To start with we’re running cheap knock off versions of professional productions.  Though I’m calling it a homage to Havi’s video avoid complicated copyrighting issues!

So without further ado, I give you my demonstration of some of the Level 2 arms…

I said I would post a vid, so here it is.  No editing except for fades in and out (the music is just what was playing on my laptop at 4am when I recorded this!)

Note my very serious face – I’m thinking!

And yes, I realised after that I had forgotten to do it starting with the right side for the video.  And yes, I’m wearing orange in front of an orange wall (I like orange, ok) it’s not the image going crazy.  And yes, the lighting and quality sucks.

Well, I thought I’d save you the trouble of pointing out its many flaws

Having made it through Level 3 arms I’m now working on being able to do it with greater speed and fluidity (rather than with lots of pausing and umming!)

However, the golden rule of Shiva Nata is “it has to be difficult to work”.  So rather than simply work on getting from a 4 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10, I figured that maybe I should try something completely different with a lower level to challenge myself in a completely new way!

Reminding myself it’s a practice

This is a totally new way of doing things for me.  I normally like to obsess until I master something and then celebrate by showing off to my friends and feeling good about myself.  And to be honest I’ll probably do both of these anyway (heck, I did promise a video at some point – I just need to get over the whole perfectionism thing with it – all encouragement welcome!)

Anyway, the idea here is for me to work on always aiming for a goal, by constantly reminding myself that it’s a practice, with infinite variations, that I will never finish but will keep doing anyway.  This ties in big with my current personal development theme.

Masochism FTW!

So, to make things harder for myself (so as to stimulate deconstruction and reconstruction) I decided to try the idea of replacing the numbers with colours and saying them out loud!  I chose Red, Yellow, Green and Blue because they’re separate, bold colours in my mind – making it easier to ‘see’ the patterns with my mind’s eye.

It was totally worth it too.  I could see new patterns emerging from Level 2 that I hadn’t noticed, or at least taken notice of, before.  And there was no way I was doing it with the legs either – so I have another thing to try next time!

I’ve had a lot of practice at masochism…

I’m a dancer – I have various horror stories about pushing through pain barriers and exhaustion in order to perform & rehearse.  It seems that being able to happily take risks and make things harder (in a controlled manner) on a physical plane can translate to doing the same on a mental level.

Of course, no-one is always willing to do it, everyone has times that they want to just lie down and relax – but given that it’s generally considered a good idea to play on your strengths to support your weaknesses (oh my gosh – I’m doing yoga talk! Havi, what have you done to me?!) I figured that I would let my years of dance lessons help support my brain training now!

Going backwards?

I actually did the Level 3 arms as well (or at least as far as I could get with them today) because I don’t want to feel like I’ve ‘slipped back’ into Level 2.  See above about still working on my need to master vs being in the practice.  I don’t see this is a problem, it just meant that I took longer with it all, but at the moment I’m lucky to have time on my side (and know it – when I’m not freaking out).

What do you think?  Is doing a different version of Level 2 a step backwards?  Should I just be pushing myself harder with Level 3 to make it difficult?