I heart Shiva Nata

It’s like liquid math. Only you don’t have to understand it to have it work for you.
Havi Brooks

Shiva Nata is a mind-bogglingly difficult system of forms that is based on eight basic arm positions and all the possible combinations and configurations of those positions.

When you’re doing it wrong, you’re doing it right.

When you’re doing it right, it’s time to up the stakes.

And there’s no way you’ll ever get to a level where you’re done.

For some time now, I’ve been hooked on it, both for the physical aspects and the mental ones. Activating your entire body and rewiring your brain? Brilliant.

How I started?

First, there was Havi’s blog.  Or that’s what I found first. Eventually I found my way to the Shiva Nata Starter Kit page, and read it at least five times during the course of a week before I was finally brave enough to invest in it. Sure, it was a bit of a splurge on a student budget, but I figured I’d get it for myself for an early birthday present.

Background: I’m not what you’d call an athlete. I used to do folk dance for ten years, and I guess that taught me to isolate arm and leg movements, but other than that, I was far from graceful. In fact, just the previous year, I’d given myself a concussion as I hit my head on a wall.

In other words, the prospect of gaining more grace and coordination was very welcome. I was also as flexible as concrete, and I have a genetically wonky back that requires daily attention and exercise. Which I was skipping. And reaping the *ouch* benefits.

Since the DVD took a few days to ship, I started out with the printable arm position sheet and level 1 sequences.

There I was, standing in our kitchen, arms sticking out in weird positions that I never knew my shoulders could bend into, trying to remember the next movement, feeling my brain boiling. Brilliant.

The thing that stuck with me from the starter kit was the permission to only do five minutes. Especially when I did it without the DVD, five minutes of trying to remember how the sequence went was plenty.

With the DVD, I could outsource the remembering process and was able to do ten or fifteen minutes before I felt my brain and arms were about to fry.

Meditation and journaling

Doing Shiva Nata also introduced me to meditation – something I’d been too jittery to do before. I mean, sitting still for five minutes and breathing and not thinking about anything? Yeah, right.

The recommendation was that after doing a practice of Shiva Nata, it’s wise to take a few moments to sit still and let everything absorb and connect.

For me, it’s also something I need to even out my focus so I’m able to communicate with others without snapping. If someone (read: my darling fiancé) interrupts me during my Shiva Nata sequence and asks me a question, I’m literally so focused on the practice that I can’t answer him in polysyllabic words.

In addition to the sitting-still-and-absorbing (or what the more enlightened ones call meditation), I’ve started journaling after the practice as well. Whatever comes up, I write down. It helps me catch the ideas and insightings whirring in my head and put them into a form I can process further.

Where am I now?

I won’t even go into the spectacular pattern-busting powers of Shiva Nata. You can read all about that from the spectacular Havi Brooks herself. Spectacular.

As far as patterns go, though, I have managed to create myself a morning practice of Shiva Nata, yoga, meditation and journaling. So much so that I feel I can’t really function before I get a few starting positions done. Kind of like a morning cup of coffee for some people.

Whenever I’m stuck with a brain project – blogging, studies, writing – I take a few minutes to do a few starting positions from level 1 or 2 followed by a few minutes of sitting down. More often than not, I get a *ding* insighting about the project when I get back to work.

So far, I haven’t had a life-changing, mind-blowing, *BOOM* epiphany or insighting during my practice. Instead, I have these little *ding* *ding* insightings more or less every day. Some I blog about. Some I talk about with my friends. Some I only journal about.

I do get scaredy-pants about the practice as well. Skipping days or doing sequences that are not holy-baloney difficult.

The cool thing is I can often catch myself mid-process. I can see the motives for skipping or procrastinating – in this and in other things – and I can try to be all accepting about it.

And my back sings the praise of Shiva Nata. All the standing-on-one-leg-waving-arms-around stuff really targets your core muscles, y’know? The yoga helps too, of course. I mean, I’ve actually learned to like yoga. Imagine that.

I don’t think I’d ever started blogging, either, if it wasn’t for Shiva Nata. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to put myself out there, or the security that I can come up with things to write about several times a week.

Incidentally, before I started crafting today’s post, I did a few starting positions of level 3 with square feet, and got royally lost. Halfway through one cycle I realized I was doing something terribly wrong. My reaction? “Yess.” For a recovering perfectionist, this is a big deal.

I’ll try and write about my Shiva Nata practice (that word still sounds so official) as I progress.

In the meantime, if you want to read more, I recommend visiting Havi and James, who are both totally awesome. And cool enough to call themselves Shivanauts* – I’m still wrestling the we’re-not-worthy syndrome with that. Say hi from me if you decide to pop over for a visit.

*a term that makes me think of a four-arm Shiva statue with a space helmet. Funnily enough, when I started doing Shiva Nata, my fiancé called it “the astro dance” without ever having heard the term. I might be the only person in the world who finds that funny.

And until we meet again – keep catching your own, possibly Shiva Nata -inspired, insightings!

Love,

Sari