Quick Tips

Dance of Shiva is a mind/body exercise that can be practiced in 5 minutes a day. It can be used to practice decision making, clear thinking and getting into the flow.

Start by learning the basic positions first (unless you already know them.) They provide the framework for the movements.

When learning the moves, practice a page of moves (4 positions) or a set of moves (4 pages) at a time. Practice until you can easily remember the moves without needing to refer to this book. Once you’ve memorized a page or set of moves then move on to learning the next set.

Perfection is not required prior to moving on to the next set. What I would suggest is required is that you can do a set of movements without having to think about them in order to do them.

Flow While Learning

One goal of the dance of shiva (one possible goal) is to enter the flow while doing the movements.

Flow is an absence of thought. You know what you have to do without having to think. (There is awareness, but the awareness is focused on doing as opposed to thinking.)

You can practice flowing by working within the limits of your short term memory.

Learning a set of movements, if you find that you have to think in order to figure out what move is next then you are trying to learn too much at once.

Focus instead on learning or practicing a smaller set of movements so that you can get into the flow even as you are learning the movements.

One of the reasons I like to use dance of shiva to practice flowing is that it is easy to brake movements (or positions) into smaller elements that are still meaningful. It is also easy to combine movements.

Use Discernment Prior to Practice

Prior to practicing (or learning) a dance of shiva movement use “discernment” (or thought) to decide which moves to practice.

If you find that you can’t flow (because you have to keep thinking) then use discernment to break the moves down into a smaller practice set.

After learning a small set of movements then practice it in the context of a larger set of movements that you already know. (Here you can use discernment to group a set of practice movements together.

Rest when you’ve had enough.

If you’ve already learned movements then

I would suggest that if you are limited time wise, then focus on doing a few moves and on doing those moves well.

You will feel better doing this (and flowing) versus going through the motions of too many movements, none of which you have learned to the point of being able to do them without having to think about how to do them.

Lead With Your Mind

As you get used to doing the movements, practice seeing or visualizing the position you are moving into before you do the move.

A benefit of the dance of shiva is that the positions and movements are simple enough that this is relatively easy to do.

One other action that you can do is to say the position you are moving to before you actually do the move.

You can think of this as “Leading with your Mind.�

Immediate Feedback for Faster Learning

With dance of shiva you can act as your own teacher. The movements and positions are all clearly defined. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can sense whether you are doing them right or wrong.

You can then correct yourself straight away.

Because there is no lag time between doing the “test” and finding out the results, you can learn relatively quickly. You aren’t waiting for a teacher to “grade your tests.”

With that in mind don’t beat yourself over the head when you make a mistake. Instead, focus on continuing to flow. If you continually make the same mistake then isolate and practice the problem area until you can do it comfortably. Then (gradually if required) re-integrate it.