Brain mush, patterns of fear, and writing guest posts

This is an amazingly honest and insightful guest post from Gina Loree Marks.

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.