How to calm down a stressful situation
I had to evacuate my home this past weekend due to the Kincade fires in Northern California.
Natural disasters are always dramatic and intense. They make us feel small and insignificant in the face of the sheer power of natural forces. They also give us a renewed perspective on what’s important in life.
In the face of such a volatile situation, like the Kincade fires in Northern California, stressing might just add to the already intense situation.
Here’s what I did instead, which brought calm and restored wholeness to my family, when we could have easily just gotten sucked into the crisis and stress.
This is something you can do as well when faced with an unsettling or stressful situation, whether it’s a natural disaster, or a personal situation that is stressful.
Oh, and just so you know, my family and I are safe, and so is our home. We are spending time at my sister’s till they allow us to return home.
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Prefer to read? Here’s a transcription of the video:
Today I want to talk to you about how to restore wholeness and restore calm and ease and love in a situation that is out of balance. It can be any day or it can be in a more intense situation of crises. Because the best that you can do in such a situation is to restore the situation, the environment, back to a wholeness and ease, a flow, and any other quality that you want to have present in this situation.
So as you might see, I’m recording today from a different background and that is because I live in Northern California and we have the fires. We’ve had them now for three years, at least in a row. And there was mandatory evacuation for my town. And so a few days ago I left to another town that’s two hours away where my sister lives. And so I’m recording this video from my sister’s home.
And this is what happened. What happened was that there was news that, you know, we might be evacuated. And so people went to the supermarkets and brought water and canned food and people went to the gas pumps and there were long lines of cars waiting to fill up their gas and we were one of them.
And people are really getting prepared for a crisis situation, whether they have to stay at home without electricity and without heat or whether they’d have to get in their car and leave within minutes if the fire came to our area or if we would have a mandatory evacuation.
And so I was out, you know, I was out in the supermarket and I was out in the, in the gas pump and I came back home and I could feel how restless the energy was. I was feeling a bit out of balance and I had this thought, how can I restore wholeness and love and ease and calm to the situation?
And so the best I can do is to myself and my family and the people who I’m touching directly. And so as I knew that at some point we might be evacuated, I decided to do laundry so we’d have clean clothes. But also it felt like a routine activity. I set that dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen and I cooked a meal, a very kind of nourishing porridge , like a savory Indian porridge, for my family.
So when everybody came, my mother in law came her senior home and my spouse came back and my son came back that there’d be this kind of centered hearth with a hearty meal that everybody could settle into.
So you see those kind of ordinary activities that I did, which I do all the time, but I did them with the intention of creating wholeness and calm and ease and routine and a sense of the ordinary just to get myself settled back in instead of being in this crisis mode of what do we do next?
Now I was raised in Israel. I was born and raised in Israel. So I, I know what it’s like to be in a crisis situation, in a war zone. I also come from a family of alcohol and rage. So there was plenty of crisis in my personal life as a child. So I know how to get into a crisis mode and solve the problem and be the most efficient.
And so I had that as well. But I came from a different place. I came from a place of, I settled into my heart, into my center, into feeling a lot of love and wanting to create wholeness for the people that were surrounding me. And so this is what I did.
And so then we decided in the evening, we decided that we were going to pack our valuables. So we’re ready rather than trying to pack them when we’re told that we have a mandatory evacuation. So we picked up the, the valuable in our house and that too, I just did it from that place of love and homeless.
What am I going to want to take with me that I cherish? Like albums and special things like that. No beautiful bowls or there were so many things that I, that I love that I wouldn’t take, but just a few albums and things like that.
And then things that would help me continue my life in the most easy way that I could be someplace else, but I could continue my daily routine without it being too abrupted and to disturb. And so that’s how I chose. I went from room to room and it was very simple. We didn’t pack a lot. And then there was the question, do we leave now when it’s like 10 o’clock at night or do we wait for mandatory evacuation because if there isn’t, then we don’t need to leave.
And it was just this feeling of for our sanity, and again, I’m feeling it now again as I’m sharing this with you, this sense of love and wholeness that I wanted to create.
I said, let’s leave. Let’s leave when there’s no traffic. Because in the afternoon people were already leaving and I knew that when there would be mandatory evacuation people would again, there’d be of cars and I said, let’s just leave now when there’s no traffic.
And we took our cars and our dog and drove to my sister’s and arrived, you know, close to 1:00 AM but it was a smooth sailing.
And then we heard that at 4:00 AM there were, you know, cars driving through our town with megaphones announcing mandatory evacuation and there was traffic.
And so I’m sharing this with you because you see how in a situation where it’s so easy to get into doing and what’s the next thing, and listening to the news and the phone and just getting into like a stressed or doing mode, I settled into something quiet, something loving. Cause this is the ideal state that I want to be in, wholeness and love and ease and care for myself, everybody around me.
So I tried to calm the situation. Now when there’s a fire, that’s intense energy and then there’s all the people in crisis that’s intense energy. So there’s so much and we had winds as well. That’s intense energy.
So the best that I could do in this situation is inspire some calmness and some ease and restore some wholeness through my love and my care. And so that’s what I did. And here we are a few days at my sister’s place and I’d have to say that we’re in ideal conditions, ideal conditions.
So we are one of the lucky ones. We haven’t lost our home. And um, although there weren’t that many homes that were lost this time because they were much more prepared at this time than two years ago. But still, so we’re in, in a very good situation. I’ve been able to continue to work and do my weekly video like I’m doing now.
But the more important thing that I want you to take with you is how can you, when you are in a crisis but also on a daily basis, what can you do to restore wholeness, to maintain wholeness, to come from a place of love where you are rebalancing the elements? And the more intense it is or the more stressful it is, how can you settle into a quietness?
How can you settle into an open heart? How can you settle into what is the best thing right now to create wholeness in my life or in this situation at work or with my family or anything, any challenge, financial challenge, or a challenge of health, anything that is going on?
And you know, we live in intense times and there’s a lot going on that is intense. And the best thing that you can do is how can you restore wholeness and love and ease or any other quality, joy or anything that you want to restore or amplify in any situation that you are in?
So I hope you find this useful in these intense times, but also just on a daily basis as a meditation before you go to work, or when you start seeing your clients, or when you prepare a meal or just to have this intention, what do I need to do now? What is the intuitive thing to do now that I want to restore wholeness and bring love to the situation?
So I leave you with that and next week I should be back home and will continue the weekly video from, from my home.
Blessings.
Thank you so much for this, Anna, it is certainly the way to go rather than act from panic.
Just your description was calming. Send much love to you all, stay safe, stay calm, much
much love