It’s pretty simple – rather then just the horizontal or vertical spiral – use both together. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-back-to-1. That’s your new spiral. Now apply the level 1 formula to it – allowing 8 moves to get back to the starting point each time.

You can do this with the level 2 starting positions too – or figure out the new starting positions implied by merging the spirals into one.

Apologies if this is gobbledigook! As always, mistakes mean new information on what not to do – and if you can laugh at them to keep it light, congratulations!

The current teaching community, the majority of whom are not certified (like me!) are hoping to talk with him and clarify, and hopefully find some grace for the spreading of this fantastic practice.

Until then, or until I get the opportunity to train with Andrey (which I’m excited for! possibly May), I will take the label “Shiva Nata Teacher” completely off of myself. I do not teach Shiva Nata, and I’m no longer offering products for sale to share the information of the practice.

However – I’m still an enthusiast of the practice, and I’d like to continue to share all the fun variations I come up with, in that spirit. So I won’t be shutting down the Shiva Nata aspect of the blog. As always, I assume you’ve had an introduction to the basics and are here to challenge your brain in new ways!

Also… I’ve temporarily moved to a remote island in Panama! So, there’s that. We have internet, but not fast enough to post movies, so it shall be text-only for now.

Happy flailing!

Shiva Nata is interesting because technically it needs no introduction. You can approach it and be insanely confused by everything that’s going on – and just by watching, and by the magic of the monkey-brain that really, REALLY likes to solve puzzles – you’d be well and thoroughly on your way to new brain patterns. Hooray!

Realistically though – we like introductions. We like knowing a bit of what’s going on, it keeps us far more interested because we can trust and start to see that there are patterns and meanings in what’s going on.

So while I think anyone could try even super-advanced Shiva Nata classes, jumping feet-first in – there’s not a whole lot of safety or comfort in that!

Here’s my offering to help. To anyone that wants more structure to how you first learn Shiva Nata. It’s a full class, a 60-minute workshop that’s designed to teach you the basic building blocks of Shiva Nata (the arm positions) and gently get you thinking a bit about moving between them. You’ll have a chance to get totally confused, as that is a major plus of Shiva Nata – but you’ll also be gaining a foundation of understanding.

Yay, Shiva Nata classes for beginners! Jump right in – no need to change, this won’t be a sweaty-tough practice (shiva nata rarely is).

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I’ll also be posting this in the “Shiva Nata” tab up top – but I thought it had a place in the blog as well.

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I’m subtly aiming, yes, at drumming up interest in my online Shiva Nata classes – they are genuinely fun! And possibly intimidating? I’d say you’re well qualified for the classes if you’ve understood the introduction and possibly… 10% of what happens after the first 25 minutes. Yep – no more then that necessary. Every class starts out in a way that’s easy for beginners to follow along – choosing words or playing with numbers, not rushing through positions.

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Also – if you’re already a Shivanaut and need no introduction, but you’ve been bugging people about this really cool thing you do – I’d love if you could send them over here! Shiva Nata can be an intimidating thing to try to teach (or learn from) a friend – it’s kind of goofy-looking, and making mistakes can be uncomfortable with friends watching. Let them try Shiva Nata in their own home – much easier to be un – selfconscious there!

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You’re still reading? Sweet! This class is completely a gift for you – and each class also takes a fair amount of time and effort to make! If you feel inclined, any donation you’d care to make would be cherished. Image below takes you to a choose-your-amount paypal button. Thank you for being here!

I frequently go over my “what is Shiva Nata” explanation, and I was pretty excited about this one today… so I recorded it!

Basically – Shiva Nata is both a Game and a Tool.

It is a game, in that…

• it’s fun. (personal opinion)
• you play with it, change it as much as you wish.
• it has a set of underlying, fairly arbitrary rules.
• it never ends… you can finish a session of Shiva Nata just like you finish a sudoku puzzle or an ultimate frisbee game… but that doesn’t mean you’re done/mastered/completed Shiva Nata/sudoku/frisbee.
• it’s only fun and useful if it’s difficult… and the difficulty is a valuable part of the experience.

Shiva Nata is a tool…

• use it to un-stick difficult projects, the way your brain is struggling and succeeding at making new connections transfers to your project.
• use it to increase your focus, much like meditation (with more engagement and movement).
• use it to find conscious liberation / freedom / enlightenment! Oh yeah!

Of course, this doesn’t tell you what exactly happens when you do Shiva Nata – but it’s a good number of reasons why you might want to do Shiva Nata.

Alright, have a great day/week/weekend! Go forth and flail! (check out my classes – awesome for a dose of the un-sticking of projects! I won’t speak as to the ultimate enlightenment likelyhood)

So: In an attempt to be a helpful bear…

Here is a video of ALL the arm positions of Dance of Shiva. It is made to be followed – push yourself away from the computer a bit to give your arms the room to move around. These are the 8 positions you’ll be using for every level, they stick around… and there’s only 8.

Warning: It might be too fast. Too fast to follow smoothly, or to pick up and really remember the arm positions the first few times. My bad, not yours. ALSO…. :sneakyface: this might be your first introduction to the glorious frustration that is Shiva Nata! You are supposed to be bad at it, to trick the monkey-puzzle part of your brain into fully engaging, to flame out and leave your brain in an addictively confuddled state (don’t worry, it does NOT carry over into the rest of your day!).

And another side note warning: this is not really the creative, fun, silly Shiva Nata that you’ll generally find in live classes. It’s a little dry to help you focus on learning the numbers. You’re not supposed to get it right – but knowing the arm positions helps you get to the more fun ways of not getting it right.

So – this one’s for you, kiddo or grandma or care bear… Follow the best you can, take relief in both arms doing the same thing, if possible laugh at the frustration, if not possible throw something, preferably unbreakable… welcome to Shiva Nata! Rest after watching! Enjoy!

Like all Shivanautical epiphanies – rather stoopid on the surface.

In my processing of the 40 day Shiva Nata Expedition (1 more day! I’ve hit a 90% daily practice rate – and a 100% daily thinking-about-practicing rate!), I was noticing that in order to step into the life we want, we are most certainly stepping OUT of the pieces of life that don’t serve us, that won’t and can’t and shouldn’t follow us into the new life we have planned.

Except of course we can’t just discard pieces of ourselves – we created, we have been these people on purpose.

One of my favorite parts of being a yoga and shiva nata teacher is the chance to create an invocation – whether short or long, an opening and way to leave the non-practice world behind. I’m not as eloquent in personal practice, often forgetting to set the buffer between life and space. “Lala back in with the trash new trash bag unroll yoga mat yay child’s pose” is efficient, but not terribly intention-ful.

So I recorded this invocation. It works perfectly for any activity you are doing to involve your body, mind, and spirit in a safe space – meditation, yoga, shiva nata, creative times, journaling or writing. It is an opening and a closing, about 8 minutes total. I would make a playlist with these on either side of a track or tracks you enjoy using for practice – not interrupting practice with technology is nice.

The focus is stepping out – gently shedding layers of identity that block us from experiencing the depth of practice – and gently and mindfully re-acquiring those layers on the exit.

Feel free to download, if you like these please share, use, enjoy!

Happily, I made a full video to follow along with this time! All starting positions (level 2-style). Feel free to just flail and see if the pattern jumps out at you – otherwise, an explanation follows… (also, no words – it’s a feature! just watching and naming the positions is a mind-buzzy practice, or finding the number-words for yourself as you’re following)

To construct this level, you start with level 2 transquarters – using each level 2 starting position and, instead of travelling forwards or backwards, skipping a step. 1 to 3 (and 3 to 1), 2 to 4 (and 4 to 2) – 5 to 7 (7 to 5) or  6 to 8 (or 8 to 6).

The extra step in these transquarters (that preps you for level 6) is that instead of moving each hand to its transquarter – you move it to your other hand’s transquarter destination. So 2-7 would normally transquarter to 4-5 – but instead, 2 grabs the 5, and 7 grabs the 4.

Another way to think of this is inserting a mirror-move in between the start and the transquarter. Start at 1-5, normal transquarter would be 3-7, the mirror is 7-3.

Let me know what you think, and have fun flailing!

Mmm, spinning around is fun! And visual-arm position correlation – oh wait, that just sounds geeky. Hopefully geeky sounds fun too.

Anyway, this is easiest to figure out if you just DO it – rotate a quarter turn towards your leading arm with each arm position in levels 1, 2, 4, or 5 – and pay attention to the arm position and the view you see/direction you are turned. Turn the opposite direction after one full revolution = four arm movements = one cycle back to the starting position. Repeat the rotation and anti-rotation for the forward/back, back/forward sections as well!

If you’re feeling confined to the computer, perhaps this graphic will make the repetition a bit more clear – hopefully.

Have fun, try it out!

Storytime, storytime!

I haven’t been pursuing yoga for endless years yet – that day will come. For now, I’m coming up on my 5th year anniversary of my first time rolling out a mat (at that point, a ridged foam camping pad that left super-interesting dents after savasana!).

And this is the story of my first yoga (full mind-body, present-moment, fully-conscious) learning experience. And I may have just scared the dog realizing that this was over 10 years ago. It seriously feels like yesterday.

Yoga can be present in every moment – every moment you are mindful and working with your body and thoughts. I first learned this… in shop class.

Enjoy!

And many thanks to John Kriegshauser, the wonderful teacher I mention. As far as I know, he’s still teaching the intro materials course at IIT, whipping ditzy freshman into fairly reputable woodworkers and modelmakers… ie, performing miracles.

This post was inspired by the fantastic TeachNOW course. Thinking about my teaching lineage was very instructive – helpful to think of the very full range of past teachers to help support me in my teaching.

Doors:

This is a month of doorways, of saying “Hello, door between the old and the new me! Thank you for marking so clearly a pathway of change.”

Some doors will be covered with blooming flowers, welcoming me from a gloomy space I’ve been in to a bright and exciting field of where-I’m-supposed to be. These doors will make the decision to pass to the other side easy.
Other doors may be murky and shadowy, with cobwebs – due to a monster fear of letting me cross, of what might be in the new room.

My task with these doors is to turn up the lights on the other side. Maybe by sneaking my hand in to turn on the lights. Maybe by acknowledging that there is night on both sides of the door, and giving it permission to turn to day on thte other side, and seeing more of what’s involved.

Other doors might be hard to find – I can search for them.
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Mirrors:

The other metaphor for meeting future me is stepping into the image I see in the mirror and becoming that person I’ve imagined. A doorway to myself as well as a doorway to other areas and levels of life. Still rich in visual metaphors, I will imagine the costumery required, the mood, the smile, the attitudes of the girl in the mirror. And I can become her… by stepping in.
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A sidenote, and arguing with Narnia:

Whenever I think of mirrors, I think of the last metaphor in the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (which I have read at least double-digit times). Their old world has basically ended, and the god-leader-lion takes them… through a door (hey I didn’t realize that part of the metaphor was there until I started typing this) into a better-Narnia, the “true” Narnia, of which the Narnia they played in was just a pale shadow. The metaphor for how much more alive this new world was: Seeing a city out of an upper-floor window, and it looks fine and all – but then you turn around, and see a glimpse of that city in a mirror pointed out that window, and the image is incredibly much richer and deeper and more meaningful then your first glance of the city.

It actually used to make little-Beth kind of mad – she wanted the real life view to be deeper and richer – it made more sense to her that you’d see the view in the mirror first and it was eh, but then you turn around and the view out the window was the real and meaningful one. But maybe that sense of barrier was important – something has to happen to make the rich-and-true real.
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Thanks to now, I’m ready for then.

Regardless, I am ready to step into the deeper richer me, with the patterns and habits I want and need to move forward. With huge love to the place I am now, and the places I’ve been – obviously I’ve gotten close enough to the door to be able to step through, and that’s huge – I’m willing to step through the door now and feel how things are different now.

Good luck to me!

What slightly-future yous can you claim and work towards stepping in to?

(oh, and the Shiva Nata practice for day 1? Working through Level 3 more, figuring out new stuff I hadn’t realized before. For example: I knew you could rearrange the order of the movements.