Feeling for the calm in the storm.
Hey There.
I hope you are well and are finding moments of ease during this unprecedented time in history.
Now in our 5th week of sheltering in place, I'm working remotely from my dining room table on most days with my son across from me, at times in his Google classroom. This was not in the plan.
This pandemic is calling on us to adapt to situations and adjust our behaviors in ways that were entirely unexpected and perhaps unwanted. And as many of you know, when faced with what we don't want, we react. We lash out, or retreat and isolate, or sometimes we simply give up and succumb to a state of helplessness. Below are some things I'm noticing about my reactivity during this time.
In many moments, I have felt shades of sadness well up, especially for my son when I think about how wonderful his teachers were this year and how much he seemed to enjoy learning (for seemingly the first time in a school setting).
I have had rage flare-ups, especially when I think about how this situation could have been handled more skillfully, and with a view of saving lives and protecting humanity.
I have felt restless, especially when the house is quiet. This is when I'm most aware of how active my mind is, as it tries to process the endless news cycle with all of its editorializing and polarization.
I have found myself drawing on every ounce of my mind-body tools to find moments of groundedness and calm during this surreal time. There is a clinical term for this: resourcing. Resourcing is a way of accessing the sensation "goodness" in the body to bring about the experience of embodied safety and calm. When you're fully resourced, your nervous system relaxes it's fight or flight response. Our nervous systems are actually always doing this, modulating and adjusting in and out of degrees of flight or flight in our life moments as warranted. However, when faced with a prolonged period of uncertainty or an event that isn't wanted, we can get stuck in reactivity. We need more support to regulate our nervous systems. Actively drawing on supports that help us to resource are extremely helpful.
Mind-body tools act as resources to help our nervous system remember that it can experience stress, and then return to a state of calm. I have found during this time that I have needed more physical movement for resourcing. I have relied on my trusty old hatha yoga and pranayama practice to help relieve tension and move the turbulent energy in and through my body and breath. I have also jogged more times in the past few weeks than in the past few years. I have biked and taken walks.
In addition to relying on sensory feedback from my body through the movement practices above, I have also relied on external resources, including nature (this magnificent , Spring!) music (more on this at some point in the future), social supports (we are not alone in this) and humor (laughter is great medicine!).
What has supported you to resource during this time? Feel free to share here.
We're all in this together,
Mara
