Dance of Shiva

What if you could train your brain without needing a computer or a book? What if you could train your coordination, your proprioception (your ability to feel your body), your ability to use the left and right sides of your brain, short term memory and long term memory, and also exercise your ability to sense inputs and respond with different outputs all at the same time. What if, as an added bonus increase your creativity, your ability to think outside of the box or even to create the box that you think within.

What if you could develop your ability to sense potential, the ways to do things rather than the reasons to stop, and balance the sides of your upper body. You can even learn to think from right to left as well as from left to right and learn how to think from “another point of view.”
The Dance of Shiva offers all of these advantages, while exercising the brain and the body at the same time.

Training
The Brain

In the Dance of Shiva a small part of training the brain involves remembering. Is that enough to turn you off of training your brain? What if memorizing was made simple. Rather than focusing on the idea that you have lots to remember, why not focus on learning little bits at a time. Make memorization bearable or even enjoyable by doing it a little bit at a time and not worrying about what you still have to do.

It’s not a big stretch to remember bits at a time. So while comfortable and doable, how does this train the brain? In a way it’s like learning to ride a bicycle. Initially you have training wheels so that you can focus on steering and using the pedals. Training wheels don’t really help you with balance but they do help you to get comfortable with the “idea” of riding a bike. Then when the training wheels come of you can practice looking ahead and finding that thin line of force that helps to keep you upright when the wheels are turning.

Once you’ve learned to ride a bike without training wheels using training wheels is an encumberance. With the training wheels off you have so much more freedom to ride the bike. You can handle corners quickly. Likewise in the dance of shiva. Once you’ve done something simple like learning the basic positions so that you don’t have to think about them you gain a bit more freedom. Then you learn the next stage-how to move between those positions.

Freedom
To Act

Here again is a little bit more memorization, but again with memorization comes the freedom to use your brain in other ways. Instead of trying to remember what the positions and the moves are you can focus on doing the positions and the moves. You can focus on sensing your body at the same time and based on the ideas that you have memorized, you correct the positions of your body as necessary. The faster you do the movements (the faster you are able to do the movements because you’ve memorized them) the faster you have to use your brain to check and correct your positions if necessary.

Computers and books aren’t a bad thing. Obviously I am sitting here writing to you on my macbook pro. But over reliance on computers and books at the expense of not-memorizing or learning, we miss a chance to help our brain (and body) grow. It doesn’t matter if there is “too much to learn or memorize” the point is you just have to start now. And if you focus on learning little bits at a time, not only do you train your brain and your body, you can have fun and enjoy life at the same time simply because you are practicing being present in what you are trying to do.