Last year, 2019 in July I got a new name. I was initiated as Nataraja by my yoga teacher Doron Hanoch. Given such a meaningful name felt like a big gift.
Who is Nataraja then and what does it mean?
Nataraja is the dancing form of the supreme God Shiva. As Shiva reached enlightenment, he continued his ecstatic dance in the Cosmos. Shiva’s dance is known as the dance of life and death.
In year 2019 I spent 6 Months in Doron Yoga & Zen Center in Guatemala practicing, teaching and deepening my yoga studies both on philosophical and physical level. As part of my studies, I wrote a small thesis about death and afterlife according to Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism. Articles of it can be read in here.
These studies gave me understanding of the life we have is not limited to this physical body, neither to this lifetime we are living right now. We think we live once, and we will live only once in this physical body. But the soul, spirit, energy, has lived several lifetimes and will live hundreds of more, unless we get enlightened and will be able to break the cycle of samsara. The dance of Shiva, as Nataraja, is the dance between lives and deaths we go through, the cycle of several rebirths and deaths. To understand the dance means to understand how small particles we are in the whole universe. How this energy we are made of just keep on circulating on and on, just taking different forms from time to time.
The Dance
During my time in Guatemala, I found my freedom and expression in the flow of dancing. We started every Saturday with a physical movement based meditation; Zen Dance. It became the best form of therapy form me. As dancing in the group, eyes open or closed, I was released from all mental and physical burden that I carried. Every week I sensed the other members being released from their own burdens as well. No words exchanged but all tension, expectations and stress were disappeared. The yoga community cleared the table once a week by dancing together.
Me, the dancer, wrote a thesis about life and death. I got a name. I feel very much gratitude to my sensei, Doron-ji, for such an honor. I will continue my dance of life and death, from this lifetime to the next one.
I am writing this on the late evening of 21th of February, which happens to be the night for Shivaratri, a huge annual festival dedicated to Lord Shiva, Mahadevi. Shiva is one of the principle deities and energies in Hinduism. Together with Brahma and Vishnu they create, protect and destroys the universe and all existence.
Shiva is seen as the first yogi ever been. Shiva is the first teacher of the science of yoga. Shiva’s body is often described androgynous; left side of the body is pictured female, and the right side is male. Shiva is the god of yoga, arts and meditation.
Here is a small curiosity that I really like; in Finnish language the dancer is translated as tanssija. Take Nataraja in it we get a tanshiva.