Surviving and Thriving During a Collective Crisis

"When everything is moving and shifting, the only way to counteract chaos is stillness. When things feel extraordinary, strive for ordinary. When the surface is wavy, dive deeper for quieter waters." --Kristin Armstrong (most decorated women cyclist in US history)

These are extraordinary times we are living in:  calamitous, turbulent, and nerve-wracking.  We have been forced to engage like we never have before.  We witness the extraordinary power of democracy in action and the often terrifying forces challenging democracy.  It has our adrenals and central nervous system working on overdrive.  I am hearing and seeing the bouts of crippling exhaustion and despair from many.  How can we survive and thrive during this crisis, especially if it is long and drawn out, as it appears it will be.

In my experience, the single most important quality necessary is self discipline.  Without this, it is very easy to be pulled off our center of gravity, to lose focus, to become physically or emotionally disabled. These are the days when routine and purposeful activity is mandatory, healthy outer and inner habits leaned upon. 

What does this mean in relation to the 4 fundamentals of wellness: rest, nutrition, exercise and spirit work/play?

REST:  Make sure you get a lot of it.  Try to go bed nightly the same time and wake the same time.  If your sleep is broken, start employing self-care tactics to ensure a better night's rest.  

Sleep is the most obvious aspect of the rest fundamental.  But to give our sympathetic nervous system periodic breaks we should be having other relaxing actions as part of our day.  Needlecraft's like knitting, crocheting is a great relaxer, helping get repetitive deeper breathing patterns in play.  Playing an instrument, playing record/CD, radio music, watching funny or non-intense movies, reading novels.  Know where your threshold is with stress and anxiety and take a break.  Take a whole day off from social media or political activities and just have some guilt free fun. In a crisis, it's very important to have a lapse of engagement, where you are not thinking or acting on behalf of the crisis.  And in that lapse, to feel joyous in the activity and not guilty you are not "on it".  Pick your battles, you can't be part of every march and rally.  Know what is the right action and when for you. Become aware of fatigue, burn out, depression and readjust your approach.  Navigating this terrain for ourselves is very interesting as you begin to recognize signs and symptoms in yourself and the subsequent choices you make in caring for yourself. Self-discipline brings order and a healthy repetition.  Following are some previous posts that might help with this.  The Fine Art of Self Soothing, Modern Toiletry, Energy Field Surveillance, Sleep Tight, A Right Rest,  Witnessing: Attention, Intention and Healing

"We adore chaos because we love to produce order."  M. C. Escher

Photo credit:  Lalu Danzker

NUTRITION:  Inevitably, we will capitulate to comfort foods; it's winter and there is a crisis. Add some broccoli to your mac and cheese, make some good bone broth for the base of your soups-- very healing, and worth the effort.  Cook.  Cooking and baking and engaging in that way is very important.  It slows us down, it put us in relationship with what we are about to receive, it's caring in action.  Sometimes you gotta get takeout.  Most of the time take the time to cook for yourselves and your loved ones.  Following are some previous posts on this that might help.  On Fire: the State of Chronic Inflammation, pH: It's all about balance, Bone Deep.

"Chaos is a friend of mine."  "I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me." -- Bob Dylan

EXERCISE: I bring this up a lot in my work.  Exercise is a major stress buster, helping to regulate our functions and systems.  Being mindful of all movement from washing dishes to just spending time in bed stretching legs and pelvis is bringing an attention to the body. It grounds us, creates a sense of the vertical in myself.  When crisis hits, most of us fly into our emotional and mental responses, leaving our body disconnected.  Our bodies are everything in a crisis; we depend on them for reality checks. Our bodies are constantly giving us cues as to the truth of the moment.  If we aren't attending to the body, we miss the cues of what is going on inside and outside.  Stay close to the body.  Moving the body, the breath in the body opens up our perception; we think more clear, our feelings become regulated. I just said it but I say it again:  the body is everything.  You lose your connection to your body, you lose your groundedness, your sense of reality, and become subject to the craziness your feeling and head gets into without a relationship to your person.  Without your body, you literally lose skin in the game.  The body is an equalizing factor. We discount it, disrespect it, bemoan its inconveniences. We have to love it and we have to move it.  Following are some prior posts centered on this fundamental wellness principle:  Designed to Move

"The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies."-- Napoleon Bonaparte

SPIRIT WORK/PLAY:  

Spirit work are activities that center our being.  Obvious examples are meditation and prayer.  Less obvious examples are walking with an attention to the body ("Zen" walking puts a name on it), Buddhist breathing exercises that open one's heart, and/or dispel negativity. Qigong exercises of bringing in images of patience, magnanimity and letting go images of hate and fear, are among a few.  Spirit work grounds us in our internal truths and helps liberates us from the frantic, over kinetic external.  It is peace-making.  Play is wherever there is fun and humor, satisfaction and that which touches the essential in oneself.  All of these can be found in the "mundane", such as knitting or cooking or car mechanics, or guitar playing to name a few. This kind of work brings us closer to who we are and our purpose, not from the activity itself, but from the internal engagement rooted in love of peace.  When we get a frequent (self discipline!) taste of this, it becomes much harder to lose that vertical, to be pulled out of an inner, more real alignment. Prior posts that elucidate on this:  Humor and Health, Prodigal Return: Community of Self, Oneness: Ho'oponopono, 

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence. --Buddha

As separate as these 4 fundamentals might seem, they are actually deeply connected.  They support each other and are often part and parcel of each other's expression.  When they're working together (for the most part), I experience an established discernment.  My mind quiets to the dramatic headline; it starts to look for plausibility, it becomes inqurious, the guile radar engages. My emotional intelligence kicks in without hysteria.  Everything starts to work together.  I'm grounded.  My more whole self is centered.  Thank you self discipline.

Become aware of energy: your own, others and the collective.  Pace yourself.  Step into the fray when your vertical is vibrating "yes".  Be respectful of yourselves and others, others who might not be as equally aligned in a moment.  Practice compassion as best as you can with yourself and others.  Remember:  Kindness.  Be kind, no exceptions (even when your mad as hell).  Kindness, like forgiveness, like love is a boomerang, it comes right back to you.  And hate, fear, ego righteousness-- it does the same thing, it comes back to you almost immediately, toxifying what could be otherwise.  So, for your well being's sake, be kind while you are being courageous.

Following are some essays that might be helpful:

The Collective: Group Energy, Anxiety: Inside the Box, Meditate? Do I Have To, Violence: A Cautionary Truth

Guilt's Pleasure and its Mayhem on Wellness

We are all susceptible to guilt. I remember, with astonishment, being a brand new mother and the feelings of guilt that panged me when my newborn threw up, or was gassy, or in any way unhappy.  I remember how shocking it was to feel this, not being used to that feeling, in that unfamiliar situation.  It was new and a somewhat ridiculous response, but there it was.

Depending on your cultural background, guilt can be a daily occurrence that riddles us with negativity, releasing stress hormones which significantly impact our health and wellness. Working with clients and my own self observations of guilt-visits indicates it is an indoctrination that has led to it becoming a fully ingrained habit.  A habit that is sapping our life force.  A habit established, probably, generations before us.

Something rings false when I feel that inclination to obliterate a feeling (usually negative) .  What is guilt good for?  Maybe it is the first bell rung asking for conscience to surface.  Maybe it is a precursor to remorse (I have my doubts on that one).  Mosquitoes serve a purpose (delectable food for birds and bats); so must guilt, I guess.

There is a difference between guilt and remorse.   Remorse is an actual feeling-meeting of "I can never do this again" and the sadness you did whatever you did to such an extent, your gut knows it can never happen again.  Remorse is a deep feeling that actually leads to behavior change.  Guilt is merely feeling bad, masks as having depth, with wringing of hands and "mea culpa", but the behavior associated to the action will usually be seen again and again.

There is some band-aid pleasure with guilt.  A superficial, "I feel bad-- that should do it, move on" kind of reaction.  We have guilt about accidents out of our control, tragedies somebody in us thinks we could have prevented even if they are an ocean and continent away, with people we often never met.  Guilt infiltrates what and how we eat, the way we spend money, our leisure time and relationships.  It undermines us, stresses us, brings bagfuls of negativity to our daily lives.  Yet, we minimize it, turn away and discount the hold it has on us.  There is some pleasure in the angst that is hard to let go of, some payback.

How to deal with guilt?  Guilt, like other mostly automatic negativity, doesn't appreciate the light.  Once an awareness and standing before it is possible, it atrophies quite naturally, slipping into the shadows whence it came.  So the work with guilt is bringing an awareness to it.  One might recognize it by the feeling in one's chest, the considerable tightening in a jaw or lower back.  One doesn't need to understand or analyze it.  But, we are required to be with it, breathe with it.  Find the silence in oneself while the manifestation of guilt begins to free fall.


Guilt and Worry.  Both so easy to discount, while being so wearing.  Is it because most of me hasn't been insistent enough on having a modicum of joy, hence allows for these large bouts of guilt/worry doses to transpire?  Or is it that most of me has confused a life worth living as having a lot of pain, sorrow, negativity; is it that introspection is mixed up with self-infliction?  Or maybe it truly is a life-long and generational indoctrination; a part of me, like a limb or an organ.  Yeah, it bothers me sometimes, but what are you going to do?

Guilt disables our sense of living without regret.  It ensures the cascade of stress hormones, taxing our bodies and our being.  A sense of well being and peace is the antidote to guilt.  But like what cutting oneself is for some people, the momentary pain of guilt is for others.  It feels sorta good.  Until that feeling is acknowledged, guilt will always be a distraction, a smoke screen we secretly (unconsciously?) cultivate, effectively keeping at bay the life worth living.

On Fire: the State of Chronic Inflammation

Napa Campfire images, photo credit:  Will Fraser

Inflammation is the miraculous response of the  body telling you something is wrong. Occurring after injury or sometimes in the normal course of living, inflammation brings on pain, discomfort, bloating, reflux and a myriad of other symptoms.  Most of the time we just live with it.  But the problem with living with inflammation is that we stop noting the onset and continuation of it, the degrees of discomfort it causes.  It goes from being an acute problem (short term) to a chronic condition.  When this happens, inflammation can be a killer.  Chronic inflammation is linked to heart disease, cancer and arthritis.

We live in inflamed times.  High levels of chronic stress, poor dietary choices ( see Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid), exposure to toxins (ie: foods that are laced with pesticide, second hand smoke, commercial grass/plant fertilizers, chlorinated pool or drinking water, vehicle emissions), spiritual alienation and/or strife (symptomology presents as irritability, lack of tolerance for the unknown, anxiety, attachment to control), electro-magnetic (technology) or radiation (unprotected sunlight) exposure are but a few ways low to high grade inflammation can become chronic.

One of the precursors to being systematically in an inflammed state is linked to the pH levels in our body. The more acidic our bodies, the greater chance of inflammation.  We want to lean toward a more alkaline pH.  Foods that promote alkaline pH are mentioned in the above food pyramid and here alkaline foods list. Generally, staying away from processed foods, red meat, most animal products, increasing non-starch vegetable intake and decreasing high-fructose foods (processed, sugar-based) helps to decrease acidic pH levels. An intact and robust immune system keeps inflammation in check.

Emotional states and an overloaded/balanced central nervous system effects the acid/alkaline levels in the body. Stress and general chronic negativity changes our body's pH to be more acidic. Avoid long term anger, misery, bitterness, resentment, and fear. Prayer, meditation, and the practice of forgiveness and gratitude supports our well being, impacting pH positively.

The challenge I see as a life/health coach in identifying inflammation problems is awareness.  People, as mentioned, put up with bloating, reflux, chronic runny noses, mucous in their stool, yeast conditions, chronic joint and muscle pain (all indicators of inflammation in the body) as a matter of routine if they notice it at all. Pain and inflammation are the body's cues it is time to take a different tact in one's lifestyle behaviors.

Following are some good resources regarding diet and natural approaches to pain and inflammation.

Anti-Inflammatory Diet - Dr. Weil

Make muscle pain a memory with ginger 20 Pain Cures You Can ... informative daily help