While we’re all on community lockdown, keeping safe, keeping healthy, and keeping sane is on top of everyone’s mind. Here are some essential life tips for living in the time of pandemic. This is SPIN.ph’s COVID-19 Survival Guide.
SARA Black wants to make one thing clear: “Meditation isn't like a magic bullet.”
The meditation and yoga coach told SPIN Life, “I can't just give it to you and it's a pill that makes you better instantly and magically.” Especially now, when the COVID-19 pandemic is overtaking the planet and upending so much of the life that we took for granted.
Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, it’s a time of great collective anxiety — a communal grief, as psychologist Sherry Cormier, Ph.D., termed it, as we watch economic, health, education, and other systems collapse under the great, invisible strain of the global virus.
But Black also knows all about the quiet power of meditation. She looks back at a time four years ago when she experienced a lockdown of her own. While training for an Ironman triathlon, she took a bad spill on her bike and suffered multiple fractures along her hip. The photographer, runner, climber, and competitive sailing athlete had to spend weeks on her bed, unable to move.
“There were times when I would wake up in the morning and I couldn't walk. You really just dive into this self pity party,” she recalled.
With nothing else to do, she turned to meditation. “Really using that opportunity to turn inward and the meditation practice is what gave me the resilience that I needed to go through that difficult time,” she said. When she fully recovered, she devoted herself more to the practice, and even spent a month in the Himalayas so she could become a fully-fledged teacher.
When the lockdown happened, she realized that her meditation lessons would be her way of helping out the frontliners. “It's how I can serve at this point,” she said, “what I do in this moment that has value to people.”
Through friends in the medical community, Black opened up her closed Facebook group — where members can view her livestreamed lessons and access other videos — to frontliners who wanted to join in.
Around 150 doctors and nurses, she said, have joined her online classes.
With their erratic schedule, she knows frontliners can’t devote time to the classes like her ordinary students. She noticed that a lot of them chose to view her videos instead of joining the usual 7 a.m. class.
“But just to be a stable presence for them, whenever they want to come, that's okay,” she said of her work with frontliners. “It's just been really sweet for me to receive messages from them once in a while. ‘Thank you so much, that really helped me, I feel calmer now, it's been helping me get through all the stuff that I have to deal with.’”
Anxiety is something that frontliners are feeling acutely. “It's not just what they have to face at work, but also the fear of bringing stuff, illnesses home to their families or they have to be separated from their family while it's happening,” explained Black.
In fact, she said, “A lot of us now are in fight or flight response.”
In the class, she teaches the participants how to experience their breath. It’s an act that sounds so simple: air in, air out, over and over. But a mindful focus on the fundamental act means that you start breathing better, so you get the full physiological benefits of getting a major hit of oxygen and finding your inner peace, even in this very anxious time.
“Putting you in tune with your breath makes you realize that wow, I have more power over my energy levels than I thought,” Black explained. “And then you begin to learn how to direct it. Putting you in touch with your breath can enliven that sluggish feeling — that you can transcend that.”
To help achieve that kind of relaxation for yourself, Black recommends that you try this:
Sit up straight on the middle of a chair, but don’t lay your back on the rest. Close your eyes. “When our spine is not straight it kind of impinges the flow of energy,” Black said.
Breathe naturally for 30 seconds to one minute. You want to achieve that feeling, Black said, of “Wow, I'm hearing my breath for the first time.”
Inhale through the nose, then hold it for four counts. Hold your breath at the top of the inhale. Keep your mouth closed.
Exhale through the nose, then hold it for four counts. Hold your breath at the bottom of the exhale. Keep your mouth closed.
Do this for four cycles. Then, if you want, try to lengthen the count. “But it really depends on the person, on what their lung capacity is,” Black said.
Do this for five minutes. Black recommended listening to a piece of classical music so you won’t focus on the time or glance at your clock every few seconds.
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