Finding Light in the Pandemic Trance
Taking a mental pause to reflect upon the lessons of the Ro-Ro-V (Covid-19’s more loving name).
Many of us were barricaded into our homes, hopefully safely, beginning in March and some of us have begun returning to some levels of normalcy. Every grocery store worker, healthcare worker, warehouse and delivery worker, person assisting elderly, fitness and wellness professional creating online content and parent and teacher implementing the best strategies they can...just wow. We got some badasses out there. And to everyone being kind and doing the best they can, that’s pretty miraculous. You are all the seeds of hope, resilience and sources of empowerment for me and so many others right now. I hope those of us fortunate enough to have had safe quarantines filled with woods walks, tik toks, baking and caretaking, can begin to show similar levels of commitment to something larger than ourselves.
I think in the state of the world as it is now with so much uncertainty globally, in our own nation’s fabric and with the state of the planet (wildfires and so much more) we tend to lose sight of the lessons we just learned.
The chaos that seems to have ensued post pandemic is necessary and a wake up call for so many of us and for the systems that operate our world and yet it can be so disorienting that we forget to integrate the light we just found in the former darkness. If we can access this light again in our own being, perhaps, we can tend to ourselves more compassionately amidst the state of the world so that we can step foot into the world as better stewards of change.
The truth of disparity and the accelerated gaps between the few haves and the countless have nots was illuminated throughout the pandemic. While many of us were baking new recipes of banana bread each week, many others were fighting to put food on the table. These inequalities aforementioned expose how our systems have failed to rectify the toxicity of the racial divides in our country. These two polarizations have coexisted in our society long before the era of this pandemic and yet now it is more pronounced. I have such privilege that it is also my duty to not walk around with my eyes solely blissed out on new recipes and yoga classes while there are people with basic needs and justices not being met. Humanity, specifically in our country, is facing a choice to turn a blind eye or to choose love. And by love, I mean active love, not passive. It is a choice to choose love in every single moment, and in this case, I mean to choose to face my own racist hardwiring and rewire them tirelessly. We cannot sit back and reimagine a world that supports human rights for all, we must also look inward at our own thoughts and actions to bring about change in this cataclysmic moment.
We are in the densest of forests and we can take a sacred pause and seek to truly know what needs to be felt, seen and nourished during this time. When our hearts are this raw and tender, it can be so vital to pause so that we don’t act out of fear and so that we can step forward to evolve rather than repeat old lessons.
In many ways, we are experiencing a collective global trauma filled with fear and grief.
We are currently walking, sprinting, shopping, crying, dancing, fighting and feeling through this pandemic and political uprising. And as much unsettled energy is amongst us, it’s also the biggest pause humanity has seen in a very long time and in many of our lifetimes. So much of what our systems’ have normalized is being fought against and brought out of the darkness. Institutionalized racism, corporate exploitation, mental illness and surveillance capitalism appear in the forefront of so many of our minds and we can immediately become overwhelmed with all the wrong in the world. Myself included. I often feel powerless and like I want to cry one minute and yell the next. However, I am choosing not to run or deny and to accept, fight, use my voice and also hold my peace and nurture myself and others. Instead of burning myself out, I acknowledge we all deserve time to take some self care and turn off the media and focus on being selfish to fill our cup as well. It doesn’t mean injustices are gone or that we are actively ignoring problems, it simply means we can refuel so that we can go back out into the world speaking a more grounded truth. Fighting and actively combatting things in our world that need to change can coexist with maintaining a landscape of inner peace and rest.
We can have the fear AND look at this as an opportunity for our gifts to be planted as well.
As Tara Brach likes to say, this belongs too. Every feeling belongs. These waves of fear belong in the ocean as well. Fear can serve a purpose too. Fear is nature’s protector, it is intelligent in telling us to pay attention. The challenge is to not be possessed and then debilitated by it. Fear is contagious, and it is the greatest danger of the pandemic, the political injustices (or the continual fight for human rights) and in addressing our duty to protect the planet. If we know and understand that our mind can operate in flight or fight mode, then we can also have awareness as to when we are in that state. The most recently evolved part of our brain, the frontal cortex, is responsible for things like humor and our executive function which is the part of our brain that is more response based and less reactive. To redirect our minds and bodies out of a reactionary state, we can utilize some simple body awareness, breathing and mindfulness practice to call us back into equilibrium.
A loving kindness meditation can be a beautiful way to navigate ourselves back into the heart and out of the trance of fear.
Practice naming the fears so they may actually lose their power and grip over our bodies. Get to know the fear, don’t fight it or it will persist, let it be there and gently investigate its roots and sensations in the body. Then nurture the feeling as it is somatic because science is pointing to the fact that truly “issues are in our tissues”. Then you can move into presence and call on a source of love larger than oneself. Gradually, piece by piece, unfold into loving. We can open our minds and hearts to every emotion and experience as it is, not being quick to slam the door on the less romanticized emotions. For we know the more slammed doors will lead to some weeds in our own bodies and minds that will continue to grow.
As I have been finding myself in the pandemic trance (or political or any trance for that matter) I have been calling upon these questions as a source of grounding to create an inner refuge that priorly felt far away.
What am I grateful for in this moment?
What do I need to nurture myself?
How can I be of service to others, even if it is just to one person or as simple as a text?
What blessing has arisen from this?
We have to power as to what we tune into. A lot of it is our choice. We can actively inform ourselves to be knowledgeable, well equipped and also create boundaries with information we consume.
We don’t have to ride highs and lows of online news, media and charged conversations with people around us. The role we have as caretakers and as people actively striving for human rights for all can be sustained with a well of peace outside these realms. We are always worthy of a few more minutes to be still in the morning, the ability to walk away from conversations that feel unloving, and to unplug.
Meditation, yoga, exercise, mindfulness, kindness and grounding are tools many of us have heard of before the pandemic.
We integrated them into our daily lives to cultivate a well of peace that we can access whenever. And we also created this for times like this. This is what we have been practicing for, our tools and practices are important now more than ever. With the world feeling so overwhelming, it has been the easier and quicker way to escape it all by watching Netflix all night or having that extra drink. And yet we often feel worse after this as we realize our reality truly has not shifted at all. So this truly is the best time to tune your frequency into something higher and more loving as this is exactly what all of our practices are for.
We are not passerbys, we are part of writing this story. Even one person holding grounded peace in a room full of panic can change the whole dynamic. Ultimately, we have the choice of who we want to be during this time. Love onwards.
