Shiva Nata Practice Journal

Shiva Nata Practice Day: Dumb Fight Edition

Intention: Figure out how to give the chihuahua a bone. What does he want? I want him to feel like this:

I want him to be safe and secure and at peace and most of all quiet so that I can get unstuck and get back to work. But he is too busy growling and criticizing and alerting me to every possible negative reaction that will result from anything I plan to say or do. He is too busy looking like this:

Working on: Level one horizontals and verticals.

Things that came up for me during this practice: Woah! Anger! Not from doing the dance but from some offsides, real life actual criticism.

My boyfriend is very athletic. Has been his whole life. He is also a teacher and a coach and along with that takes immense pleasure in telling people how to do something the “right” way. Walking past me and getting a look at the video, he immediately told me my form was terrible and there was no way I could be getting any benefits out of this unless I made my arm movements sharper.

I reacted by getting really angry, telling him that he didn’t know what he was talking about because this was not a typical martial art or yoga form and that the goal was to “do it wrong.”

He looked at me like I was crazy, of course, and then proceeded to passive aggressively whine about how “of course I know nothing about stretching, I’ve never seen anyone stretch in my life” etc etc

Things that came up for me after this practice (meditation, shavasana): Was too irritated to even sit in shavasana. Left the room in anger.

Things that came up for me after this practice (48 hours): I don’t know maybe something about my intention will come up? I am trying to use the practice to get over my perfectionism, and having someone walk in and reinforce all my fears about doing it wrong while I was doing it wrong really didn’t help. My reaction certainly didn’t help.

I reacted so strongly because what I need is to hear that yes it’s possible for even me to make shiva nata a part of my life. I am very uncoordinated. I once took Arthur Murray dance lessons for a summer and ended up getting a partial refund for being “unteachable.”

I have always been drawn to the idea of yoga, but have been worried about being physically unfit and not capable of doing it. In college a friend started a daily yoga practice and I asked if I could attend a class with her. She looked me up and down and said “I don’t think its for you. Its really hard and there is also some praying you have to do. Maybe you should try powerwalking.”

I was pretty crushed and at the time didn’t know how to communicate how that made me feel - embarressed, fat, too “bitter” or “sarcastic” to even try to engage in a spiritual journey. Spirtuality isn’t a contest but I felt condescended to with the statement.

Since I read Nonviolent Communication, I think I could have heard my friend but come to a very different conclusion. Maybe she herself was really involved with the praying and didn’t want me to make fun of her. Maybe she just wanted that time to be for her alone and didn’t want to bring a guest. Maybe she really just thought I would enjoy something else more but her tone was unintentionally abrasive, leading me to believe she meant it in the vein of “you aren’t capable of this” when she literally meant “from what I have observed of your taste, you may be happier trying something like this instead.”

Well yesterday I completed a yoga class! And the way it made me feel - wow! Amazing! Tremendous heat and pounding blood. It was beautiful. I have never felt my body so completely in my life. Like every cell, every membrane, everything. It was all alive and pulsing with deepening and receding pressures. I can’t wait to have that feeling again. Today’s soreness is a gift. It is a reminder of the party my muscles had yesterday. Now my back and my legs and my arms and my shoulders are all hungover from the revelry, texting eachother about what a crazy celebration of life that was. As I gingerly wiggle through the covers like a snake, every movement corresponds with soreness, but I can’t stop grinning.