How Do You Improve Coordination?
With A Clearly Defined Idea

Coordination is getting two or more things to work together towards a single goal.

Improving coordination can mean improving the way that your mind and body work together or improving the way the parts of your body work together. In either case you can coordinate or unify by leading with a clear idea of what you are trying to do.

Improve Coordination with Clearly Defined Ideas

How does shivanata help with improving coordination?

First of all the arm positions used in The Dance of Shiva are very simple and easy to define. Once you have learned the positions you can focus on putting your arms in those positions and feeling your arms when they are in those positions.

• If you know the arm positions that you are moving into, then you are using your mind.
• Actually putting your arm in that position is using your body.
• Feeling or sensing your arm once it is in position you can give your mind feedback as to whether the arm is in the exact position or not. You mind can study this information, act on it and more finely match the position of the arm to that "imagined" or thought of.
• With practice you require less adjustment.

Modifying the Positions

Even if you can't do the positions as described, you can modify them to suit the limits of your body.

As an example, in position 1, above, you can have the elbow straight and the hand at shoulder height. This could be the way you define position 1. So long as you can recognize when your arm is in this position, i.e. you can feel it, then you can use this position to help unify your mind and body.

If you do modify the positions, make sure that you clearly define what those modified positions are. Then you can use that definition to unify your mind and body.

Feel the Positions

Practicing with one arm at a time, you can use a mirror to help see when you are in a position as defined. At the same time you can practice "feeling" the position from inside your body so that you can recognize or feel when your arm is in the right position.

You can make this more of a "whole body experience" by feeling your shoulder and ribcage, and adjusting the position of both to make putting the hand in position as easy as possible. In so doing you coordinate ribcage, shoulder, elbow and hand, the idea that of using those elements to put your hand in the right position unifies them and helps them to work together.

Move slowly and smoothly

You can practice moving slowly and smoothly in and out of each position so that you can learn to feel the positions and the positions become second nature to you (built in).

Moving slowly and smoothly takes effort. You have to focus to move slowly and you may find that you focus on feeling your body as you move slowly.

Moving slowly and smootly not only results in better muscle control it also helps you to feel what you are doing.

Improved coordination can result.

Learn Little Bits at a Time, Hard Wire the Positions into your Brain

When learning positions and movements, focus on learning little bits at a time.

Practice only as much as you can hold in your short term memory so that you can focus on doing the movements rather than on thinking about how to do them.

Once you can feel the movements, once you can remember them easily, without having to think, you can move on to learning the next set of movements.

You may not always do the movements perfectly. However, what is important is that you are able to recognize when you make a mistake. Afterwards you can then practice movements you get wrong until doing them right becomes natural.

Make Little Bits Meaningfull

When learning little bits at a time make those little bits meaningfull. With the dance of shiva meaningfull well defined bits can be positions with one hand or the movement between any two positions. It can also be a sequence of repeated moves.

When picking little bits,

• first of all make sure that the little bit is readily definable and sensible.
• Then make sure that it is easy to hold in short term memory.

And so you can start with learning arm positions and movements of the dance of shiva one arm at a time. Then you can progress to using two arms and a leg.

Coordinating Both Arms at Once

As you progress to practicing positions which involve using both hands at the same time you can focus on feeling both your arms in different positions at once.

This requires focus and attention and practice.

You learn to feel your hands in clearly defined positions, coordinating body and mind, and you learn to feel your hands in different positions as required, coordinating two parts of your body at once.

Whether you hold a static pose while standing or move your legs at the same time, you can also focus on coordinating legs, spine and arms, eventually working towards feeling and controlling all elements at the same time. You can thus learn to coordinate your whole body with your mind.

You can do this in any activity that you want to get better at (from playing drums to doing martial arts, to dancing, to playing an instrument) but the nice thing about doing the Dance of Shiva is that it is easy to break things down into meaningful elements so that you can practice the necessary coordination.

And the coordination lends itself to other activities.

Improving Coordination Slowly and Smoothly

To imrove coordination with any exercise, let alone dance of shiva, start of by doing it slowly.

Do it slowly, at a speed where you can feel your body and adjust it.

Think of traffic lights.

Traffic Lights Are Dumb

Traffics lights are a "dumb" or non-intelligent way to manage traffic.

There is a little (or a lot) of design effort that goes into planning the timing of when which directions of traffic get the green light and when the red. Or a simple timer is used.

How many times have you been stuck at a red light and been waiting for ages while there is absolutely no cross traffic?

Traffic lights with sensors could avoid that situation. Admittedly they wouldn't be useful when there is heavy traffic flow in all directions, however on the occasions when vehicles are waiting needlessly, sensors could be used to detect that situaiton and change the lights accordingly.

Ideally, such traffic lights would have some way of communicating with each other so that information on decisions are shared and coordinated.

And what is the clear idea that coordinates the actions of such traffic lights?

Keeping traffic flowing, maximally, or, reducing wait time to the minimum for each car.

If traffic lights all had sensors and the ability to act on what they sensed, that network of traffic lights would be deemed "smart" or "intelligent" and the road network as a whole could act in a coordinated fashion.

Doing the Dance of Shiva Intelligently

Apply the same definition of "intelligence' to doing the dance of shiva. Have a clear idea to guide each action and feel your body while you are doing each action. Sense your body. To learn to feel your body move your body slowly, and even better smoothly.

Do the movements smoothly so that you can learn to use your senses to feel your body and how each part relates. At the same time know what you are trying to do so that as you sense each part of your body you can adjust that part to make it match what you are trying to do.

If you are practicing horizontal hand positions and you notice that you hand isn't horizontal, then correct the position so that it is.

Act intelligently, use your senses and have a clear idea of what you are trying to do.

Your body will then begin to match the idea you have in your mind.

Your mind and body will be coordinated, unified by what you are trying to do.

And as your coordination improves, you can then work at increasing the speed at which you do the movements while continuing to feel your body and lead it with a clear idea of what you are trying to do.