Guest post by Philip Shepherd.
The lockdown, the constant unseen threat of the virus, the disruptions of our routines – these have all placed unaccustomed stresses on our lives, and made us susceptible to anxiety. When we reflect on how anxiety feels, we might notice that it’s characterized by an unsettled feeling in the body, and by the tendency of our thoughts to run endlessly through familiar loops.
I think if we’re honest, though, we might appreciate that those feelings were equally a part of our pre-COVID lives. We just didn’t notice our anxiety as much. We didn’t have the time or the quiet to notice it. It was an integral part of our routine; as part of the pattern of our lives, we took it for granted in much the way that you habituate to the pattern of the wallpaper that’s been there for ten years and is no longer seen. Anxiety is a constant presence in our 21st century lives; it runs through us like an underground river. The COVID situation is like the strobe of a lightning flash that reveals it.
If anxiety is our constant companion, then what is its source? To me it seems to lie in the ways in which our culture encourages us to disconnect. We disconnect from our breath, from the intelligence of the body, from the harmonies of nature that sustain us, from our neighbours and neighbourhoods, from the unseen consequences of our actions – our habit of withdrawing from relationship goes on and on. It’s as though we want to believe that if you can sufficiently disconnect from the world around you, and assert control over the relationships that are necessary, then you’ll be safe. The actual outcome of successfully implementing that strategy will be a state of mind in which you feel isolated, alienated, alone and anxious. I don’t think COVID is presenting us with a new problem – it’s merely amplifying one we’ve been living with, and presenting us with a new opportunity to address it.
So here are three simple ways in which you can explore the disconnections our culture encourages, and return to a renewed sense of peace and companionship.
- Soften into the body’s wholeness. If you are not in wholeness, you are divided – parts of you at odds with other parts. Such division is our normal state, because we tend to live in our heads – and when you sit in the head and gaze down at the body, it appears to be mechanical, like a tool you possess to do your bidding. Can you gently begin to feel your body’s wholeness? Can you feel your feet, your legs, your back, your belly, your arms and shoulders, neck and head? Can you gently feel it all as a living whole? When you soften into the body and feel it as a whole from the inside, and live in that wholeness, you return to its clear presence.
- Let your body breathe for itself. We are so used to overriding the body’s intelligence that we’ve forgotten that it’s known how to breathe – easefully, spaciously, fully – since birth. The body is essentially fluid, and each breath courses like a wave through its entire length. This is not something to achieve willfully. Can you soften the whole of the body to the inbreath and release it to the outbreath? Being willing to experience the body’s aliveness through the breath, without supervising it in any way, will gently carry you out of anxiety and into the present.
- Let yourself come to rest on the earth. Our culture has disconnected from the earth beneath our feet for so long that we no longer feel the disconnection. We have demonized the earth and deified the ever-beckoning, unattainable sky: hell is beneath our feet, heaven is above. This value system lives in our neurology, and our implicit mistrust of the earth prevents us from coming fully to rest on it. What cannot rest is restless. Caught in anxiety. So allow yourself to notice any restlessness in your body, any jitteriness in your tissues, any part of your energy that is not at rest on the earth. Noticing it, allow your breath to permeate that energy and soften it enough that it can settle down through the body and meet the earth. As you restore that lost relationship, and you reconnect with your wholeness – with the breath, with the earth – you will come to rest in a strength that will carry you through this crisis and into a less anxious life on the other side of it.
For more information on Philip Shepherd’s work, please click here.
