Shiva Nata Practice Day: Getting to Flow
Intention: I really need to be present and work very hard today. So my intention is going to be asking my body and mind to summon up every ounce of strength to support me in every way I need to be supported today. I need to go reread Havi’s guides because I am feeling like this may be inappropriate, like the intention needs to be a question? But I might as well ask myself for something and see if I get it.
Working on: Level one fast horizontals and fast transquarters.
Things that came up for me during this practice: Very fun, very lost, much flailing, really really wrong, this is way too over my head oh no, oh this is fun, more flailing.
Things that came up for me after this practice (meditation, shavasana): I may have been way over my head but am not thinking about it. Just asking my legs my arms my heart my mind my eyes to be in peak performance today, I need everything they can offer.
Things that came up for me after this practice (48 hours):
Confession - this was yesterday’s practice. I am writing it the next morning. And I am feeling almost hungover and exhausted. Why?
Because yesterday, I was flowing, I was in peak performance, I worked for a straight twelve hours at a desk nonstop without even getting up to eat, drink or use the restroom. Without emailing. Without checking blogs. None of that stuff. My body and mind responded and I did it.
Now I don’t think I respected my body because of the burnout migrainish fuzziness I am experiencing right now. I could have been fueling it or trying to take care of its needs when it was busting its butt for me, but I just pushed through because I had a deadline. So even though another deadline looms for tonight, and I would like to repeat yesterday, I am going to be kind to myself right now and get a really nice meal, a long shower, some stretching and breathing before asking for the incredible again. And today I give my body permission to ask for food or whatever it needs. Yesterday it didn’t even ask, I didn’t even feel deprived the whole day. It was an amazing sacrifice so I need to honor it and respect what it did for me.
Also that was a cool experiment - my intention for the morning doesn’t need to be asking a question, it can also be a summons that I ask myself to rise to the occasion of. Way cool, way valuable, and will be easier to just ask for what I need when I know what it is I need. Sometimes I don’t know what I need or want and that is when I can engage the practice with a question.
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.
