Or should I say … the Portland of triple-decker bicycles ridden by bearded bacon-eating guys in tophats.

Anyway.

Guess who’s coming to town?! Okay, I’ll tell you.

It’s Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band.

Yay!

THIS THURSDAY, March 11th, 2010 from 7:00 pm.

Here’s what it is.

Awesome, awesome kirtan from New Orleans.

Big, beautiful, surprisingly great stuff.

I’ve been a fan for several years now. And Selma and I have been to two of their amazing live shows (once in San Francisco and once in Sacramento). We have only the most wonderful things to say about Sean and his band and their work.

And if you’ve ever been to one of my Shiva Nata workshops, you’ve probably heard some of their songs from Calling The Spirits. I haven’t heard their new album yet but I’m assuming good things.

Here’s why I’m mentioning it here.

Dude.

There is nothing better for Shiva-ing it up than some good kirtan.

Plus, singing kirtan does for the heart what Dance of Shiva does for the brain.

It’s big.

It opens things. It changes things.

Introducing new patterns into your brain.

Plus I’ll be there and Selma will be there and this music will make you want to dance it up with Shiva Nata all night long.

Or sit and meditate. Or whatever.

The point is, you should come by if you can make it. And say hi to me and Selma.

Where is it?

Some hippie-ass place (we are in Portland, yes?) in southeast that I’ve never been to. I’m sure it’s great.

Thursday, March 11th, 7pm
An Evening Of Mystic Mantra Music
The Bhaktishop
2500 SE 26th Ave
Portland, OR 97202

And $15 gets you in the door.

Whee!

Maybe I’ll see you there.

Sing ho for kirtan!

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In Boise.

On Saturday, April 10th, 2010 from 9:00 am until noon.

Here’s what it is.

I quote Frank:

“A half-day workshop about how you can use your brain and body to get insights and ideas any time you need them. Half of it’s theory and pop neuroscience. The other half involves uncoordinated arm flailing to inappropriate music.

“We’ll talk about where ideas and insights come from (the neuroscience behind them).

“We’ll look at why common suggestions for getting out of a rut (take a walk, play a game, do something else) don’t always work. Then we’ll discuss tools for generating ideas and insights any time you need them.

“And we’ll do Dance of Shiva so all the stuff we talked about gets integrated into your body and your brain. That way you won’t lose it. Plus, there will be Hug Yourself Yoga.”

Uh huh!

Here’s my recommendation.

Frank is amazing.

Super bright. A lot of fun. And a really good guy.

If you’re anywhere near Idaho, you want to be there.

Sign up details are right here.

Yay!

That is all.

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Okay. I’ve been doing lots of thinking lately about the interaction between Shiva Nata and everything I do in my business.

The obvious connections. And the more subtle ones.

When we were at the Destuckification Retreat and doing Dance of Shiva every day (sometimes twice!), the moments of bing were flying fast and furious.

And one of the things that came up was that our Shiva Nata practice was preparing our brains to go way deeper with the change-your-patterns material.

But also the actual content of the program was helping us be better equipped to contain and process all the crazy-cool stuff that the physical practice was giving us.

The first Shivanautical epiphany.

This wasn’t even mine.

In fact, it kind of drives me crazy that I hadn’t come up with this before.

So I was teaching about how Dance of Shiva is all about the relationship between deconstruction and rebuilding. Create and destroy. Take something apart and then build something new with the old components.

That’s why Andrey calls it the liberation of consciousness. Because you can take any pattern — physical, energy, emotional, mental, spiritual — and use the parts of it to bring in the new pattern.

And the new pattern heals the old pattern. Patterns rewrite patterns. It’s like homeopathy but bigger.

And then, of course, when the new pattern becomes automatic and unconscious … it’s time to bring in more new patterns to engage with.

Anyway.

Then Hiro pointed out that everything I teach is a parallel of the Dance of Shiva. Everything I teach breaks down into destuckification and biggification.

And what is destuckification if not deconstruction? And what is biggification if not new creation.

*slaps forehead*

The next Shivanautical epiphany.

Again, I was talking to Hiro.

And she was speaking beautifully eloquently (no big surprise there) about energy.

Lots of people talk about releasing energy. Releasing gunk and stucknesses in the system. Releasing things that no longer serve you. And then giving all that stuff back to the universe or to the earth or whatever.

Releasing things to be transformed into something else.

But she was describing this process in the coolest way ever. It was about giving back the thing that isn’t working … and then that thing being dissolved until the only thing that remains was the core essence of it.

And then that core essence infusing the world with its truth and beauty.

So it’s not letting things go. It’s letting their essence be free so it can transform everything it encounters.

It’s not destruction of the thing. It’s the deconstruction of the outer layers of the thing because at its heart is something beautiful and necessary.

And then the next one.

And of course when I did Dance of Shiva the next morning, what came up later in the day was that we’re constantly throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

We have all these things we don’t like. Our monsters. The shoes that get thrown at us in the form of criticism. The difficult conversations. The avoidance and the iguanas.

And inside each of those things is something important that is completely hidden. Or completely distorted.

And that’s what the deconstruction of Shiva Nata is for. Releasing the essence. Transforming the whole.

Dude.

Again, it’s kind of hard to explain because epiphanies are stoopid. But it’s also kind of awesome.

Waiting to see what the next one will bring.

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Those Shivanautical moments of bing and zing that show up and make you go oh.

They’re really hard to explain to anyone outside of your head.

Because a lot of the time they sound kind of obvious.

It’s kind of like big spiritual truths.

Right?

Like you have a serious moment and you realize that everything is made of the same stuff.

But no matter how you frame it ….

• It’s like physics! The same components come together to become different shapes and forms. A tree is a tire is a doughnut. I am a tree and a tire and a doughnut!
• It’s like kabbalah! Everything is made of light!
• We are all one. We’re all the same, at the core of things. It’s just permutations!

Yeah. Your enormous life-changing understanding is just probably going to sound kind of ridiculous. At best.

More likely, it’s going to come across as something that everyone already knows. Or has heard. Or doesn’t seem like a big deal.

And the reason it’s a big deal to you is that you have had a deep, visceral understanding.

Your entire body knows it. Your consciousness knows it. Your cells know it. Your heart knows it.

You are in the process of internalizing something really huge. And it’s so huge that it can’t be explained without sounding like the biggest, most cheesy cliche ever.

Same deal with Shivanautical epiphanies.

The biggest, most surprising and wondrous ones are really hard to explain.

Sometimes this is because the actual information isn’t that much of a revelation: it’s the depth at which you get it that is the new thing.

And sometimes this is because once you have the new piece of information, it’s so completely obvious that you can’t really remember what your brain/life was like without it.

And sometimes this is because the new way of perceiving things is so compelling and so deep that it doesn’t get words.

It happens.

The other day I woke up into a serious Dance of Shiva moment.

I knew it was a Dance of Shiva moment because everything made sense. And also because I was feeling kind of annoyed that I hadn’t spent my entire life acting on this thing I knew to be true.

But I couldn’t put it into words.

It was sort of like … “everything is good.”

Or:

Everything has good at its core. And I can break down any situation and take out the essence which is good, and use that essence to make the next thing happen.

And this is what needs to happen. And Dance of Shiva will help me do it because the purpose of the practice is to break things down into their essence and restructure itself. From the good into the good.

Couldn’t explain it beyond that. And to be honest, my thinky brain wanted to start finding all the intellectual holes in this.

And instead, I decided to just take the essence of it. And let it plant seeds for my day. I can find holes later. I’m good at that.

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And my goodness, there were a ton of people on there. Hi guys!

And since we had thirty-seven questions sent in ahead of time …
And since most of those were actually three or four questions instead of one…
And since all of them were really interesting …

I’m turning some of the questions we couldn’t get to into a series of blog posts.

Today we’re starting with two questions that are, delightfully, about things I’m totally not qualified to answer but still have opinions on.

And, as always, assume the usual caveat that I’m not a doctor or a therapist, so (for the record) I’ll be all disclaimer-ey about that.

And before I say anything else, because Shiva Nata is complicated and pattern-centric and weird, you always want to focus on staying grounded, so you can be really present with both yourself and your stuff if it comes up.

And you want to notice what’s going on with you during the practice, so that you can stop or make adjustments if something doesn’t feel good.

“How might Shiva Nata help with Attention Deficit Disorder?”

Here’s how I see it.

Dance of Shiva engages multiple senses simultaneously, so it obliges you to make use of different channels of perception.

Watching the movements requires intense visual focus. You use your hearing to process the numbers and movements. You’re also using touch, in the sense that you are moving your feet against the floor in different patterns and your limbs through the air in different patterns.

Add to that the brain work of following the number sequences (or word sequences). And the simultaneous moving of your arms in different directions following different patterns, building neural connections all over your brain. Wow.

So in a way, it actually encourages you to focus.

And if you’re challenging yourself by making it hard, it should really be pretty impossible to think about anything other than what you’re doing.

Not to mention the heightened awareness of patterns thing, which can help you learn more about what tugs you out of yourself, and when — and it gives you information about what you can do to make your life work for you, given the circumstances you’re working on.

Seems to me that all or any of those things could be useful.

I would LOVE to see some serious research done on Dance of Shiva with ADD. And if people want to jump in with their experiences, or with their students’ experiences, that would be awesome.

“What about Dance of Shiva and bi-polar disorder? Is it okay?”

“I am not sure if this is a question you can answer: the 14 year old daughter of friends is visiting for a week so that I can revise her French classes with her because her grades have gone downhill.

I have thought of doing Shiva Nata in between with her to make revision a bit more fun. But: She was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder last year and is under medication. I am pretty sure that Shiva Nata won’t do her any harm but I still feel a bit reluctant. Do you know anything about conditions in which it is maybe advisable not to do it? Thanks!”

You’re right. I have no idea how to answer this.

In general, doing Dance of Shiva is really balancing, because it’s so systematic and it’s all about connections. Good for the body and good for the brain.

At the same time, it’s a really powerful practice, with powerful sensations.

And there is the emotional component too: whenever you do Shiva Nata with people, you want to make sure that they understand that the point is to do it wrong, so they don’t get overcome with frustration.

Some (most?) people get frustrated anyway. And when there is a lot of emotional stuff going on, sometimes the experience is of not fun. And other times, it’s really liberating to have permission to not have to get it right.

If you’re feeling anxious for any reason and want to play it safe, you might stick to just do something that breaks up the schoolwork, and maybe makes the memorization bits easier.

I might try doing just connections.

Like Horizontal-Vertical connections with numbers and/or words. And then giving her a break and seeing how it feels.

These answers are just starting points. For more questions, probably.

There are so many things to ask. So many things to notice. So many things to need.

The essential thing about using Dance of Shiva, in my experience, is turning everything into information that helps us have a more conscious, intentional relationship with ourselves.

We make sure that our main focus is safety. Grounding. Whatever we need to stay centered and in the process.

And then ..

• We notice things.
• We experiment.
• We take notes.
• We ask questions.
• We make a point of doing things differently next time.

If people in the call only took away one thing from the themes we played with — sovereignty and “Check your patterns!” — I hope it’s this:

“It’s your practice.

Which means that you get to experiment, mindfully.

And to test things. As long as your intention is to learn stuff about your patterns so that you can take better care of yourself, that’s going to help you figure out what needs to happen next.”

And for now, let’s leave it at that.

More guest posts coming up. More answering of questions-that-didn’t get answered.

And big love to all the Shivanauts, and people-who-might-eventually-be-Shivanauts and all the Lurker Mice.

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Still good reading, though. Yay. Yay!

I’ve got Dance of Shiva on the brain

I’ve got some confessions to make.

Even though it’s hard and Havi says I might hate it, my brain loves Shiva Nata; it just can’t get enough.

But sometimes it’s just not convenient to pop in the DVD and flail my arms, you know? Sometimes I’m in a public place, or sometimes I don’t have a DVD player or sometimes I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep. These times are just not conducive to doing the Dance with the DVD. But does my brain care? Noooooooo…..

Yes, I’d love to have a regular morning practice, but that’s not where my life is right now.

I’m prioritizing evening time with my husband and morning time with my toddler and sleep time for myself in between. I try to fit the Dance in wherever I can, and I’m looking for a good way to do it more regularly.

It’s still a pretty new thing in my life (Level 1 and proud), so for now I sometimes easily find the time and sometimes I go a while without flailing. And when it’s been too long my brain starts poking me.

If I don’t give it its Shiva fix, my brain will just start doing the dance on its own.

It’s like getting a song stuck in your head.

I’ll be lying in bed (for example) trying to fall asleep, when I notice that my mind is going through the paces: 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 …

And I say “Stop! Stop! I’m trying to sleep and Havi says Shivaing at night will keep me up!”

And sometimes my brain listens (it helps for me to cross-my-heart promise to do some Shiva Nata the next day and distract it with something else shiny), and sometimes I just do some mental rehearsal of the Dance.

Other times I just don’t have the will to get up and do the Dance, but my I can tell brain is craving it. So I’ll put the DVD in my computer and just watch the theory or some of the practice sections. If I’ve got just a teeny bit of energy I’ll actively try to pretend I’m mirroring the movements.

Often I can find an empty room at work for a quick Shiva break, but I don’t have the DVD …

So here’s my confession: I’ve spent more time practicing the Dance without the DVD than with it.

I really hope this is okay.

Oh, it goes so slowly, and I suspect I don’t fail enough (ah, perfectionism, you’re so cute. Even when the goal is getting things wrong you think you’ve got to do it better), but my brain wants its fix! A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

And once my brain was crying out for some Dance of Shiva and I just had to be sitting at my desk. So I pulled out a pad of paper and started writing out the numbers.

Warning! This was so much tougher than I expected it to be. But I did start noticing patterns I had no idea were in there before.

Here’s the thing:

I know my brain benefits from these too.

When I sit still and visualize myself doing the Dance some of the same brain circuits are being activated as if I were actually doing it.

When I watch the DVD I’m activating mirror neurons and, again, I’m stimulating some of the same neural circuits I’d be activating if I were moving like Mr. Lappa. Going slowly and thinking hard about the patterns gets them into your brain.

People who study brains for a living have spent years researching this stuff and writing about it in peer-reviewed journals. Okay, I don’t know if there’s research on Shiva Nata, but if we trust that the Shiva Nata is good for the brain (and oh, my brain certainly thinks it is), then these other forms must be good too.

Now if only I had a magic extra well-rested half hour to myself in the morning so I could just do it the “normal” way…

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I love how each one comes from a different — but equally unlikely — angle, and then just nails something that is so completely true.

Some stuff I thought you might like.

Off. Balance.

Casey wrote about being off-balance.

Sometimes when I’m doing the Dance of Shiva in the mirror, I feel like a fucked-up cheerleader. It’s hard to resist the temptation to snap into every position (three years of marching band in high school will do that to you). Most of the time when I start feeling really cheeky and flow-y, I throw myself off balance within moments.

My Stuck Is A Bear

Holly wrote about her stuck being a bear.

But this is important, important enough for me to haul my how-does-it-manage-to-be-both-flabby-AND-flat arse out of bed at this ungoddessly hour and risk the Wrath of Bob, so he’ll just have to put on his big kitty panties & deal with it.

All of that tension and a cacophony of tuning.

Eric wrote about the relationship between internal noise and internal information. And about pain, flailing, tension and listening.

One thing I learned from Tai Chi is that the best way to relax something that is chronically tense is to actually listen to what it is telling you.

All of that tension and a cacophony of tuning before the music begins.

Paper Fireworks.

Lots of great stuff at this paper fireworks tumblr blog that I am madly in love with.

Like this one.

And – when Havi says get lost she means get completely lost, I think, because I was floating on a log in the ocean a million miles from shore with how wrong I was doing it and had the best day afterwards.

She’s an anonymous brand new Shivanaut chronicling her thing and it’s awesome.

Show some support!

Group Blogging.

Yup. There’s a Shivanata Group Blog.

With so much goodness.

Like this piece from Elizabeth.

Anyway, after the practice, my About me page practically wrote itself into my journal. I have been trying to write this page for months and months – and here it just flowed out.

Even though I didn’t set an intention or anything. Hurrah!

It’ll probably be another many months before it gets posted, but hey, baby steps.

Oh, the epiphanies. They are many.

So.

As some of you know, I just came back from teaching a week-long Destuckification Retreat in California.

We did Shiva Nata every day.

Sometimes twice.

On the beach. To The Clash. With words and sounds and seriousness and silliness and transcendence.

And my mind is boggling at all the incredible things that came from practicing with this amazing group of (extremely brave and tolerant!) people.

So over the next week or so I hope to share with you some of the extremely weird and fantastic things I have realized, discovered, seen, re-seen, understood, processed or been given.

Because ohmygosh. Big big stuff.

Love to all the Shivanauts and the people who are just thinking about maybe eventually being Shivanauts and the people who are resting at a plateau or taking a break, and all my beloved Lurker Mice.

So good to be back. Kiss!

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Twice a year I teach a class (by phone) where we talk about Shiva Nata wackiness and I answer questions. This has been going on for a few years now and it’s usually pretty fun.

We talk about ways to get back into a practice when it’s stuckified, ways for it to support you, and anything else you’d like to know/understand/untangle in relation to the madness that is Dance of Shiva.

This class is free to everyone who owns the Starter Kit and you can totally take it as many times as you like.

What kinds of questions?

Oh, let’s see. Theory, practice, random stuff you wonder about. It’s all good.

Surprise me. :)

Boring questions are welcome. Wacky and bizarre questions are welcome. It really doesn’t matter. My duck and I will do our best to help you out.

Details?

Here is the important part. We have CHANGED THE DATE of our upcoming class. So put this in your calendar!

It’s going to be:

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 16 , 2010 at 12:00 PM Pacific

And *not* next week as previously announced.

You can use the time zone converter to figure out what time noon Pacific is for you.

Expect to take notes, because scribbling happens.

And, as always, you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. If you’re more comfortable listening in than talking, that’s fine.

You can also make sure your Dance of Shiva questions get answered by leaving them here.

Leave your questions here in the comments and I can see to it that we cover them in class.

Shivanautical communal learning! It makes me the happy.

And if you aren’t already signed up, you can sign up here. If you can’t make the class, we’ll still send you the recording as long as you’ve signed up.

Awesome. Maybe we’ll get to talk to you then.

*blowing kisses*
Havi & Selma

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In case you were wondering what’s up with that, I thought I’d let you in on the secret Dance of Shiva Roller Derby connection …

Oh boy!

The Dance of Shiva Roller Derby connection.

Okay.

Dance of Shiva:

• is the fastest way I know of to become insanely coordinated.
• gives you just ridiculous physical agility, stability, speed of reaction.
• makes you graceful as hell.
• teaches you to completely own your own mental, emotional and physical space.
• helps you find that invisible crown of sovereignty.
• turns you into the one who cannot be shaken.
• launches you into a state of intense focus and concentration.
• lets you restructure the matrix and use the force.
• makes you the one who can dance between the rain drops, spot the openings, be untouchable.
• teaches you to see the connections, know the weaknesses and use the strengths.
• is like a wacky forcefield of awesome.
• is occasionally done while listening to The Clash.
• is really probably the only obscure yoga-based training about which you could easily say “that’s so punk rock”.

“That’s so punk rock!”

So it’s basically love at first sight.

Roller Derby is all about being agile.

Agile thinking, agile movement, agile reaction, agile being.

Sure, it’s also about being fast, hot, powerful and fabulous.

But it’s really about this core quality of agility in all of its possible forms.

Which means?

Having a mental map of where everything and everyone is, even when it’s happening behind you.

Being able to find the hidden openings at will. Always knowing what your options are. Knowing what to use and when to use it.

Your mind’s ability to be constantly tracking everything that’s important: moving people, moving targets and that steady flow of highly complex, constantly-changing information.

Focus. Serious, serious focus.

All that is pretty much what Dance of Shiva does best.

Because Dance of Shiva is the thing that trains your brain to see and understand the connections between things.

It’s liquid math, done with your body.

It’s the thing that lets you build and strengthen new neural connections so that you can think structurally and systematically, creatively and surprisingly, all at the same time.

It’s brain training that gives you the ability to react faster to whatever comes your way. Also scary triceps.

And it quiets your thoughts. Gets you where you need to go. Sets you on fire because anything is possible and possibility is the biggest high there is.

You can see possibility. You can breathe possibility. You can act on possibility.

Obviously, I’m pretty excited about us hooking up. Can you tell?

Why now?

Oh, I don’t know.

I’ve been teaching this stuff to yoga people and movement professionals for the past six years.

And then in the past two years I’ve been teaching it to entrepreneurs and creative thinkers and artists. And seeing crazy-wonderful things happen.

Derby needs Shiva Nata.

And the Shivanauts are ready to bring some of their power and love and silliness to Derby.

We also kind of have a lot in common. Like campiness, fabulousness and stripey socks. And drag names. Sometimes.

And we make up words! Like shivanautical or destuckification if you’re me. And brutalitarian dominatoration and butt rocking-est if you’re Guns N Rollers. See?!

So we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime?

Ass-kicking coolness on skates! Best. Sport. Ever.

My duck and l will see you at the bout! Or, you know, on the internets.

p.s. GUNS N ROLLERS! Rawr!

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Oh yes.

Background?

So two days ago I had a tiny sparkle of a post-Shiva-Nata realization.

Definitely not an epiphany. A gasp of a something leading up to one.

So.

It occurred to me after my practice that what I’m focusing on (or trying to emphasize) in my life right now has two parts.

It’s about grounding and stability on the one hand, and flow and movement on the other.

And of course both are related, blah blah blah.

The connection part wasn’t the realization.

The realization was more that I want to focus on this in my home. And that I wanted to think about bringing grounding and stability into my sleeping area (hence the new mattress obsession).

And about bringing flow and movement into my workspace.

But all that is the background to the actual moment of bing that has been sparking all kinds of things today.

Excellent.

So then yesterday morning I was doing my morning ritual of visiting each corner in Hoppy House and connecting to the qualities I’m working on.

Because, you know, wackiness is a great way to start the day.

And I had a total Shiva Nata moment. A mini-epiphany of the best kind.

A quick surprising rearranging of the internal matrix.

Just the way we like it.

Okay. Here it is.

I was standing outside the door of my bedroom. The space that I want to bring more grounding and stability to.

And realized it was flanked by trees.

There is a tree on the mezuzah (you might have to wikipedia that one, sorry). And a tree is the central theme in the gorgeous painting I bought from Leah Piken Kolidas, which hangs on the other side of the door.

Right. The space I want to ground is surrounded by trees on both sides.

Also the room itself has lots of wood. And a brown floor. And all the other colors are first and second chakra colors. Hello, grounding.

Why no, I’m not done boggling at myself yet.

So I went into the office, thinking about what would have to happen to make that space more about flow and movement.

And then realized that it’s all about flow and movement.

In fact, I have four separate pictures of boats in there (only one is a pirate ship, interestingly enough). Plus the walls are … blue.

Like water. And symbolically it’s the fifth chakra which is all about inspiration and connection and communication and various flow-centric stuff like that.

Oh, and I have a painting by Sarah Lacy of a seascape.

My focus: on something that’s already there. Awesome.

I’ve been spending a lot of time and money and energy on new and better ways to negotiate my relationship with space.

To get better at feeling at home in my space.

Wonderful classes with Jen Hofmann and Lisa Baldwin. Picking up on smartnesses from Cairene MacDonald and Janet Bailey.

And all of these things are helping. It’s all about incremental change.

But while all this change has been infusing my life, my brain hadn’t caught up with it.

Hadn’t internalized just how much has actually shifted. Or just how much of what I was looking for was already present.

The conclusion-ey bit.

So yeah.

Obviously the “everything you need is already inside you” thing is a coffee mug slogan a known spiritual truth type of thing .

But it was pretty cool to trip over the reminder that it really is.

Because everything I needed was already there. In seed form.

My job isn’t to bring grounding in or to make flow happen. It’s just to notice what is and attune to the qualities that are already there.

It’s about moving from what I’d thought was the question:

“How do I bring more of these elements and qualities into my space and into my life?”

… to the real question:

“How do I notice and remember that my space already contains what I want and need from it?”

It’s about moving from the old thing of bringing something in to the new thing which is accessing something that’s already present.

Bonk bonk bonk.

Off to play with Captain Obvious. And to do another ten minutes of Shiva-ing it up. Because I can’t wait to find out what’s next.

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