... what now?

We find ourselves in uncharted territory.

For many, the implications of the current situation are hardships: job insecurity and/or financial instability, the stress of managing home schooling, supporting older relatives and friends without contaminating them, navigating ways to explain what is happening to kids, tackling work in new arrangements, being in the position to care for sick loved ones, or even becoming sick oneself.

For everyone, it is paramount that we carve out time for self care as well as time for processing and reflection.

How can we create balance when everything seems inherently imbalanced?

If you create a schedule for yourself or your kids try to maintain some regularity, make sure it is sustainable. Optimally, the “working hours” could very well be fewer hours than your kids previously spent in school or that you spent at work. Look at what would best serve you as a whole person, as a whole family in a stressful time full of unknowns. Try to have at least 3 days where you have allotted time for yoga, breathwork, and/or meditation. This time could be 10 minutes! In the next week or so I plan to provide some resources for guided practice if attending class in person is not feasible.

Now more than ever we can get a glimpse of the fact that life doesn’t always provide us the luxury of being led through things. Ultimately, it is only what we internalize and the practices that we maintain that will empower us to weather difficulties and to find the quiet within the storm.

If we can shift perspective and approach, there is the potential for this time to serve as a much needed realignment An opportunity to do less and choose to do things more mindfully. Being conscious brings calm clarity. We tap into something much greater than the drama of our minds and begin to experience life beyond our habit energy and previous associations.

Perhaps now is the time to connect/reconnect with nature, with painting, with communicating with loved ones on the phone or by email (or letters!), with those unfinished projects around the house, with journaling, with reading something for fun, with looking at ways to support the community and those in worse situations than our own, with presence while: cooking, cleaning, petting the dog, doing dishes, folding clothes, and/or reading to children.

It is also the time to reconnect with the healing power of doing absolutely nothing --- nothing!

Nothing can happen in an instant.

Just sit back and allow wonder to arise. The leaf shadowed light through a window. The sensation of water on your skin. The smell of ripe fruit. A warm breeze. The eye melting yellow of blooming daffodils. Shoot, the whining voice of a loved one if you can experience the vibrational nature of sound before the mind categorizes.

Experience the experience before the mind enters.

Try to listen to your heart’s desire. What do you really want to do with your precious time here on Earth? How do you fully embody the profoundly unique expression of universal creativity that is you?

Get quiet, the answers are there waiting to be discovered and they may not be at all what you expect or what the conditioned mind would choose.

What if we follow the heart instead of being directed by the mind?

Let’s find out!