Life withers in isolation. At a biological level, we require open-ended contact with the world of microbes to cultivate biodiversity and sustain equilibrium. At a social level, we co-regulate, learn, grow, and find meaning in life through interaction. To live on survival mode in isolation is a predicament with heavy consequences on our physiology.
Like everyone, I too, continue to seesaw in extremities during this pandemic. I wake up one morning full of birdsong, hope, and vigour- and the next feeling foggy, drained, and immobile. The spectrum of emotions have been washing through like a massive clearing tide, taking me back to deep-rooted remembrance.
For the first twenty-eight years of my life, I knew not of ease, comfort, or pleasure. I learned everything through seeking discomfort, being injured or ill, befriending pain, enduring immense loss and grief, and facing my death – over and over again. As a child, there was no escape from what overwhelmed my system therefore, hurrying the process was not an option. I was often alone and had to learn to foster the skills of acknowledging and accompanying whatever arrives as is.
Many times, I had no idea what was coming nor if it was entirely mine – still, I opened my arms in welcome. I oscillated with detachment; ebbing and swelling in the aching zone of adaptive expansion and stopped trying to avoid what is painful so I can raise my body awareness to navigate it differently.
With time, grit and more time, I learned to settle in the pain; observing my stress physiology and able to seize the moment of pause between stimulus and response.
What’s more, pain became one of my most cherished and honoured guides.
When we encounter overwhelming challenges, we tend to feel small in contrast and our actions don’t count for much. These are constructed narratives that self-limit. The manner in which we respond and the degree to which we believe our existence and behaviors count, are shaped by our thoughts and how we feel about hope. They are also affected by our connection to our body and so, Earth – the queen of metamorphosis.
Today, during times of severe disconnection, mistrust, loss, hurt, and chaos, we are asked to build our capacity to connect to our body and restore amidst what we perceive as threatening and feel is less desirable. We’re accustomed to the idea of “getting away to connect and restore when in truth, this is available to us today – exactly as we are and where we are.
We need to remain, not depart.
We need to include, not eliminate.
We need to slow down, not speed up.
We need to rest, not exert.
Change, in life and our bodies, is the sole constant. Whatever circumstances we face, we have the power to choose our response. To be given the gift of aliveness is to invite calamities and feelings we would rather disregard, but imagine if we stopped trying to push through intellectually and/or spiritually?
Imagine if we quit the incessant need to alter the inevitable and fleeting?
Imagine if we leaned into the unknown in surrender without a timeframe?
Imagine if we practiced active hope; creating from the internal rather than passively permitting the external to determine our becoming?
Imagine if we blindly and faithfully trusted as our ancestors have?
Our focus and energy would be liberated to become resourceful and more importantly, we would build capacity.
Feeling everything is the remedy. Regardless of what emerges, remember, sensation is qualitatively neutral. It is our perception, mental interpretation, and constructed narrative that determines what is ‘painful’, ‘bearable’, or ‘pleasurable’.
Let’s rest in the reservoir of resilience that is our body without judgment, forcing, or a need to accelerate what already is.
Let’s choose to wake up to the beauty that surrounds us.
Let’s remember our isolation is bonded by webs of infrangible wholeness, uniting us beyond the physical realm.
From the heart,
Salma
Image: “World As A Playground” © Aristoula Beti
