I went for a walk and for some reason I was daydreaming about explaining the benefits of Shiva Nata to a bunch of people with no context. What came to me is definitely courtesy all the flailing around I’ve been doing.

There are a million things to say!

Here are the important things.

Our brains are amazing. You ask a question and it immediately begins seeking the solution, the treasure. Also, they are malleable.

If you’re interested in neuroscience or psychology or creativity like I am, you’ve probably heard that a million times. If not, it means that we can change and grow the capacity of our brains. Technically speaking, neurons can fire in new directions, taking new paths.

Back to how great our minds are: There are more connections possible in the human brain than there are atoms in the universe! Seriously.

This means that whatever you’re struggling with, whatever challenge you’re facing has infinite solutions and your brain wants to discover them for you.

But. Although our brains are capable of change, your neurons like to travel the same familiar path they’ve been meandering down all your life. These paths become like grooves.

If you’ve ever struggled to change a habit or moved houses and then found yourself automatically driving to your old house, you’ve experienced this neural rut.

So in order to make some of those infinitely possible new connections, we have to shake things up. We have to challenge our brains to loosen their tight grip on the way we perceive reality in this moment so that a new, richer, more expansive understanding can emerge.

When it happens, it feels like sparkly, effervescent insight. Like those moments when you see something in a new way and laugh out loud, or mutter to yourself what a genius you are.

And you suddenly see possibility where you couldn’t before, or something you thought was a problem turns out to be a doorway into something better.

There are probably lots of ways to shake things up in our brains so that this can happen, but the best way I know of is Shiva Nata.

Although how and why it works is also fascinating, it doesn’t really matter to me. It just works.

Do I like ice cream? Yes! Do I need to know how my brain processes and determines this in order to enjoy it? Nope. Experience with loving Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked is enough for me.

{I’ve been have amazing insights with a recording I created of an alternation version of Level 3. If you want extra challenge, practice a bunch of Level 6 first to delete Level 3 from your brain like I did. And then flip to teacher mode so that the first position refers to your right hand instead of left. Delicious epiphanies!}

I keep saying I want to write more, but that’s not exactly true. I write tons, I’m writing all the time, pages and pages every morning and more throughout the day. I’m constantly filling notebooks and as I type this into Evernote, it’s becoming my 697th note in the last two years.

What I’m really wanting is to share more of that writing, to hang it on some kind of refrigerator where other people can see it. I don’t even really know why, but that’s my wish.

I keep thinking my little blog is the simplest refrigerator to start with, and I often fantasize about posting a lot more frequently. Sometimes I get carried away and imagine how great it would be to say something here almost every day, and sometimes it even sounds amazingly possible.

I’m not wanting to write something complex or insightful every time, or even most of the time — just little low-pressure nuggets of thought and wonderings.

And then, and then… I don’t. Even though I write plenty. Writing may be the thing I’ve done with the most consistency and heart in the last three years. But I still don’t hang it on the fridge.

And aside from spurts here and there, I haven’t spent time doing the things that would make that possible — choosing what to share, a little polishing to make sharing possible, and of course the biggest one: investigating what’s between me and doing this thing I so want to do.

But lately insights into bigger patterns have shed some light on this one in liberating ways. I’m hoping that means I’m ready.

Then two weeks ago I sat down to write a birthday card to my college roommate, someone I adore beyond words. I was feeling blank and beyond words when I sat down. But if the card was going to make it to her in time, this was the day to slip it in the mail. After thirty blank seconds, I scrawled out what came to me.

When she said she loved I believed her because I had given the time and space so that the right words could bubble up from my heart. Turns out my heart only needed thirty seconds!

A week later I sat down to write an overdue thank you note. Again I was blank, but this time the birthday card experience infused me with a little faith that the right words would come. They did!

My success with the cards gave me the idea that maybe the same faith could work here with the refrigerator.

Instead of waiting for the fully-formed nugget to come to me, I could make space for it. As a practice, which is what I’m really wanting. I have a writing practice. Now I want a hanging things on the refrigerator practice.

Yesterday morning we were out of coffee so I went out. Well, in part, that’s just a good excuse because I love going out.

But I hadn’t been to this cafe in a few weeks and I had never seen this barista before. When I came in my hair was all blown around and I said something about how cold it was, and she nodded and agreed “that wind!”.

And then she said something that completely endeared her to me: “I feel so bad for the plants!”

I knew just what she meant because last week was sunny and beautiful and Spring-like with flowers blooming, but now they were all whipping around on their fragile stalks.

This barista was beautiful and sweet and warm. And there was something unguarded about her that disarmed me so that even though part of me felt secretly envious of her beauty, another part of me felt like I needed to protect it.

Later I wondered if she was maybe talking a little bit about herself, without knowing it, in all her sincere worry over the new blossoms.

I think sheet music is so completely beautiful. Stark. Black and white, lines and symbols.

So simple and at the same time, to my non-musician self, entirely inscrutable.

Feeling suddenly drawn to sheet music feels like a clue or a message. Maybe about language or translation or…

Or about the way seemingly nonsensical (to me!) squiggles and lines take form in patterns that add up to something else entirely and create all that beauty and life. Music!

Then walking to the cafe last week I saw this scrap of paper at the edge of the sidewalk curb.

Still beautiful! And the mystery of the clue grew…

I just got back from visiting my family in the Midwest and while I was there I found out that at the end of last school year my enterprising little brother starting selling bottles of pop to the other kids on the bus after school. He’s 15.

For some reason I find this both hysterically funny and totally inspiring. He said he’s always super thirsty after school and he’d pay just about anything for a drink and figured other kids would, too. So he started bringing extras with him on the bus and selling them for a premium. He’d send his best buddy up the aisle asking people “Hey man, you thirsty?”

When he was just a toddler, we used to say about my brother that he carries his party with him. No matter where we were or what we were doing, his mischievous little spirit was juiced with festivity.

Which I also find totally inspiring. Carrying my party with me is pretty much the goal of my life.

**************

While we’re on the subject of pop…

A few months ago I heard the funniest joke from an older cowboy gentleman. (Warning: I was working on a production, delirious from lack of sleep, so “funniest” is relative.)

Older cowboy gentleman says quickly to you: Como esta frijole coca-cola?

You say: ?

He repeats: How you bean, Pop?

Ahahahhaaaa. This might be especially funny to me because my pop calls pop pop. Still.

When I go to yoga, I want to do it right.

I know I know– so not the point.

So then layered on top of trying to do it right is the knowledge that I’m not supposed to try to do it right so I try to be all: I don’t care. Look at me not caring.

But it doesn’t really work and instead I just end up layering the don’t-try-so-hard! should on top of the get-it-right! one.

Which gets my shoulders all hunched up around my ears even more than usual.

Yesterday I started wondering what I would be like in yoga if I was five. At first I imagined being all loosey-goosey and not caring at all but then I realized that’s not quite right.

I think I would still follow the teacher’s directions and try to understand the pose, and to twist and fold my body into it. But not in order to comply or be good or prove that I’m not completely lame.

Instead I would just be exploring the poses because it’s fun. Because it feels good. Because challenge is fun. Trying hard can feel really good. Getting better and better at something can be a hoot.

Five-year-old me likes to play that game. Not out of perfectionism or fear of criticism. Just for fun.

Five-year-old me would also grab a drink of water or leave to go to the bathroom if she needed.

This morning in class during humble warrior, I started to fall forward and barely managed to untangle my hands from behind my back and get them to the floor in time to prevent face-planting.

That’s never happened to me before because normally I would never, ever risk it. Because, ohmygod, can you imagine how embarrassing that would be?

But five-year-old me isn’t self-conscious enough to get embarrassed. She takes herself so much less seriously than I do. Too busy having fun.

I just left a cafe because I couldn’t handle the mother-daughter dynamic happening at the table behind me. The volume, the intensity, the rage emanating from the daughter made me so cringey. I really do not like cringing for other people. I have enough of my own stuff to cringe about. Cringe!

I packed up my stuff after hearing the mom get three words into a sentence before her daughter interrupted with “Can you just get to the point of the story already! [RAWR!]“

*RAWR added for emphasis.

I’ve been feeling mysteriously defiant lately. Like, I’ll be eating peanut butter out of the jar even though I’m not feeling particularly hungry. And I’ll sense this wave of my own RAWR!. An inner voice saying “you can’t stop me” or “because I can!”

I can take my defiance out on a jar of peanut butter. (And my stomach.) I would so rather not.

If I don’t know that that’s why I’m eating peanut butter, I’m just all “wahhhh, why do I eat peanut butter?! I suck!”

And it’s pretty obviously not about peanut butter. But what is it about? I don’t know! rawr.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I try to figure out why I’m feeling a certain way but just end up getting myself more stuck because either I can’t find a “legitimate” reason which leads to struggling with myself or stifling myself. OR, I start looking for evidence as to why I should be feeling whatever crappy way I’m feeling which is a good way to discover a load of crap.

Then I got to witness this vitriolic encounter at the cafe. I have no idea what’s really going on under all of that girl’s rage. Her parents had recently gotten divorced and they were planning for who would get what holiday. Divorce is enough to set off some stuff.

Whatever is going on, I’m sure her rage somehow makes sense. But it was hard to watch. I think because from the outside her anger was so clearly about something else.

She can be a total brat to her mom and never get any sense of satisfaction, never even touch or express her real pain or hurt or fear or shame. And then her brattiness probably just adds a new layer of guilt and separation. (Guessing from my own personal experience as a sometime brat.)

Maybe her brattiness is my peanut butter consumption. And then we feel bad about that thing in addition to (or instead of) the other thing. The real thing. And the real thing doesn’t get any air or space or attention or love so that it can heal and transform and float away.

I’m trying to just let the defiance be there, assuming it somehow makes sense. I’ve been wanting to throw a good old-fashioned tantrum, but I notice I don’t really know how. I can sort of stomp around and say grrrrr and set my water glass down loudly and glare. But beyond that, I’ve got nothing.

Maybe I could just get out my jar peanut butter and glare at it. I like that idea.

I have a tangled relationship with being good. As in, I’m so tired of it. Like I told Tara in my Declaration of Independence, I think I might be allergic.

My tendency toward tightening is a deep-seated pattern with lots of old, tangled emotional roots. Rotting roots. It’s much too mysterious to even write about yet, but I couldn’t help myself because I found the silliest thing that’s helping.

I noticed that every single time I leave the house, I call out to Grover: Be good!

And when I come home: Were you a good boy? And ad nauseum: You’re such a good boy!

Grover has many fine qualities. He’s a charming, exuberant clown of a dog. But really, if I’m honest, good behavior is not his strong suit. (See: exuberant clown.) His failure to be good doesn’t change the fact that I love him so much it hurts.

So I started playing with the way I greet him, hoping to symbolically link it up with my own process.

It’s so habitual, I still never make it out of the house without “be good” slipping out. But at least I notice so I can follow it up with all sorts of corny, awkward commands.

Have fun!

Keep it real.

Be cool, dude.

Do your thing, Grove.

Be good. (Oops!) Okay, yes, be good. But in addition, be yourself, Buddy!

This is a dog who has no trouble being himself. Somehow this new way of saying farewell just feels right. Like by entreating him to be himself, I’m aligned with who he is. Leaning into his nature.

Maybe it sounds goofy, but I’m hoping that aligning with who he is will help me align with who I am, “good” and “bad” and everything in between, around, over and under and wider and truer.

We had a substitute teacher in yoga this morning. My usual dear, gentle, sweetheart of a teacher is on vacation and was (mis)represented instead by the intense woman who teaches Baptiste Power.

Honestly, it would be easy for me to get swept away, head right off the rails with that intense power style. I am a pusher, a tightener. But while I might want that fiery energy, it’s really not the kind of yoga that I need. I need to learn loosening.

Anyway, class this morning was hard. And wobbly. I was wobbly. And the teacher said that wobbly is good! Wobbly, in fact, is the way of life so we may as well settle into it.

I liked that. (Although I secretly suspect she only said it to get us to push ourselves harder to hold the pose for longer.) Still. I appreciated the sentiment. Life is dynamic, change is constant. And maybe feeling wobbly isn’t always a sign that I’m meant to crumple.

It reminded me of how liberated I felt when I first learned of deep practice: that cultivating talent sometimes involves paying excruciating attention to how very bad I am at something. Sucking at something as a sign of progress, I can get on board with that!

My first yoga class was probably 10 years ago: power yoga with my mom at our hometown athletic club. My mom rocked it, she of perpetual peak physical condition. I was out of shape, me of the college student’s sake bomb and burrito subsistence. I shook all through class.

No one else in that class seemed to shake. I was clearly not cut out for this. It was several years before I’d try again.

And now here I am, falling in love with yoga so much later, and learning that wobbly is apparently good. Not only that, wobbly is the way of life.

I’ve been reading Poser, My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, but kept putting it down, mostly because I was so darn jealous of Claire Dederer’s brilliant writing voice I could hardly stand it. (That and some of the ways her childhood reminds me of my own. A bit unnerving)

Although now that Eileen and I have talked through this creative jealousy phenomenon, I’ve been able to enjoy the book. Enjoy it so much, in fact, that I was sad to finish it this afternoon. I actually laughed and cried on alternate pages.

This newfangled idea that wobbly is good reminded me of something I read in Poser yesterday:

Shaking is a sign that you have awoken the prana body. Meaning, you’ve unleashed energy that was previously dormant. Shaking is a sign of life. Shaking is a sign of humanity. The energy is flowing like crazy through your nadis, and your subtle body is waking up. Shaking is a sign that you’re not quite perfect–and therefore you are not dead yet.

I’m all for unleashing previously dormant energy. Ditto for being reminded that I’m still alive.

And wobbling is good. No one ever told me this. I think I’ve been needing to hear it all my life. And now I’ve heard it twice in two days: Wobbly is good. This is a relief.

First let’s explain the scribble. You can see why I can’t take a picture of myself in the pose. And while Grover has quite the yoga repertoire, tree isn’t his pose. And I’m not about to go snag an image of some serene, svelte yogi that makes us want to smoosh ourselves into the corner. So.

Last night I learned something amazing in yoga. (And yes, also, I am a cliche.) Anyway, it was during tree pose.

If you don’t know anything about yoga, first of all I only know a tiny bit more than you. Which is about to become abundantly clear.

Second, tree is a balancing pose where you stand on one leg with your arms shooting up into the sky. Like a tree. (See scribble.)

Third, I am good at this! (We like tree pose very much. If you do Shiva Nata, I bet you’re good at it, too. And if you do Shiva Nata, you’ll appreciate how nice it is to be good at something. To be allowed to be good at something! Relish it.)

So you’re standing there with one leg rooted into the ground and with the instep of your other leg resting on your thigh, arms reaching upward. And when you start to lose your balance, the natural tendency is probably to crumple forward and pull your lifted foot to the ground to steady yourself.

Which, intuitively, seems like a good idea to prevent faceplanting and such.

Except! Here was the amazing thing. I had never been to this teacher before and so what she said was new to me. (Benefit 4 trillion of having multiple teachers.) She said even though your tendency is to crumple, the best thing you can do is focus instead on growing up higher.

Pretty much as soon as she said that, I started to lose it. But I didn’t crumple. I grew. And it worked. It seriously felt like I was countering the forces of gravity. Incredible. I did it again on my other foot.

So you think you’re gonna fall. Instead of giving in and letting the fall overtake you, you stretch a little harder, reach a little higher up. Grow.

I don’t know how this translates to real life yet. That’s the damn trouble with yoga. But I’m going to figure it out.