Dance of Shiva

Training my brain with Dr Ryuta Kawashima’s “Train your brain: 60 days to a better brain” I found that I got my fastest times when I practiced looking at the next question while my hand wrote the answer to the previous question. After each set of math equations done this way I felt mentally alive and almost like I had gone for a good run (was that endorphins kicking in?) I felt good.

Knowing
instead of
Thinking

In “Train Your Brain” the goal was to answer simple math equations as quickly as possible. I did these practices daily noticing each time the number of errors and also the time it took me to finish.

In order to answer the questions quickly I had to write continuously non-stop and in order to do that I didn’t have time to think. Instead I had to trust that I knew the answer deep in my sub conscious because I’d practiced these simply math equations so many times in my youth. If I trusted my ability to “know” the answer I could simply look ahead one question at a time so that I could see what was coming up while allowing my hand to write the answer to the question I had just looked at.

Handling
Change

It’s a little like driving in a rally and being the pilot and navigator at the same time. The navigator looks at the map to see what is coming up next-tells the driver so that the driver can handle it, and then looks at the driving notes to see what is coming up next. If the driver and navigator are tuned in to each other they can work together well as a team. Together they can sense changes in the road ahead and handle those changes. At one level we can look at the car, the driver, the navigator and the road all as separate ideas that are connected to each other. The navigator senses changes in the road ahead, conveys those changes to the driver so that he or she can handle those changes and meanwhile the car stays on the road despite all that is happening. Together the driver, navigator and car handle changes in the road so that they can stay connected to the road.

The better they stay connected to the road and each other, the faster they can drive on the road and the more likely they are to get the best time possible.

Training my brain, the questions, one after the other, are like curves in the road ahead. My ability to answer those questions equal my ability to handle the curves in the road and stay connected to the road in general. By looking ahead one question at a time my navigator senses what change is coming up and transmits that change to the driver, the part of me that answers the question. Together we answer the questions as quickly as we can getting the best time we possibly can and feeling good in the process.

Practice Knowing
Before Doing

How can we apply this when practicing the Dance of Shiva? Practice seeing the position we are moving to before we do it. As an example, moving both hands forwards from 1-1 to 2-2 before we actually move our arms, we “see” the position 2-2. Then we do the move. Then we practice seeing the next position after that. We can practice this in other things as well. We can practice “knowing” what we are going to do before we do it.