The lockdown has stripped me of all the control I thought I had. With all the uncertainty, grief, loss and change in the air, anxiety and fear can really knock you out. Time’s like this, it’s so important to tune into your body and find out what feels right for you. No judgement, no expectation just attention to what your body needs. Our bodies are so sophisticated, when you feel anxiety, sadness, anger or frustration coming on, they’re telling you that you need to pay attention to what is happening outside of you. Is what you’re consuming not what your body needs right now? Is your confidence being knocked because of the pictures you’re seeing on social media? Is the news and media you’re exposing yourself to making you feel powerless and hopeless? Is the lack of movement making you feel unwell and down?
Forget about the should’s and must’s of what it is you need to do to feel calm and collected. Pay attention to what your body is telling you so that you can navigate through the waters of your life with a little bit more calm. My body was getting anxious with the news and media, so I stopped consuming it. I deleted the Facebook app from my phone so that I would curb the morning habit of getting onto my phone as soon as I woke up. I noticed that my body was being overwhelmed by all the stimulus coming at me from the television, emails, my phone and social media. So I started reducing my exposure to these, because I needed to calm down.
I realised that my mind was catastrophising a lot of events in my life and that worry was consuming me. The only way you can counteract your worries are by shifting your focus on either an activity that engages your pre-frontal cortex, like a puzzle or a game, or practicing gratitude in a consistent way. I needed positive things to focus on, but there wasn’t a lot of positivity around me. So I started practicing gratitude for small things like my morning coffee, being able to utilise technology to contact my partner, having access to shelter, food and water. My mother still being here, despite a few months ago fearing her loss to cancer. It’s important that you can shift your focus away from all the things that are going wrong, to the things that are going right. I’ve come to realise that perhaps there is more going right than we realise, we just don’t pay attention to it. Food for thought.
I also started recognising that my mental health can only be protected through the utilisation of tools that I know scientifically work, things like meditation and exercise. But I also know, that I’m a perfectionist and that anything that will trigger me being a perfectionist will do more harm than good. No one needs to be a perfectionist during a lockdown, that will not help you in anyway. So, I decided that I will incorporate these habits into my days only on the premise that I will not judge myself and my performance. It wouldn’t be about how long I meditated for, or how high my heart rate went during exercise. It wouldn’t be about structure, pressure or progress, it would simply be about commitment and paying attention to what my body felt like on each day. This meant that if I only felt like 10 minutes of exercise I would only do 10 minutes of exercise, be it stretching, yoga, indoor cycling or some form of cardio it doesn’t matter, because every day my body has a different need. The only important factor was that it would be something, even if only for 5 minutes! The same applies to meditation, I’m not trying to become a meditation pro, I’m trying to help my mental health with the use of tools like meditation. Some days the practice is easier than others, but it’s never forced or judged.
On the days that I don’t want to do exercise or meditation, I still stick to the commitment but with a bit more of a cheat, for example I sit on the stationary bike and just pedal as I watch TV, I don’t pay attention to how long I do it for or how fast I do it, in fact I don’t even try to break a sweat. The fact that I’m just sitting on there and incorporating some movement is enough. When I don’t feel like meditating, I put the meditation on as I get into bed and dose off within a minute of breathing. This is all enough because my body doesn’t need the pressure of doing any of these perfectly everyday.
The reason why commitment is important is because new habits will always be resisted by the mind and the body. No one likes change, so you can’t go from zero to 100 in a day, a week or even 3 months! Heck, if it takes you 12 months to go from 0 to 5 that’s still a great and huge achievement! I think the issue arises when we try to change too quickly and we are not paying attention to what our bodies want and need. After all, why are we exercising? Because we know it’s good for our BODY.
Practicing commitment during a lockdown is only helpful if it’s mixed with kindness and love. Placing pressure on yourself and or comparing your experience with others won’t help. For me, these two new habits combined with the practice of self-love helped reduce my anxiety. I still get anxious, sad and scared but instead of them feeling like a tsunami, they feel like the waves, they come and go. They remind me that I’m human and that it’s completely ok to feel whatever it is I need to feel. Listen to what your body needs, what makes it feel more calm and at peace and do just a little bit of that each day.
Love Always,
M
Souloom™ 