I recently made public a post from back in December about feeling tired after practicing Shiva Nata.  I even wrote to Havi a while back asking about whether this was normal.

Well, it seems to have percolated away in the back of my mind for a while and has now re-appeared, along with a structure (cause I *love* building those) to help me explain it to myself.

I’ve written about it over at my other blog, but the applicable bit for here is that I’ve maxed out my current energy and I need to improve that before I’ll be able to do more regular and intensive Shiva Nata practice.

Why do I want to do a more regular and intensive Shiva Nata practice?  I’m so glad you asked…

Another ongoing issue

I like Shiva Nata.  I like it because it has noticably made a difference to my awareness of my thoughts since I started it, but I also like it because I’m naturally good at it – ego love!

Of course, anyone who’s spent some time reading Havi’s writings on the subject knows that the latter isn’t necessarily such a good thing.  It’s been a great way to get into a practice with the intention of going wrong, and thus work on my perfectionist streak, but I haven’t had any epiphanies really since cracking Level 3.

The very clever Duff sparked thoughts about this a while back (thank you!) and it has also been percolating in my brain as I start to realise what it is I’m getting out of the practice, or not as the case may be.

Now, I don’t intend to stop, not yet anyway, but it ties in to what I wrote above in that I think the practice would require much more energy from me to make it complex enough to get the magic flowing.  At the moment, I don’t think I have what it takes to make epiphanies this way.

So what now

As I said, I’m not giving up.  I’ve got the instructions for Levels 4 and 5 from Havi and I’m going to go through a similar process as I did with Level 3 for those, which should pass some time.  Whilst I’m doing that, and going at a pace slower than I would like, I will work on the stuff that I need to help me push further: my diet, my sleep and my friends.

Wish me luck.

Whilst Level 3 is where I’m pushing myself at the moment, I like to mix in a little Level 1 and 2 at top speed to see how I do.  Since I realised recently that Level 3 was not causing me complete havoc any more I thought I would have a go at doing it at speed.

Gah!

This was tricky.  The difficulty however was less to do with the movement itself (though at speed I did get lost many, many times) but in keeping up the speed.  Whenever I wasn’t sure what was next I found it nearly impossible to make a move that I wasn’t confident in.  Rather than keep going, even if I knew I’d mucked it up, I would freeze until I had worked out what the next move was.

What can I do when things go wrong?

Part of me thinks that this isn’t really a problem.  I can go as fast as possible and get frozen every so often and it will still be more taxing that going through it slowly.  I do get some moments where I’m able to flow through a tricky situation and others where repeating it on the same side and/or then repeating on the opposite side makes the pattern clearer and I can see it in my mind more clearly.

However, I had originally been aiming to keep up the pace and just go wrong if I went wrong, and that didn’t work.  Rather than just move my arms and keep going, even though I was very confident that I had gone wrong and would therefore need to repeat this section, my arms would just freeze, if only for a second, until I worked out the next move.  I’m wondering if this is where using the DVD would be useful – since I can jump back in by following the DVD when I freeze and just skip where I get stuck for now, repeating this over and over until I get stuck less often.

On my own though, I know that I’m able to go back and repeat and repeat as much as I like an area that catches me up until I feel like I’ve at least got a better grasp of it and then move on (I don’t want to spend hours waving my arms around – they start to ache after a while).

Anything over Level 3 and the DVD won’t be available anyway.  But presumably the keep-pushing method is what happens in a class environment.  So what do you reckon – is it better to immediately stop and work it out or try and keep pushing through?

I kept getting stuck, and I mean like completely and totally, my brain has frozen, why am I stood here with my arms both in horizontal 1 stuck.  I was trying to work through the Level 3 arms – without the DVD, because that just annoys me by going either too slow or too fast depending on whether I’m in the flow or having to work out each step in turn.

My practice habits

I have a habit about how I practice! Yes, it’s a brand new habit, developed whilst I was practicing Shiva Nata – can you believe it!

I don’t say the numbers out loud, they tend to distract me because my arms can work out what they’re doing at Level 1 and 2 without my mouth getting involved.  It’s actually easier for me to do the arms (with or without legs) without saying anything for these.  But at Level 3 this habit failed me!

Trying something new

So, without realising about the habit thing at first, I started talking myself through it (that being another habit of mine – I think best out loud).  One-one, two-two, two-two, three-one, one-three, two-four, four-two, one-one, three-three, ….  Suddenly, the little mini-patterns appear in what I’m saying (even though my arms are convinced that the whole thing is just one great big long random jumble).  Sometimes I say one thing but my arms do another and I’m able to see where I’ve gone wrong because my arms don’t feel like two-four but my mouth knows that two-four is next.  Quick check and ah-yes, I’ve made a mistake, but I’ve spotted it!  I’m aware, I’m conscious of it – this is most excellent, because now I can choose what to do next instead.  (Oh the symmetry!)

The idea for when you’re in a sticky patch

If you find yourself getting stuck and not getting past where you are try changing around whether you do one or both of the moving and the talking.  So if you tend to do one of the following, try another:

• Just do the arms in silence (or with music)
• Talk your way through the sequence moving your arms at the same time
• Just talk through the sequence without moving

What have you tried when you’ve got stuck, and did it help?  Are you stuck now – can you give this a try and let us know how it went for you?