Shiva Nata: the Dance of ShivaOh, and some more epiphanies.
Because why not.
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.
Twitter: kimianak
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that you’ve said it I totally can see how our Shiva Nata practice and what we were learning at the retreat were supporting each other.
And those insights from Hiro and you are brilliant. Thanks for sharing them, Havi!
Josiane´s last blog ..A (huge!) shift in perspective
Wow. Uh, so, that last bit brought tears to my eyes.
Why? Because I keep judging myself and putting myself down and thinking I’m horrible and ugly and all these bad things, but, it’s like that’s just all the outer layers that I’ve heaped on myself through the years, but if I get down there and clean myself off and let the gunk go, I know I’m going to be this shining, beautiful thing.
It’s just going to take time to strip all those layers away and to let those layers show me what’s at the heart of them. Let them teach me what they did for me.
Lovely and timely, as always, Havi!!
Just yesterday I had a deconstruction deal going on. Only I hadn’t looked at quite like that until reading this.
It went something like this.
“Why is this weight thing a constant head rear-er?” (insert appropriate nasally “Waaaaa” here)
I worked through an exercise from Mark Silver’s book and it got dusted off more and more until I was sitting with this essence of APPROVAL.
And from there I was aware of how often and varied are the ways I get approval in every day life and I brush them away, shrug my shoulders, INVALIDATE the person approving.
I am given the gift of approval daily in small and sometimes very large ways but I’m so worried about getting approval I had closed the door to receiving it…sort of…or never truly sitting with the need; so not acknowledging.
Or something like that.
It probably makes way more sense in my heart than in these words, but you know…
CJ
Twitter: roomtosmile
dear havi–
i am a brand-new shivanaut (yeah! i love titles! i love groups!) and have found the changes in my life in the past four days to be…well, when i tried to describe them to my loving mother, i had to preface it with, “i know it sounds like i’m stoned…but it’s just shiva nata!” but actually, it’s not so much like they’re changes in my *life*, more like changes in my understanding of my soul. i kind of did think i’d be perfected from this practice–you know, all the rough ways would be made smooth and all that. but really, it’s more a matter of uncovering the pure heart and intention that was behind each of the patterns i’ve seen so far–because all those weird bumps and glitches really, really did all start life as something that wanted to protect me, or make me happy, or make things easier. and now of course, some of them need to examine if they still want to be walls now that we all are a little wiser…
last week’s parsha was ki tissa, which i have always loved–the golden calf, betzalel, men with hearts of wisdom, whiny israelites…and this week, it really hit me that false idols (which i’ve been thinking of for years now as the demons of TV! and Consumption! and Celebrity!) are really things that we engineer to simply feel more secure. we make like the israelites, and beg someone else to make us something that will Fix Us and keep us from the horrible hungry monster of worry. Just something external that will help us stop thinking about the horrible gaping hole inside of us.
this week, i began to think of the internal ground of parshat ki tissa as a moment where we were asked to find strength inside ourselves. not forever, just a moment that would begin to help us build our own security muscles. and we fail, collectively, because we need a false idol, a transitional object. we get so scared and unwilling-unmovable, really–because we can’t see that there might be anything positive or tender or sweet about the walls/monsters/iguanas living inside of us. we want them out, and we want something to make us feel better. for me, i’ve always worshipped the False Idol of looking and dressing perfectly. now, i’m beginning to ask the question: what makes me want to start melting down all my earrings to make a pretty little golden calf in the first place?
sorry! so long! ah! but seriously, havi, shiva nata in all its mystery might be the best thing to have happened to me since EFT, the fluent self and yoga came along. which is to say, it is a Very Good Thing.
b’vracha! hamon!
jessie
Havi! Selma!
This is off-topic. Sorry. I wanted to tell you that I (finally!) took time out to listen to the recording of your Dust off the DVD teleclass last night, and it was really, really inspiring. You addressed something I had been worrying about (whether your brain is really benefiting if you’re screwing up the movements–so pleased to know it is!). I woke up this morning excited about taking on the shivanata challenge again. I’m looking forward to reading your responses to the questions you couldn’t get to in the class here on the blog!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Agnes Northstar´s last blog ..Easy Now
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