How to get out of a stressful shock and regain your balance!

The world has changed almost overnight and we find ourselves in a new reality that is stressful and uncertain. While the first step is to take the recommended precautionary measures, what can you do next to create more spaciousness and ease in your approach to the situation?

While this week’s video is primarily a response to the dramatic effects of the Corona virus on all of our lives, the practice I suggest is relevant to any stressful situation and can help you gain a much needed shift toward greater balance.

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Prefer to read? Here’s a transcription of the video:

I want to talk today about how to create more spaciousness and calm and ease in the face of any challenge that you are facing. How to create calmness in a system in a situation when there’s high drama and there’s stress.

But I want to particularly address the dramatic shift that has happened in the past few days with a Coronavirus and its spread worldwide. And suddenly the new reality that we have woken up to in the past, I think, 72 hours is that we need to stay at home. We need to protect ourselves. We need to take precautionary measures for ourselves, for our loved ones, but also for people who we don’t know, because when we go out, you know I pay for something, I touch my credit card that cashier touches the credit card. Then they touch somebody else’s products. Somebody else touches their products. It’s like suddenly we’re six and 10 and 1000 degrees of separation from knowing someone who we’ve touched and the other way around.

And so we’re here to take care of ourselves, but also to take care of each other.

And so I want to use the metaphor of when we get a cut or a bruise or we have a physical ailment.

Suddenly our body is in trauma and we attend to the place that’s in trauma. Let’s say you have a cut on your finger and it hurts and it bleeds. So okay, you first have to do first Aid is take the precautionary measures of what you need to do, and that’s what we’re doing with a Coronavirus situation right now.

After you’ve done that, it’s still throbbing. Your finger is still throbbing, and all of our attention usually goes to the finger as if all of us is in pain. All of us is hurting.

And at a time like that, it’s really important to step back and say, wait a second, I’ve taken care of the emergency, my finger is okay, it’s clean. I have a Band Aid.

It’s still throbbing. It’s hurting, but what is functioning in my body? My finger is a small part of my body and it’s in pain, but the rest is still functioning. Nothing has changed. I can breathe. I can see. I can nourish myself. I can think. I can talk. I can work. There are all other things that I can still do. I can love. I can care for others.

The rest of my body is still functioning. I’m healthy and everything else except for the cut, or if it’s a more severe ailment, even that. Whatever it is, if you’re having respiratory problems, that’s very scary, because it’s it’s the essence of who we are if we can’t breathe or we have a flu and it’s hard for us to function. Our head throbs and hurts.

And even then, what is working? You can wiggle your toes, your hands. That’s working. My legs are working. My arms, I can move them. I can still play the piano or I can still listen to music and enjoy music.

You see where I’m getting at? There’s other parts of your body, and your being are still functioning while something is in dramatic change, in some trauma.

And so the same is going on here with a Coronavirus.

First thing, take care on the emergency level. Stay safe. Do the precautionary procedures of staying clean. Wash your hands, take care of yourself, loved ones. Stay at home. Shift if you can, your work and your activities, whatever you can to do virtually.

Okay. Now ask what else is still working in the world that hasn’t changed? And most of it has not changed.

The sun is still rising and going down every day consistently. It just rained here where I live yesterday and it was so beautiful and the earth smells so fresh. That hasn’t changed.

And the birds were still, you know, flying around. And there’s a water bath I have outside and they were inside it and chirping.

That hadn’t changed. And I’m doing well, I’m healthy. I’m at home. There are people in the world who I love and who love me. Technology is still working so that we can all go virtual and support each other, and so I’m making this video to support you, to create more spaciousness and more calm and ease in your life.

There’s so much that’s still functioning that it’s important to pay attention to that because we just kind of get swept away by the you know, it’s like a strong magnetic field that pulls us into fear and concern, and it’s not that it’s unreal. It’s that once you’ve taken care of the initial emergency conditions. Step back and say, “What is functioning in my world?”

And so one thing you can do is make a list of what is working in my world. What is still thriving in my life and in the world around me, in the life around me, in the nature that I see around me?

So practice this. Stay safe and healthy.

Blessings.