Excuse the non sequitur picture, this is just kinda cool, in a silly way

This was the first time doing vertical. And again (partially) while waiting for tea.

There is a lot of overlap with the horizontal. For instance, starting with double-2 vertical is just like the second movement of double-1 horizontal. I think there’s a similar correspondence for all movements. That makes it easier.

And counting definitely helped.

But my arms were definitely feeling it. All of those twisty horizontal 3 positions.

Well, this is kind of just a small update to keep up the chatter. Have fun peeps and dance on.

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Havi Brooks said that someone who bought the DVD from her would practice Dance of Shiva while waiting for the tea kettle to boil. Well, I was up before 8 today (I know, it’s crazy) and wanted to get out of this little slump I’m in. I set the water to boil and hopped into Level 4 horizontal.

And let me just say that it is the perfect amount of time. I got through all of Level 4 just as the tea was ready.

Level 4 is getting easier. At least, the horizontal part. I hope to start the vertical part later today. I find that saying the numbers helps keep me in a good rhythm. It’s getting to the point where my hands know that from 2 horizontal they should go to 3 vertical. All I have to do is say “3″.

I’m trying to get back into the habit of practicing regularly. Not just regularly, but a lot. I don’t want to have a schedule. I want to do it when I need it (or before I need it, if you know what I mean). It makes me feel so good and smart and focused and energetic. I miss that. And I want it back. So much better than web surfing, even though that’s fun, too. But that’s draining. DofS is energizing and refreshing. Why not stand up and do a couple of rounds of DofS?

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High Five Shiva

I’m rehabilitating my knee, so I’ve been missing the good exercise feeling. You know, being bathed in testosterone and growth hormone. Feeling your blood sugar normalizing and feeding your brain.

I can’t do anything strenuous. I’m laying off of my knee. But, I still want to feel good. Not lethargic and lazy. So, I thought, what better than Dance of Shiva? I’ve been neglecting it and I want to boost my practice. And I don’t want to backslide.

So I jumped in and did Level 1 and 2 of Shiva Nata. Nice. I had gotten a little slow at it, but I found my stride eventually. A few mistakes.

After not doing it for so long, I’ve realized how valuable the practice can be. I want to do it more. I will get to level 7. I think that’s the highest one. Whatever the highest one is, that’s the one I’d like to get to.

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Just finished two rounds of Level 4 Horizontal.

My practice has been sporadic. I may have practiced 4 short sessions in the last three months. And Level 4 was new, difficult, and kicking my butt.

But I did it today. It wasn’t too bad. I can see the path. My arms moved on their own once or twice, knowing the movements somehow. I was also counting very well. Somehow the numbers seemed natural. The path is that I will begin to trust my arms more and more to lead the way.

Level 4 is hard basically because you can’t rely on the spirals like you could in 1 and 2. In Level 3, at least you had quarter spirals, transquarters, and mirror images. Level 4 seemed so daunting because of how much you had to keep track of. But my brain is adapting!

I suppose Shiva is just going to destroy everything I’ve learned in Level 4 when I get to Level 5. That’s the way it works. The practice is to keep dancing through all of the creative destruction. To learn to embrace the constant novelty of rebirth after fiery deaths of spinning multi-armed doom.

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I practiced Level 3. I was a bit rusty, but the movements are still there. Last night I was thinking about whether my meditation practice was so clear before because I would practice Shiva Nata right before I sat down to meditate. Plus I was kind of working on the same thing. Both practices need intense concentration and a full commitment. I remembered how much I needed to concentrate about halfway through.

I slipped up and forgot to do all of the starting positions on the first go-round. So after I got to 4-4, I started over to fill in the ones I missed. Lots of stumbling all-around.

It’s amazing how much you can remember after such a long hiatus. I messed up on a couple near the beginning, but then I got back into the swing of it and could do them quite well. Though I think my form has suffered the most.

I wanted to start on Level 3 instead of 4 because 4 is still unexplored. I’ve gone through the motions, but it is far from comfortable. I wanted to remind myself of how nice the practice can be to ease myself back in.

While I’m on the subject of practice, I would like to mention something else. I think that practicing these things brings me joy. Tai chi, shiva nata, meditation, yoga. I am afraid, though, that I won’t be able to practice them. Practicing won’t earn me money. That fear, ultimately, is what drove me to stop practicing. It is so hard to fight against. I need to constantly remind myself that I have bought my time now. I have a long time to live without planning on working. I should spend it doing the things that are most important to me.

That being said, I’d love to get paid for doing this stuff. I mean, I’ve dreamed of this blog somehow earning money. But I love face-to-face teaching as well. I would love to believe that if you follow your dreams, the money will follow. Is this true? Does anyone have any ideas about this? I would like to know if I’m on the right track, or even what track I’m on.

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Oh. My. God.

I don’t have a video of it, so I can only guess I’m doing it right.

But it is just hard. Some of the starting positions took me several minutes to work through. Talk about confusing.

Before starting tonight, I was thinking “What the heck?” Havi had given us the formulas for Levels 4 & 5 on the last phone call. They seemed pretty straightforward when I wrote them down. So I looked over them tonight so I could start on Level 4.

I knew right then I was in for it. You have to switch from Horizontal to Vertical after each movement. Something deep down told me that this wasn’t going to be just some fun flailing. This was going to be total let’s-walk-Hanzel-and-Gretel-into-the-woods-so-they-can’t-find-their-way-back lost. And there ain’t no breadcrumbs on this walk. Good thing I brought my sense of humor?

Here’s the playback from my head: “So this one is going, wait, is it forward? No, backward. Wait, if I started on this side, and I’ve gone forward with the left already, but did I already do that? I’m just going to start over.” And that was on the second move for that starting position.

I managed to work my way through it. On the horizontals. I’ll leave the verticals for another day. I guess I remember when Level 3 was this hard. And Level 2. Was Level 1 ever that hard? I guess so.

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I realized that the thing about Level 3 is that you are wandering through a spiraling wilderness with only a sequence of transformations as a map. If you make one false move, you will wind up somewhere unexpected. How did I get here?

In the previous levels, you return to the starting position after four movements. Not so in Level 3. In level 3, you wait 16 movements until you find your way back to the starting position. It’s easy to get lost.

You have to trust in each single movement to get you where you’re going, because you can’t see how the road will lead you to the end.

I noticed that most of my mistakes were in the easiest part of the sequence: mirror reflection. Why was I mirroring a 1 as a 3? Maybe I was not paying attention.

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The hardest part for me is by far the point where the arms move in opposite directions. Keeping track of which arm goes which way is just plain hard. Doing it with the video has helped my muscles feel what the correct motion is without me having to think about it so much.

Lots of mistakes. Lots. At one point, I got distracted and couldn’t remember what side I was doing or even what starting position I was on. You need to know that!

So many times (maybe 5 or 6 times, but could be more) I ended on the wrong position. I retried a couple of them and just could not figure out where I went wrong. Let’s hope my unconscious is hard at work figuring out where the mistake was.

I decided that when I make a mistake like that, I just keep going. The mistakes are part of the dance. When I do it next time, I’ll be better.

Doing it alone has also helped me see some of the deeper connections in the movements. When you do something so structured, patterns are bound to emerge. I’m starting to see them.

It’s like when you recite a poem. The more you recite it, the more you see. I guess it’s like a movie in that way, too.

I had taken a break. I guess it’s been four or five days since I’ve done Shiva Nata or any kind of practice, really. I just did not feel like it, I guess.

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I watched this video today. This morning. A great way to start the day, if I say so myself.

I just finished Shiva Nata Level 3 with legs with Andrey. It is getting easier. That’s for sure.

This time, I thought I would apply something I think I said myself on this blog: that Dance of Shiva can be fun! (Well, I meant to, anyway). We don’t need to dread it, like I see in so many posts about Shiva Nata. Maybe you do dread it, so that’s what you need to write about. But come on! It’s a dance! Of course we’re all totally inadequate to express all of the wonderful combinations of the universe. The point is that you don’t want to miss out on it as it passes, even if all you do is wave your arms around.

Dancing is fun!

I was thinking about whether it should be a performance. Like for other people. I tend to think of performance kind of ruining the personal aspect of the practice. Like you’re doing it for other people. But then I thought: hey! Doing things for other people is good!

It was really Zander’s video that made me realize that I could see it in a totally different way. That the joy of sharing the dance with someone can inform the dance, not just make it an experience filled with dread.

So I want to make the movements more rhythmical and more visually appealing. More expressive of the beauty of the spirals and coordinations of hands and legs. My form has been slipping. I’ll work on that. But of course, still in the spirit of play. That’s my intention, at least. I am under no illusions (ok, maybe slight illusions) that I am totally past rote drills and self-scolding.

I think I have graduated from the DVD. It’s now just going to be for reference. Next time, I’m going to do it all by myself again. It’s been a joy reuniting with Andrey for these past weeks. But I need to go off on my own and explore these movements.

Then, of course, there’s the rest of level 3, which I have no clue how to learn. Seminars? Flying to Nepal? Havi told me the sequences for levels 4 and 5. That should keep me busy for a while.

Oh, and is anyone else excited about the phone call coming up?

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That’s what I was thinking about. And it hit me. A small hit. Not a megapiphany. Just a small bit of understanding:

My body feeling is smarter than my vision.

They say seeing is believing. But more often, feeling is believing.

The realization came when I closed my eyes a few times and decided not to follow the video. I did better (though there were mistakes). How was it better? I knew that I was choosing what to do next based on my feeling, and not based on what I saw Andrey do. It was me leading, not me following.

Just another reminder that my body learns and remembers faster and longer than my mind. But my mind likes to monitor my body, for fear that it will make a mistake. What in my history could have caused this?

This totally explains why I am drawn to Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Dance of Shiva, and other physical wisdom traditions.

I most definitely have been having lots of insights from Shiva Nata and my other practices. The self-monitoring thing is the biggest thing I am facing right now.

Self-monitoring holds me back. I don’t hold myself back as much as I used to. People used to say I would stop myself from laughing. I don’t do that anymore. But I always want to know what I am doing, be totally aware. This is my safety net. In concentration practice, I realize that that is my next obstacle to surmount.

I hold back a little piece of myself that watches the rest to make sure I’m doing it correctly. I suppose this lets me learn quickly things that really require that kind of awareness. But by holding a piece of myself back, I don’t give myself fully to an experience. In concentration, it is the breath. I commit to giving myself fully to each breath, and I keep a little part of my mind to monitor myself to make sure I’m doing that. How silly.

Part of the Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” is that you face things anew. There’s a sense of adventure and openness that I can’t have if I hold even one piece of myself back. It’s about facing the unknown future as it becomes the present with a whole self.

I’m about to sit for concentration practice. I’m going to have a little talk with myself to ask my monitor to jump into the breath with me. See you after practice.

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