Dance of Shiva

Shiva what?
Dance of Shiva is a movement art, a bit like Tai Chi, but much faster. It uses super-complicated choreography patterns to scramble your brain, improve balance and co-ordination and it may also turn you into a super-genius. If you want to learn, head over to Shiva Nata.com and get the starter kit.

This is my Dance of Shiva fan page. It has some thoughts on practicing, and some of the cheat sheets and tools I’m using.

Shiva Nata practice sheets

I share these in the hope they will help make the practice more fun, more scrutable, and less hair-tearing for my fellow Shivanauts, and make it easier slightly less hard to access the genius-inducing goodness.

If it helps you learn, or inspires you to do your own crazy things, I have succeeded. Thank you.

These are all printable PNG images. You can bring them with you so you can practice when you don’t have your computer or DVD player handy.

Level 1 – All Positions
What it is: the numbers for level 1 arms, written down
Use when: practising without the DVD (while travelling maybe) or when you’re learning to say the numbers or learn them by heart.
How does it work: For each of the four starting positions, there are two blocks of numbers. Start with the block on the left, and run through the positions row by row. At the end of each row, you’re back at the starting position. Then move to the other side for the mirror reflection, which is the block on the right.

Level 2 – Starting positions
What it is: the level 2 starting positions as demonstrated on the DVD.
Use when: you’re boggled by the size and structure of level 2, or you want to learn the starting positions by heart.

Level 2 – Practice sets
What it is: All the level 2 starting positions, rearranged, so you can practice them in handy chunks.
Use when: it takes you several days to run through level 2 and you despair of ever learning the whole thing.

Bonus Pattern: FQ (Difficulty level: 1.5)
What it is: A brand new way to hit yourself in the face!
Use when: You’re looking for a more interesting way to practice the transquarters, you’re somewhere between level 1 arms and level 3 and you’d like to try something different

Useful Tools

If you’re practicing dancing without the DVD, and you want to help yourself to keep moving, or slowly increase your speed, consider getting a metronome. You can use this free, web-based one to see if it works for you: Metronome Online. “Slow speed” is slower than 40, where metronomes generally start. “Fast speed” is somewhere around 72, I think. Experiment, it’s your practice.

Cool site by Beth: ShivaMonster.com. To help you keep your practice fun and challenging.

Don’t forget you can use the hashtags #shivanata and #shivanaut on Twitter to ask questions and talk to other shivanauts.

Video

I did a little video of me doing the bonus pattern (Forward-Transquarter) to music. I’m new to video editing, and it’s a bit rough around the edges. Hope you enjoy anyway.