doing when we do Shiva Nata:

We are internalizing patterns. And systems of patterns.

As in:

Here are all the possible ways through which point A can interact with all other points.

We are taking apart the patterns we know, both consciously and unconsciously.

We’re learning more about them.

We’re unconsciously and consciously figuring out how the elements of what we already know can turn into new possibilities and new creation.

We’re rewiring the parts of us that think that the only options available are the ones we can see immediately in front of us.

And that’s just the beginning.

Something to think about.

Even the most random, free-form explorations have structure and form. Structure and form that can be mapped and played with.

And even the most solid, stable structures have elements of chaos and play.

When we allow things that seemed to be rigidly patterned to have more than one possible meaning, we are filled with possibility.

And when we let things that seem to be chaotic and confusing contain elements of familiarity and constancy, the patterns we can’t see yet begin to appear.

An exercise.

Some of you may have done this with me in Berlin in 2006.

Put on some music. Dance around the room, making stuff up and letting your body do what it feels like doing.

Stop.

Do a round of Dance of Shiva, sticking to something you already know how to do (ex. slow Level 1 vertical arms).

Stop. Remain standing with eyes closed for two to three minutes, observing body sensations, grounding, absorbing patterns.

Free-form dance again, this time noticing which patterns your body is drawn to, which patterns you subconsciously repeat.

Stop. Absorb.

Now do three to five minutes of Dance of Shiva — something you cannot do (ex. Level 3 fast with legs). Get completely lost and confused.

Stop. Ground. Center. Feel the spirals still moving around you while you’re standing still.

One more time. Free-form dance to music. Notice the new patterns your body and brain are coming up with. Notice tendencies to do what is familiar, and what happens and your brain and body together begin to overwrite these tendencies.

Invent. Make up a yoga pose. Try a dance move that you can feel but can’t describe. Use walls and space without rules. Total creative freedom.

There are still patterns here in this new territory. Complex ones.

They’re just the ones you didn’t know about yet.

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

• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.
• Shiva Nata: odd and unexpected side effects
• Why would you possibly want to do this?

Okay. I’ve been doing lots of thinking lately about the interaction between Shiva Nata and everything I do in my business.

The obvious connections. And the more subtle ones.

When we were at the Destuckification Retreat and doing Dance of Shiva every day (sometimes twice!), the moments of bing were flying fast and furious.

And one of the things that came up was that our Shiva Nata practice was preparing our brains to go way deeper with the change-your-patterns material.

But also the actual content of the program was helping us be better equipped to contain and process all the crazy-cool stuff that the physical practice was giving us.

The first Shivanautical epiphany.

This wasn’t even mine.

In fact, it kind of drives me crazy that I hadn’t come up with this before.

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.

And then, of course, when the new pattern becomes automatic and unconscious … it’s time to bring in more new patterns to engage with.

Anyway.

Then Hiro pointed out that everything I teach is a parallel of the Dance of Shiva. Everything I teach breaks down into destuckification and biggification.

And what is destuckification if not deconstruction? And what is biggification if not new creation.

*slaps forehead*

The next Shivanautical epiphany.

Again, I was talking to Hiro.

And she was speaking beautifully eloquently (no big surprise there) about energy.

Lots of people talk about releasing energy. Releasing gunk and stucknesses in the system. Releasing things that no longer serve you. And then giving all that stuff back to the universe or to the earth or whatever.

Releasing things to be transformed into something else.

But she was describing this process in the coolest way ever. It was about giving back the thing that isn’t working … and then that thing being dissolved until the only thing that remains was the core essence of it.

And then that core essence infusing the world with its truth and beauty.

So it’s not letting things go. It’s letting their essence be free so it can transform everything it encounters.

It’s not destruction of the thing. It’s the deconstruction of the outer layers of the thing because at its heart is something beautiful and necessary.

And then the next one.

And of course when I did Dance of Shiva the next morning, what came up later in the day was that we’re constantly throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

We have all these things we don’t like. Our monsters. The shoes that get thrown at us in the form of criticism. The difficult conversations. The avoidance and the iguanas.

And inside each of those things is something important that is completely hidden. Or completely distorted.

And that’s what the deconstruction of Shiva Nata is for. Releasing the essence. Transforming the whole.

Dude.

Again, it’s kind of hard to explain because epiphanies are stoopid. But it’s also kind of awesome.

Waiting to see what the next one will bring.

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

• Shiva Nata: false gods?
• Ask a Shivanaut: Dance of Shiva before or after a yoga practice?
• Shivanautical realizations + epiphanies: take 2

Look at the comments on pretty much any post, and someone is going to be talking about how long it’s been since …

And I want you to know that it’s fine.

Not doing is okay. Not starting is okay.

The only thing that’s not okay is the guilt.

I mean that.

What to do when you’re not practicing:

You remember that this is normal.

And then you talk to yourself about it.

You say this:

(or something like it)

1. This is my guilt. It is not me.
2. This guilt is a pattern.
3. Patterns are not good or bad. They’re just information about what’s going on in my life.
4. Yes, doing five minutes of Dance of Shiva would help me start untangling this pattern. But I don’t have to do it right this second.
5. Whenever I practice, that will be the right time. The practice will wait for me.

Because you don’t want to be working the guilt.

That’s just using the idea of Shiva Nata to reinforce the old pattern (feeling crappy about yourself) … instead of using the actual practice to rewrite the pattern.

You know if you do the practice (and make it hard) that it will start making synaptic connections that will help you to understand why you’re not doing it.

But that does not have to happen right now. It just doesn’t.

And it doesn’t need to happen out of guilt.

You don’t need to shift this pattern right away. It’s much more about just paying attention to the fact that it’s showing up again.*

Which Dance of Shiva will help you do.

* For more help with deguiltifying, there are the recorded q&a calls that come with the Starter Kit, where I talk about this theme a lot.

It’s not you.

Whatever patterns you’re working on (even the ones that you don’t know you’re working on yet), they need you.

They need you to spend some time with them in a deguiltified way.

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.

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

• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.
• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.
• Shiva Nata: odd and unexpected side effects

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.

I would like to know if the Shiva Nata — is it in anyway to be considered Avodah Zarah? I am interested in ordering, and learning, but I want to be sure that I would be getting involved with something that is coming from a pure source.

Or:

My husband is concerned that it is avodah zara and that the goddess Shiva was a goddess of destruction to get to creativity, and if it’s a dance to her or her dance it would be avodah zara.

Okay. I’m more than happy to help out with this.

I don’t know that I have a single brilliant answer, but I definitely do have some thoughts.

So: a few thoughts!

Thought #1. The Dance of Shiva … doesn’t really have anything to do with Shiva.

Actually, not only is it not about Shiva, it’s also not really a dance. :)

But that’s another subject entirely, and probably deserves its own post.

What I can say in a very definite way is that this practice is not about worshipping Shiva.

And it’s not about being with Shiva.

So yes, he (it’s a he) is one of the principal deities of the Hindu religion, and that is where the name of this practice came from, but it is not a religious practice and it is not a dance to Shiva or from Shiva.

It’s about the principle embodied in the practice (and in the mythology that gave birth to it).

Thought #2. It’s not Shiva — it’s the principle.

The principle is transformation.

The principle is that any pattern can be taken apart into its components and be rebuilt as something else … something better.

The principle is swords into plowshares.

The principle is that any habit is a pattern and any pattern can be changed.

The principle is that change is the natural way of the world (of nature, of seasons, of growing older), and that we can use the informational patterns of change to improve our relationship with ourselves.

The principle is that deconstructing our old patterns can give us the information we need to move through the fog and see just how beautiful we are. How beautiful it is to be alive.

Thought #3. So, as metaphors go, it’s a pretty great one.

Shiva is a metaphor.

This concept, taken from Indian mythology, is this:

Destruction (or deconstruction) is powerful and useful, because it allows us to rebuild …

This is a concept that is super-useful for making Big Crazy Life Changes in a gentle, non-scary way.

It’s also a concept that has so much universal truth inside of it that it can be found in many religions and many practices.

So it’s not a dance to Shiva or to his qualities. It’s a practice that embodies a universal concept.

Thought #4. The name? Yeah, perhaps an unfortunate choice…

Well, at least from a marketing standpoint.

Because … Dance of Shiva? It’s hard to say, it’s hard to explain, and we’re never going to get the domain.

And it’s practically impossible to rank for “dance of shiva” as a search term on Google … very frustrating!

I mean, who can compete with Fritjof Capra?

So had it been up to me I probably would have called it something else. But it wasn’t my choice. And that’s probably a good thing.

Andrey Lappa (my teacher) is the one who brought the practice back to life. He is a brilliant thinker and a wonderful chooser-of-metaphors.

And the original name is a powerful transformational metaphor.

So that’s what it’s called. And if you feel that uncomfortable with the name, you could always call it something else.

Thought #5. It isn’t a religious practice — it’s a self-work practice.

Yes, some of the movements resemble some of the things you see in Indian dance and statues.

And the principle of Shiva (deconstruction or dissolution) is reflected in the way the practice helps you take apart patterns to make room for new ones.

But it isn’t a religious practice in any way — it’s a self-work practice.

In Hebrew I would say: avodah atzmit (self-work), not avodah zara.

Thought #6. You can make the practice your own.

It’s about expanding the power of your brain.

But it’s also about your relationship to yourself and your heart … and it’s about (or can be) your own spiritual relationship.

You could bring into it any spiritual elements that suit you, as with any other practice. 

In my own practice, I generally take a few minutes beforehand to focus on my intention, and then use Shiva Nata as a warm up for my quiet meditation time.

Andrey himself is a Buddhist, and he is really very open to everyone having his/her own personal relationship with the divine or whatever they choose to believe in — or not believe in.

I personally view Shiva Nata as brain training that has meditative effects, but not as a religious practice in and of itself.

And again, If it were up to me, I might not have opted to use the Shiva terminology, given the negative or potentially uncomfortable associations for many different people.

It’s your practice. You get to choose how to think about it.

Thought #7. I don’t have to look farther than my own practice.

Because if I thought now for a second that practicing Dance of Shiva could be a form of avodah zara, I wouldn’t do it.

I just wouldn’t.

I live a very conscious, intentional, spiritual life — a Jewish spiritual life — and that’s something I wouldn’t feel comfortable with and I wouldn’t do.

It was something I was also a little concerned about before I started, because of the name — I didn’t want to have anything to do with something that might be a Hindu practice. 

But I very quickly saw that this is a transformational practice of healing, and not a religious one.

Thought #8. The principle of not making false gods holds for many things.

This is how I look at it:

You can make false gods from anything … including from the principle that one may never make false gods.

Which is why the principle of bringing conscious awareness into your life is so useful. Because it helps you know in your heart that you are not worshipping other beings, ideas or traditions.

It helps you feel more secure in your faith and your path. It helps you trust yourself.

And I don’t know of a better practice to develop conscious awareness than Shiva Nata.

It brings me deeper into my relationship with myself, it brings me deeper into my relationship with the divine. It gives each person who practices it the thing that he or she needs most to connect with their own hearts.

Thought #9. You don’t have to do it.

If the thought of doing a practice that shares a name with another tradition is too weird or uncomfortable for you … you don’t have to practice it.

I have no desire or intention to dictate your experience of the practice or to imply that it’s something you “should” do.

So I want you to know that you have full permission from me to practice or not, to have whatever experience you have with it, to do what helps you feel safe and comfortable.

It’s your life, and I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do with it.

I’m out of thoughts about this.

But I hope that some of this was helpful.

Bivracha,
Havi

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

• Oh, and some more epiphanies.
• Why would you possibly want to do this?
• Needles in haystacks. More patterns.

Okay, now I’m just being silly.

I’ll stop talking now and let her do her thing!
– Havi

What’s the brain got to do with it?

Shiva Nata has changed my life immeasurably, delivering mind-boggling emotional and work-related breakthroughs. And yet my stubbornly ungrateful intellectual-side can’t help thinking but WHYYYYYYYYYY?

“Pattern-shifting. Epiphanies. That sounds just lovely”, says my airy-fairy side.

“But what the f—- does that meeeeeeannnn?” demands the eye-rolling, intellectual-side.

Enter neuroplasticity.

Oooh, yes! [vigorous head-nodding] We both like that word. Nice and science-y, yet somewhat mysterious at the same time.

The accepted doctrine in medical and scientific circles for most of the 20th century was that the human brain was like a machine. That it had certain locations which corresponded to specific functions, and these were fixed in place after the critical period of brain-development in childhood.

So, for example, if a stroke victim had damage to the physical part of the brain that was “mapped” to move their right leg, then there was no hope of ever recovering that ability, because that part of the brain-machine was simply broken.

Neuroplasticity is the idea that the brain is more like a fluid organism than a fixed machine.

As recently as the 1970s rogue scientists would be laughed out of their labs for suggesting such heresy, but today it is pretty well-accepted that the adult human brain is capable of re-mapping its pathways.*

This concept of the changeable adult brain has far-reaching effects. It is what stands behind the most promising treatments for stokes, autistism, blindness, deafness (the cochlear implant works because of neuroplasticity), and depression.

The rest of us get to experience this concept on a slightly less dramatic scale.

If the pathways that neurons travel in our brains are plastic, that means that we can change them. We can physically create connections where there were none before.

Which means we can shift entrenched habits and old patterns of thought, while allowing a bigger capacity for un-learning and re-learning.

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.

*A great book on this topic is The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, MD.

(And another useful resource for learning more about this subject is Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley. — Ed.)

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

• Dance of Shiva on the brain
• Help me out? Title for the Shivanaut Manual?
• Ask A Shivanaut: what’s with the epiphanies?

The other day I overheard (well, it was on Twitter, so I saw rather than heard) someone say that Level 2 Dance of Shiva wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be.

Yeah?

Good. Then make it hard.

Do it with your eyes closed.

• With squares.
• With colors instead of numbers.
• With different numbers (try 5-8 instead of 1-4).
• With legs super high.
• With transquarters.
• With music.
• With serious speed.
• With complex breathing patterns.

It’s your job to find the challenge.

Unfortunately, it’s not the job of the dance to make you work at it. That’s your job.

It’s only the job of the dance to transform your brain. And it will. Like crazy.

The second something is easy for you, it’s your responsibility to move to the next level. Or to shake up the level you’re currently working on.

Or you can always come to the weekend epiphanies workshop in North Carolina (three spots left, by the way) and get the mind-expanding experience of a lifetime.

You’ll hate it.

This workshop won’t be fun. But you definitely won’t think that it’s easy anymore.

And you’ll learn lots of ways to find the challenge and make it work for you.

There is no learning without challenge.

This is one of the reasons why Dance of Shiva transforms perfectionism.

Perfectionism isn’t possible in a practice where the goal is to do it badly.

Because you’re constantly trying to do it wrong.

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.

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

• Finding the challenge (part 1.5)
• Shiva Nata: odd and unexpected side effects
• Whoo! Workshop in San Francisco!

You’ll see why!

Here’s Lisa:

I’ve been practicing yoga for about two and a half years now, and it’s been a huge blessing in my life. I’d say about 90% of that being able to love myself and be happy has come directly out of my yoga practice.

But I know there is more that I want to do (as in “what do you want to do when you grow up”), and not only do I not know how to get there, I don’t even know where it is I want to be going.

And that part has stayed the same for many years now.

I had two conversations a couple of weeks ago that got me to start doing Shiva Nata. The first was with a woman who I went on a yoga retreat with recently.

She told me that she became a school teacher because she saw an astrologer who told her that her purpose in this life is to open her heart. I don’t remember the full chain of events, but that advice led her to leave a job in financial services and become a grade school teacher, and she couldn’t be happier.

I related this conversation to a friend who has made allusions to believing in astrology.

Astrology kind of drives me nuts. I mean, really? She changed her life based on what some stranger told her based ostensibly on the position of the planets and stars when she was born? Sorry, that’s madness.

But at the same time, it worked for her. I expressed to this friend my jealousy, how I wished sometimes that I could set aside my rational mind and believe in astrology, or religion, or whatever and someone could just tell me where I’m supposed to be going.

But I value my critical thinking skills too much, and I just can’t see that happening. His response was, “it doesn’t really matter where you get your direction, sometimes you just need someone to give you direction.”

Enter Shiva Nata.

Reflecting on those conversations I realized that I was comfortable with the insights yoga was giving me because they were essentially coming from me.

They didn’t require belief in the metaphysical. And that led me to recall what I had read about Shiva Nata on your blog and think that this is a path to insight I can walk.

So here I am. No hot buttered epiphanies yet, but my arms ache like crazy when I’m doing it and I’m lost a lot of the time so I think I’m doing it right.

And most importantly I am comfortable having faith that the insights will come. It would be hard to overstate what a big deal that is for me. I’m getting a little choked up just writing this.

So again, thank you. I am very excited about this!

Love,
Lisa

P.S. Did I come across as too judgmental on the subject of astrology? I just want to clarify that I don’t have a problem with people believing in astrology in general — if it works that’s great. And obviously it worked brilliantly for the woman I was talking about. I just can’t go there for myself.

I hope I didn’t offend you.

And my response:

Hey Lisa!

No worries. You’ll have to try way way harder than that to offend me!

I also think astrology is pretty goofy despite having had some good results with it. Actually there are all sorts of things that I don’t believe in but somehow work for me.

Like, I go to my friend Carolyn for PSYCH-K sessions which use muscle testing stuff to shift limiting beliefs.

The results are absolutely phenomenal but every single time I am convinced that it’s crap and that I should actually be able to make my muscles do what I want, but then I can’t. Because it works. So so weird.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of cynicism and skepticism, and at the same time of wackiness, so that’s more than fine.

As for the rest of it, that’s HUGE. Huge.

And thanks for the great reminder. Sometimes I forget to emphasize that yes, it’s all inside of you and you don’t have to believe in anything external if you don’t want to.

Your Dance of Shiva practice is just making connections between you and you, or really just making them more obvious.

This is such an important point for so many people.

You might also want to do Shiva Nata in conjunction with shavasana and journaling.

Like, five minutes of Shiva Nata, five minutes shavasana, ten minutes just writing thoughts down.

I also like to do it with some sort of intention to my subconscious. As in, “hey, I’d love to get a little clarity around this!” Or “Is there something else I need to know about that?”

And most important of all, if you want those epiphanies, just make sure that you keep messing up! Do it wrong! Do it more wrong! Really screw it up!

Aaaah, that’s more like it. :)
Take care, my dear. Love to you.
Havi

And Lisa:

Hi Havi,

Phew! Okay, that’s a relief. I have friends who have done the muscle testing and report similar experiences.

Very strange and interesting things, these minds and bodies of ours. I am the first to admit that there is a whole lot that science can’t account for–at least not yet.

So yes, I am also open to wackiness but not so much wackiness based on externals. Then again, I’ve never seen a serious practitioner of astrology, so what do I know :-)

Thanks for the tips on intention setting, shavasana and journaling. I didn’t do those things for the first few days, but I have for the last two. At the very least the ritual is useful, and writing more has been something I’ve been, ahem, procrastinating over for some time.

So having a ritual of sitting and writing for 10 minutes every morning will be great I think.

Love,
Lisa

And me again:

Oh I love where you’re going with this. If you just stick to internal wisdom, you’ll have more than enough to keep you busy for a lifetime!

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. 

And that’s it.

Just to sum up … some points for you:

• Internal space is infinite. You can keep going deeper inside yourself forever.
• External (aka outer) space is also infinite. You can keep going deeper into external connection if you wish to.
• Internal and external space are mirror reflections. This is one of the principles of Dance of Shiva.
• This means that waving your arms and legs around in external space is making ripples and waves in internal space.
• Everything you need to know is inside of you.
• Whether you use this practice for internal or external connection, you’ll get what you need.

Thanks for reading!

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

• “Do men ever do Shiva Nata?”
• Punk Rock Shivanauttery: answering a bunch of questions!
• Ask a Shivanaut: Dance of Shiva + pregnancy.

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.

Also she invited me to be the official Dance of Shiva genius slash scholar-in-residence sort of thing at her Writer’s Retreat Spa thing this summer in Taos, New Mexico so if you’re a woman and you write … transformative freaking experience is all I’m saying.

Anyway, Jen does Dance of Shiva too. And …

Well, I’ll let her explain what’s going on:

Okay, here’s what I’m not getting AND I SWEAR I’M READING ALL THE STUFF and watching the theory part (twice) and all that but AFTER MONTHS I STILL can’t do the all the combos of arms not even close or legs fast but I can do them slow.

So I think, “Do I keep going back and trying to learn just the arms until I can do them right going fast and without the video?” “Yes!” “But no, then I won’t be confusing my brain because I can tell I’m getting bored.” So I do legs and arms or vertical arms fast and I can’t do it AT ALL and so I go back and try learning the basics again and now I’m the guy in your question although still practicing…

I’m doing it without sound, counting, not counting, doing basic arms on my own without the video here and there throughout the day, can’t do it with eyes closed but have tried. I’m so not getting any of it yet still getting that flat feeling SO do I just leap ahead even though I haven’t mastered the first parts? (I can do the very basic four part horizontal and vertical arms)

I really don’t mind getting it wrong because I’ve always been a physical dolt. And I like to skip ahead. But is that okay when i can’t do all the arm combos, not even close?

I’m so confused!

And exhale ………

First of all, everyone send Jen a mental hug because yuck! Feeling frustrated and stuck and not knowing what to do is no fun. No fun at all.

Next step is just breathe breathe breathe because I happen to have a LOT of opinions about this.

And enough experience that everyone including famous people like Jennifer Louden and including pretty much everyone in the world except for Andrey Lappa has to listen to me, like it or not.

Things you need to know that you don’t know. Yet.

1. You’re not supposed to be able to combine arms and legs yet.
After just a couple months? That’s crazy talk.

Combining arms and legs is incredibly difficult. It took me six months to combine them. And I was unemployed. It’s not like I had anything else to do.

There are two exceptions to this rule. If you are a professional dancer/choreographer like the ones I used to regularly beat up lead trainings for in Berlin, then yeah, you should be able to pick it up in a couple of weeks of hard work.

Or if you are James Bartley aka the dancing geek, and fabulously dedicated and have been dancing for your entire life.

Otherwise you should really not be able to combine yet. That would be absurd.

2. Use intermediary levels.
You’re already doing this a bit by doing without sound, but there are really all sorts of ways you can create mini in-between levels.

• Do level 1 horizontal and vertical arms fast and just do it completely wrong and practice being okay with doing it completely wrong.
• Do level 1 H & V arms slow and alternate between having the arms be very loose and soft and flowing … and then very hard and precise.
• Do level 1 H & V arms slow but count the numbers aloud along with Andrey as you do it. Or at least try to guess the next numbers.
• Do level 1 H & V arms slow without sound and with music. Then fast to music.
• Do level 1 H & V arms slow without sound and count your breath. For example exhale exhale inhale inhale. Commit to a rhythm to get focus.

3. Change your focus.
Spend a week or two just working on connections and transquarters.

Or do a little Level 2 to mix it up.

Actually I would suggest doing Level 2 transquarters and then going back to Level 1. Now THAT will mess with your head. *cackles gleefully*

4. Who said you have to do everything in order?
You don’t. Skip ahead if you like. Just make sure that you come back to stuff later.

5. Ask yourself what the pattern is.
Dance of Shiva always brings up and works on life patterns that are keeping us stuck. So anytime we get especially stuck in the practice, it’s usually a reflection of stuff that’s going on in real life.

The question then becomes:

Is your pattern one of losing patience with things that don’t show results right away?

Or maybe your pattern is about expecting that you won’t be able to do what other people can do.

Or maybe your pattern is about rebellion and struggle.

Once you know what pattern you’re working on (or might be working on), you can make smart decisions.

There’s basically two ways you can take it.

Either ….

To flow with your pattern but still bring conscious awareness to it. You might even create an intention before your practice to receive some insights from the dance around this particular pattern.

Or …

To play with your pattern by doing the opposite of what you normally would. Surprise yourself. Take another path. Ask yourself what would be the thing you’d never do in this situation and then see what that would be like.

Because when it comes to Dance of Shiva, you have to do it wrong. But when it comes to learning how to love yourself, you can’t do it wrong.

Does that make sense? What do you think?

Love, love, love,
Havi & Selma

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

• Make. It. Hard.
• The Levy Flight. Patterns. Again.
• Hey, Shivanauts in Berlin!

Six months of using Andrey Lappa’s Dance of Shiva DVD on a daily basis. Loving the practice. But then … well, this is how he put it:

“I just never noticed the benefits that others seem to have. Now I play with it about once every few weeks or so. I do training of some sort every morning.

Lately I have been thinking of giving Dance of Shiva another try … so your message comes at an opportune time (message from the universe?).”

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

Ohmygosh! 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, it’s funny how we like to think that of all the people in the world we’ll be the one exception that proves the rule.

Here’s the thing. What’s much more likely is that we’re doing it wrong.

So I asked this guy what he’d been practicing. Level 1. Horizontals and verticals. Just doing the spirals. Stuff like that.

Uh huh. Thought so.

That’s why I go on and on and on about this in the Starter Kit ebooks.

Without challenge there is no learning.

If you ever have the chance to study Dance of Shiva with Andrey Lappa, you’ll hear him say that more than once.

I don’t know if that’s always true, but it’s certainly true for Dance of Shiva.

Yeah. Sorry. In order to have breakthroughs with the Dance of Shiva you really have to do the parts that are too hard for you.

When you’re working with the parts you already know, you’re not challenging your neurons to make new connections.

Sure it can still be fun and it’s a nice flow and good muscle work. Do only what you know or what you can do without making a fool of yourself, and you’ll still have some results.

Good ones. Like really awesome focus, powerful meditations and the most gorgeous triceps ever.

But not the epiphanies.

Sorry.

If you want the breakthroughs to come, you’ve got to do it wrong. Wronger! More wrong than that! You’ve got to seek out the challenge.

Because the breakthroughs come when you’re a. getting completely and utterly and humiliatingly lost or b. just on the cusp of grasping something new. Once you’ve had your breakthrough, it’s time to crank it up a notch.

Make it harder. Do it faster. Add another element. Get it wrong. Mess it up. Lose yourself in the patterns.

I’ve never, ever heard of someone doing Dance of Shiva and making it challenging and not having epiphanies.

The only way you’re not going to be getting the benefits is if you only do what you know. Or what you can.

This happens to me too when I’m prepping for a workshop or festival I’m going to teach at.

I start practicing what I plan to teach instead of what I need to learn. No more epiphanies. But I have enough experience memories of having learned this the hardest way possible to be able to stop and say ohhhhhhhhh.

And then do what I need to do to make them come back.

If you just do what you know, you’re doing it wrong.

More next time about how to go about feeling safe and comfortable messing up. In the meantime, big hug to you. I know! Argh! Just trust me on this one.

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

• Dance of Shiva + Roller Derby! Whoo!
• What if you don’t like it?
• It only took a year