Coming to terms with being weak

“The greatest weakness of all is the great fear of appearing weak”
Jacques Benigne Bossuel

For several months now, my life has been different from what it used to be. My husband and I are expecting our first child in early April. Of course I knew pregnancy throws curve balls at you and changes your life. I just never realized all the changes that were coming.

Oh, the weakness

Despite the fact the pregnancy  has gone well, I’ve been surprised that my physical stamina has decreased so much. On the one hand, the physical changes are the easiest ones to understand. After all, there’s a whole new person in there to carry around and feed and nurture. Weight distribution as well as hormonal changes in ligaments and muscles play a part, of course.

It’s still amusing, though. Anything I drop on the floor I have to struggle to get up, because there’s a baby bump in the way. My walking speed has decreased to a third of what it used to be. I can’t really lift anything or climb anywhere.  Not that I was an olympic gymnast or a triathlete before – still, the distinction is obvious.

The funny thing is, though, that physical weakness is not the only effect I’ve noticed.

Not getting things done

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been efficient at everything. Studying full-time while working part-time and having several hobbies and activities has been the norm. Sure, there have been times when I’ve felt exhausted in the process, but I’ve always enjoyed having a stack of plates spinning in the air.

I tried that this past fall and winter, too. Result? I was about five minutes away from burning out completely, when I finally realized I had to cut back on the stress and activities. I was constantly exhausted, procrastinating and missing deadlines, simply because I did not have the energy to do everything. Missing deadlines led to guilt, which kept eating at what little resources I had left. Even though I kept to eight hours of sleep each night and tried my best to unwind during weekends, I was beat.

I finally realized I had to slow down. If not for my own sake then for the sake of my baby. Giving up interesting projects and rescheduling my studies was incredibly difficult – mentally, that is. People were very understanding when I told them I had to take it easy because of the pregnancy. In my head, though, I struggled for quite a while before I dared to pull out the pregnancy card. Everyone says pregnancy is not an illness or a disease. I didn’t want to be the “ooh, I’m pregnant, I can’t do that” girl. The thing was, though, that I couldn’t do all of it.

Pregnancy brain

Being inefficient and tired is, of course, pretty unpleasant. The one thing that has really annoyed me about the pregnancy symptoms, though, is pregnancy brain. I don’t know if it’s caused by the tiredness and stress or if there’s some other reason for it, but I notice I’ve lost some of my mental mojo during the past few months.

The thing is, I’m used to being the sharp one. I know I’m intelligent, and with the added bonus of Shiva Nata, there have been times when I’ve probably been exceptionally smart. This pregnancy, though, has not been one of those times.

True, my Shiva Nata practice has been on the back burner, partly due to the fatigue. Still, it’s incredibly annoying to forget things, to not think of something perfectly logical, or to have to ask others to explain things to me. It’s somewhat scary, too – does this mean my wit and smarts are gone for good? Am I regressing to the level where I’m fit to communicate with an infant and nobody else? Geesh.

Um, embrace it?

For the past month, I’ve been trying to wrap my pregnancy brain around all this. It seems I have two choices: either I accept what’s going on and admit I’m this mentally, physically and intellectually weak person, or I don’t. If I choose not to accept it, I’ll have to draw up a plan of action to energise and invigorate myself.

Either way, I still have to start with the realisation that yes, this is where I am now. At the moment, my body-mind is going crazy with hormonal and other changes, and the only thing that will stop that from happening is having the baby. And since I’m hoping not to do that in the next month, I’ll have to live with the weaknesses.

For what it’s worth, for the next two months I still have the pregnancy card I can whip out whenever anyone asks.

Because of my pregnancy brain, I can’t think of a good way to end the post except saying thank you again for stopping by and reading these thoughts. And, as always, keep catching your own insightings!

Love,

Sari

Shiva Nata and blocks

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.
- Havi Brooks

So on the topic of blocks standing between me and Shiva Nata for the past few months: there have been some. As in, the understatement of the year. The process of becoming aware of those blocks is still pretty much under way, so I’ll try to nudge out some understanding – and maybe some attempt at letting me be exactly where I am with the blocks. So here goes.

The whole concept of doing it right

This block has two sides to it in my head.

During the past few months, there have been quite a lot of changes going on with my life. What with finishing my teacher training, moving to a new house, my parents moving to a new house, getting married and changing my name, as well as starting a new job…

Suffice to say there has been a lot of what-the-heck-is-happening -ness in my life. In those moments, I crave security and comfort. I don’t necessarily crave to be challenged even further. And I don’t need extra helpings of getting something wrong again and again.

Which is a bummer, since that’s pretty much Shiva Nata, right there. My brain knows doing the Dance would help me cope with the insecurity. It would help me to be present in the moment and to accept not being in control all the time. My gut, though, won’t have any of it.

So now, if I do Shiva Nata, I do the familiar levels to de-fuzz my brain or to reinvigorate my shoulders. I’m not even looking towards advancing along level 4, because I get an instant reaction of “auugh, I don’t wanna!!!” when I think of pushing myself in that direction.

And that’s the other side of the block.

I feel I’m totally not doing the concept of Shiva Nata justice by “just” doing what I know. There’s this big sign hanging on top of my head:

You’re doing Shiva Nata for the wrong reasons!!

(warning: the following paragraph will contain several instances of the sh-word.)

I mean, I should be after all those juicy, delicious epiphanies and hot buttered insights, shouldn’t I? I should have the drive to advance onwards, to get deliciously mixed up, to crave being in the zone? Shiva Nata should be my secret weapon in getting through the daily grind of always having to think, create, come up with solutions, right?

It’s just that now, in this stage of my existence, all that just gives me the aforementioned “auuugh” -reaction. That used to be the reality of my relationship with Shiva Nata. That reality has shifted, and I’ll have to create a new relationship with the Dance.

Replacing old patterns with new ones, sort of.

(I’m having difficulty figuring out what to write after coming up with that.

Like, I don’t even want to go into detail about how pattern reconfiguration is exactly the point of Shiva Nata, and  how that thought just popped in my mind after doing a few starting positions of level 3 and then starting to write this post.

In short, it was one of those “whoah/duh!” -moments that are so plentiful when doing the Dance.)

I can see something ahead

The quote at the beginning of this post is from Havi, again. It’s sort of exhausting, at first, but the post continues in the most reassuring way possible for my current state.

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.

Ultimately. As in, not right away. For now, I feel ready to be carried. And that’s where I am now.

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading these thoughts. If it sparked any insightings at your end, I’d love for you to share them. And, as always, keep catching your own insightings!

Love,

Sari

Shiva Nata revisited – a year since I started

Plateaus happen. When you’re ready for the practice it will call to you.
Havi Brooks, Dance of Shiva Special Report #1

After a long silence in Insightings-ville, I received a comment on the I Heart Shiva Nata post. Kat wanted to hear my thoughts on Shiva Nata after doing it for more than nine months now. In fact, this was something I’d been meaning to post about, but there were some obstacles in the way. I’ll dedicate this post to answering Kat’s question, and then address the obstacles in a future post – there are some interesting threads to untangle there, too.

A year’s worth of Shiva Nata

I first tried Shiva Nata in June, 2008. From the first moment, I was hooked. I managed to establish a morning routine of Shiva Nata, yoga and meditation, and I felt awesome. Once or twice I taught the basics to a few people, and they were psyched as well. I was doing level 3 with movements in space, slowly moving on to level 4.

The morning routine carried as far as last spring. Then, for reasons I’ll get back to, I fell of the proverbial Shiva Nata wagon, and did maybe one or two practices a month for a good while. I’d do a few starting positions of level 4 arms to get my brain going in the middle of a work day, or a few level 4 arms-and-legs if I managed to get up early enough in the morning. Nothing as habitual as the routine I used to have, though.

What surprised me about that was how okay I was with that. In the Starter Kit (that I devoured right in the beginning as I was waiting for the DVD to hit my mailbox), Havi makes several fabulous points about the practice, but one of them was especially important to a recovering perfectionist like myself.

Plateaus happen.

Maybe this was one thing Shiva Nata had managed to drill into my unconscious. Not doing the practice is no reason to feel guilty. Not doing the practice is just something that works for you right now. When doing the practice starts working for you again, it will feel more natural and less guilt-inducing.

And it will start calling to you. Within two days, I received an email from Havi telling me the access information to the Starter Kit (which I’d incidentally lost as my hard drive crashed in the spring) and Kat’s comment asking me about Shiva Nata. If that’s not the universe nudging me, I don’t know what is.

So currently, I’m feeling a growing warmth towards Shiva Nata again. There’s no need for me to rush things with the practice – there will still be a lot of brain-pudding-inducing hardness in the future levels, and I don’t need to catch up with the time I’ve “lost” not doing the practice. I’m still working on level 4 with legs, and hope to move to level 4 with movements in space sometime. And after that? I’ll figure it out when I get there.

I’m still convinced by the fabulousness that is Shiva Nata, and consider myself a Shivanaut. Maybe one on an orbit?

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading my thoughts on this, and feel free to share your own thoughts in the comments! And as always – keep catching your own insightings!

Love,

Sari

Gratitude

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
William Arthur Ward

It’s easy to get stuck feeling wretched about things you don’t have. It’s even easier to take things you do have for granted. So I’ll try to do a gratitude exercise here, out loud, to get things flowing again.

A New Home

I’m grateful that we have a new, beautiful home. There’s still some arranging left, but we’ve been living here for a bit more than a month, and it’s slowly starting to feel like home.

I’m grateful that we’ve been able to have friends over even though the place is not yet ready. We were able to welcome an overseas friend for three nights at fifteen minutes’ notice. My fiancé has been loving the chance to cook for our guests.

My Friends

I’m so grateful for my friends who threw me a fabulous surprise bachelorette party last weekend. The greatest thing about the party was the fact that they’d thought of what I’d enjoy and then made it happen. I’m also grateful for the chance to tell them how much I enjoyed their company and all their efforts.

I’m grateful that I have so many friends who want to be a part of my life, even though I don’t get to spend as much time with them as I would in a perfect world. I’m grateful that I can be there for them when they need me, and that they appreciate my friendship.

Love

I’m grateful that I’m marrying the man I love in three weeks. I’m grateful that we’ve found each other and that we have a connection unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I’m grateful that my parents adore him, his parents like me, and our mothers have become good friends.

I’m grateful that we’ll have the chance to throw our loved ones a party to celebrate our marriage. I’m grateful that we’ll get to see our friends and family and share our wedding joy with them. I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to plan a wedding.

You

I’m grateful that you’re reading this. It means you might be resonating with me on some level. I hope my gratitude is contagious, and that you find things in your life to be grateful for. I’m grateful for the fact that here, in this blog space, I don’t have to try to be anything other than who I am.

Thank you.

I’d love it if you shared your own sources of gratitude or other associated ideas in the comments – and until next time, keep catching your insightings!

Love,

Sari

Letting go

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Havelock Ellis

A huge part of moving house – especially moving into a smaller apartment – is decluttering. Well, at least for anyone who doesn’t follow the “take out an equal amount that you bring in” mantra religiously. Suffice to say we hadn’t. Add to that the fact that we had a very sloppily planned move (with little to no effort put in pre-move decluttering), and you get the end result of too much stuff cramped in too little space.

When decluttering, we’ve tried to follow Flylady’s rule: if you don’t love it, don’t use it, and don’t have a place for it, you need to chuck it. Emphasis on tried, because it’s all too easy to get stuck with the golden oldies, “I might need this someday” or “I paid good money for this”.

Interestingly enough, while we’ve been moving, I’ve also been dipping my toe into The Sedona Method, a self-help system where the key focus is letting go of limiting beliefs, emotions and thoughts. I have yet to invest a cent in it, but I’ve gone a long way with the free resources available on the main site (mostly audio releases in the articles section) and elsewhere.

In a way, the whole Sedona thing is kin to decluttering the mind. You constantly get a stream of messages coming in to your consciousness about the world and yourself in the world. Pretty soon, all your mental cabinets are full of junk (“I’m useless and ugly”, “Everyone is out to get me”, “I can’t do sports”, “My friends are so much more awesome than me”) that you can’t fit anything else in.

You could try moving to a bigger place – but unless you learn how to declutter, pretty soon the new place will be as cramped as the old one was.

Your mind is trying to squeeze through between boxes and piles of age-old stuff that you “might need someday” (if you find yourself at the playground age four one day, the plastic tractor self defence tactics might come in handy) or you’ve “paid good money for” (in the form of energy spent trying to work through the problem or hide it from others and yourself).

I might need this one day

With physical stuff, you get the “but it’s perfectly good” resistance. For that, I love Flylady’s notion that the stuff is still at Goodwill, and you can go visit it there if you miss it. If you really need it back, you can buy it back at the Goodwill or at the store, or maybe borrow it from someone else.

For me, there’s an added layer of “if I throw this away and have to buy a new one, I’ve contributed to drowning the planet in garbage”. True, there are some items even the Goodwill won’t take. But then again, if the Goodwill won’t take it, is it still perfectly good? And if you’ve used it threadbare, could you just recycle the materials?

With mental clutter, though, it’s easier. There’s a back door. If you let go of a thought or belief, and notice you were actually better off with that belief, you can always start thinking that again. It’s like having an endless shelf at the Goodwill where you can go and reclaim any beliefs you once had, if you find yourself missing them.

Chances are, though, that with both physical and mental clutter you won’t even remember them once you’ve chucked them. All you’ll notice is the empty space.

I’ve invested so much in it

The dress is fabulous. I bought it for a friend’s wedding, and wore it once. Maybe twice. Haven’t worn it since, but I’m still holding on to it. I bought it at a boutique that I used to really admire as a teenager. “One day, I’ll be a woman who shops there.” The truth is, though, that I grew up to be someone who doesn’t shop there, or wear the styles that they offer.

I know I should maybe give up the dress. Donate it to someone.

But I remember how I searched for the perfect dress. How I pondered whether or not I’d have enough money to splurge in the dress. How I marched into the store, tried it on one more time, and pulled out my wallet.

As you can see, I’m still in the process. The story of the dress is stopping me from decluttering it.

For beliefs, thoughts and emotions, the process is no easier. While on the surface it might seem like a no-brainer – would I rather keep this feeling, or would I rather be free – the truth is that it’s scary to let go of some of it.

Someone I know has a chronic illness. They’ve had it for years, and whenever I meet them, the first thing they talk about is the illness, and how it’s making their life miserable. They’ve had several different suggestions on how changing their habits and lifestyle might help ease the situation. For some reason or another, though, they maintain their old ways and keep complaining.

Say they woke up one morning and the illness was gone. What then?

Who would they be? What would they talk about? What would their identity be constructed around?

They’ve invested a lot of time, money and effort into the identity of “being the person with X”. For all they know, there might be nothing else underneath – just the illness and their reactions to it.

No wonder it’s scary to consider letting go of that.

For beliefs and thoughts, however, there’s always the endless Goodwill shelf. If I let go of a belief and notice I’ve lost all that time and energy, I can always get the belief back. What I’ve noticed, though, is that more often than not it’s actually a replenishing experience – like the energy was bottled up inside the belief and is now at my disposal again.

With the dress, I guess I’d have the empty space (and the empty coat hanger) at my disposal if I let it go. Plus I wouldn’t have to give up the story. I’ve got the photos, and now I’ve got the emotions documented on my blog. I can always come back here to visit them if I really really need to.

Thank you for stopping by! Feel free to comment on anything that you found intriguing, in one way or another, and until we meet again – keep catching your own insightings!

Love,

Sari