I started this entry way before Lockdown, noticing that I was very happy to not have any social obligations and get “all dressed up” just for myself. You know…to do that Self-Care stuff like:
Getting out of my pajamas and putting on Big Girl pants
Then “putting my face on” without checking, “Am I actually going to see anyone today?”
Taking time for that Siesta without first railing that it should be “mandated.”
As you may notice, my bar is pretty low. Pedicures, retail shopping therapy and massage weren’t even on the main menu, waiting for an upgrade from Frivolity to Need. That’s why my nose wrinkles at my Mind’s insistence that I don’t feel a wee bit pathetic about the resolution.
Self-Care? Really?! my Body says. You wouldn’t know it if it bit you in the ass.
Yes, it’s another new buzz phrase that the Mind has comes up with, like Mindfulness.
It’s a little bait-and-switch game that my brain is still running, teasing my Body into believing I’ll figure out what the rules to put it into my regimen to make things all better. Shoulds like:
Scheduling a break or nap into my day
Going to the ocean to soak my feet (Damn, forgot to do that today)
Being “gentle” with myself and going with the flow
The beta version of this game was a disaster. I felt like Chicken Little with the sky falling all the time. Like I just wasn’t getting it.
Turns out what my Body wanted was a more human structure for my life…instead of a steel rod, a skeleton with joints and mobility and fine motor skills. Now that’s a concept. And then instead of allowing my spine to stiffen into itself, to keep noticing and allowing myself to go with the flow. Backbone and then all those subtle things my Body felt and my Mind couldn’t wrap its brain around. So I brain-hacked Descartes: I feel therefore I am.
I didn’t even get to the social retardation piece but I’m done for now. “That,” a good friend had the habit of saying, “is for another piece of paper.”
I submitted the following interview / op-ed to dozens of papers. What does it say about me, about them that I needed to post this as a challenge?
Paul Harrison’s wife Rita was only 55 when she died on March 12, shortly before Californians were ordered to Shelter in Place. Although it wasn’t Covid-19 but the other big C that claimed her life, Paul’s friends wondered if Rita wasn’t a “smart lady who knew when to take off.”
“If it weren’t for the lockdown,” he said, “I would have been at the bars every night getting ‘stinking drunk’.” That or anything else to dull the pain of losing the woman who embodied it all for him – brilliance, friendship and eternal love.
So it was truly a silver lining that the world changed in the thick of his grieving and before he could plan a memorial.
Paul had promised Rita before she passed that he would “be all right” and in the four months after her death, he had no opportunity to do anything else but figure out what that meant. Although it hurt every day and in every way to get up out of bed and put on his “big-boy pants,” he did it in fulfillment of his oath.
To connect the dots of meaning in his life, he explained how the week-long celebration of her life will also be “to honor all the people who changed our world because they had to… because they were there.”
During this pandemic, he says, “all of us have become unlikely heroes,” noting that “people found ways to make a massive statement: This is my life and I choose to live it.”
He mentions the people who have already been acknowledged in the media – those who lost their lives, the ones who were front-line heroes, especially all the clerks and delivery persons who made minimum wage and that we never gave much thought to before.
“And teachers!” he exclaims. Parents have a renewed gratitude for teachers for “being with their children so that they can have time to work… and think… and eat… and sleep!”
From his British perspective, Paul noticed that in every single country when Big Government told people to “stay home,” that was acknowledgment that leaders didn’t really know what to do or how to protect its citizens.
“Politicians passed the buck from the federal level down to state, county and community,” he says without rancor, “and we had to step up and we did.”
“Parents stood up with their kids and loved them every day. Spouses didn’t kill each other! Seniors learned to use their computers and Zoom with their families. Millennials looked up from their phones and said, ‘I can do something,’ Stars stopped being stars and gave concerts and raised money. Friends. Strangers. We changed the face of the earth.”
“I lost the love of my life and her clients thought they lost their therapist, healer and guru,” he went on to say. That she never thought of herself as any of those came from a genuine humility and respect for every individual’s unique way of living out their life. Rita Harrison said often that every person deserves dignity and esteem simply as a human being… which doesn’t mean perfection… but goodness, blind spots and resources of all kinds.
“That’s why I believe that this memorial is the perfect place to celebrate how the People, the Folk, common and not-so-common, mobilized themselves. Nobody should be able to take that away from them… that They Got It Done. And they should remember to pass this on to their children. They must tell them.”
“Even though everyone was isolated, people built this with solidarity. For all the diversity in this country, everyone pulled together, and trouble only arose when differences were stressed again. Despite what the cynics are saying, people are changing the world quietly and for no credit.”
“We grinned and beared it – hating the masks but wearing them – because it taught us about respect, respect for each other’s autonomy.”
Body, Mind and Soul, that’s the phrase. But it’s become more the joke than reality of my be-ing.
My body has been screaming, “Hey, I’m Walking Here! I’m Talking Here! I’m trying to walk the talk.”
But The Mind has been too busy, yes Too Busy and between looking up and asking,”What did you say? I didn’t hear you,” it says, “There there, have a seat and we’ll talk about it in a bit. I’ve got something important to finish up first.”
And then Body nods off, forgets and wakes up the next morning stumbling about and a bit in a panic over the sense that something didn’t get done.
“How about if we talk the walk instead?” it says sweetly and pseudo-soothingly.
That’s the repeating scenario day after day. My noisy, overbearing mind has taken over and programmed my body to Shut the Fxxk Up, dragging it along kicking and screaming.
Rita Harrison, developer of AYM
Okay, my brain’s survival plan has gotten me Here, past scrapes and even battles. But my body’s taken to sitting in the corner pouting, refusing to Walk the Talk or even Talk the Walk.
My Brit friend and therapist Paul says that The Problem all started with that doggone “I think, therefore I am” bollocks (his favorite word which I’m loving and fast-adopting). It’s comforting to notice that this Mind dominance is not only mine but a societal tendency, to “think about it,” “think it through” until there is so much information in our noisy heads that we are hitting a wall…big-time.
Even our meditation is called Mindfulness when it should be Mindless enough to allow the Body to feel again, to express itself in its own language. And then, only then, can the broken connection between Mind, Body and Soul be repaired.
Come to my AYM sessions to explore for yourself the:
Sounds that resonate with your body,
Movements that clear out the heaviness and boost your joyful energy, and
Stillness in Movement and Movement in Stillness that calms.
More about positivity. That, by the way, was step #1. I wanted to start with “More about negativity,” and the fact that I love this version of Gloria’s fabulous anthem says mountains about where my head is usually at. Waiting for the disco ball or other shoe to drop.
Step #2, I’ve decided to change my responses to “…so how ya doin?” Instead of the hesitant, “Uh, ok or the word vomit that accompanies, “I’m a hot mess,” I might just burst into singing, “I Will Survive” instead!
That’s why my life has been all about Chakracise and AYM lately and since D Day. (That’s D as in Divorce from he whom I still have trouble naming lest I call up the Devil.) It was one of the life preservers that got me back to solid ground and then learning how to be happy again. Because what’s better for shaking off the blues than dancing (especially when it’s through those fabulous things called chakras) and what’s better for finding the road map to happiness than meditating while you move.
I’m a woman. If I’m in my feminine energy flow, I can multi-task and dance and meditate the night away. So lose the nagging ID that I’m scatterbrained and disorganized. We have both flows within us, so I can do that man-glue thing of focusing and fixing as well.
But don’t get me wrong. In Chakracise, there’s both meditation in movement and in stillness because in this day of Covid-19 and age of Aquarius, we are being called on to integrate the feminine and masculine instead of continuing to let them war. So come and Access Your Moment through Movement and Stillness. Zoom ID 771 765 222.
I regularly pull from a deck of Animal Medicine Cards to set my intention for the day or get an idea of where my head is really at. Not surprisingly, I picked Armadillo out of the card fan this morning. Its guidance? Boundaries.
As someone who has been watching the news on a limited basis and attempting to keep my own hand on the rudder as I steer through 24/7 CVN (CoronaVirus News), it was perfect. Of course, that’s the double-edged sword:
Are you seeing what you want to see? Gathering justification for fear and hunkering down?
Or as the guidebook directs, thinking about “what you will and won’t do; what makes you feel uncomfortable and what is comforting to you.” Manifesting your intentions and commanding the universe?
I armed myself with these thoughts as I ventured out for my daily “hell no, I’m not staying in.” The official pronouncements have worked on me in classic deprivation fashion. Tell your body you can’t have something and it wants It.
That’s not to say that I’ve embraced what a friend calls “covidiocy.” I’m trying to do what I haven’t done most of my life – to respond instead of react, or perhaps pay more attention to what my gut reactions are saying.
How do you:
Discern what keeps us safe in a world where every little thing from a handshake to a hug carries danger;
Pick apart fact from fear-mongering;
Ground yourself when chaos is hovering everywhere;
Hold a steady and normal course in these windy and rough times of change?
I imagine all of us are struggling with this, and the temptation is to be judgmental when people “come down” in a different place than you. How would it be if we noticed that deep-down, this is what the world needs – to protect, understand and respect each other again. To heal from the inside out.
Fighting for Happiness 