Mrs.Devi Venugopal
Hello readers, I hope we all learn to embrace our vulnerability during the COVID times, I want to empower you all with many tools which you can use to maintain your body and mind in a higher life condition. This month, I will walk the talk and be more vulnerable to the readers sharing my journey during the lockdown. Like India, Indonesia, too, went into lockdown by the end of March, and until now, the COVID cases are in the hike; therefore, we are in self lockdown.
As per the new norm, online school started for my kids, and they were not happy with the change. I saw a lot of emotional mood swings in all our family members. My husband did not enjoy the Work From Home (WFH); elder daughter missed many memorable events in school, such as her Graduation Ceremony from Middle School, and so on. The present time is the rumbling stage of our story. The goal is to get honest about our stories and analyze what we are making up about our struggles and dig into our boundaries, shame, blame, resentment, heartbreak, generosity, and forgiveness. (Brown, 2015).
The first step is to understand our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which opens the door to engage with others. We have to identify the conspiracies and confabulations, the lies told honestly, what our minds frames. The three questions you can use to have a reality check are:
What more do I need to learn to understand the situation?
What more do I need to know about the other people in the story?
What more do I need to learn and know about myself?
When we are hurt, making up stories is our survival instinct, but choosing to rumble with the truth is a conscious choice.
I want to be brave and started to make observations of all the incomplete stories, which caused chaos in the environment. The first truth is we all need to stay under one roof 24/7 and do our day to day activities, that is the reality. I have to understand what the emotional state of the family members and their coping mechanisms are, such as binge eating, binge-watching Netflix, binge sleeping, or blaming others. The third point is to keep my body, mind, emotions, and energy in balance, accept with complete willingness to the current situation and respond to it with my ability.
I have invested my time in pre corona time in learning Yoga and decided to use it as a tool to understand myself. What is Yoga?
Yoga is not a practice, not an exercise, not a technique.
Science of Yoga is simply the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.
The external situation impacts each one of us, but Yoga is the science of creating emotional conditions precisely the way you want them.
You finetune to point where everything within you works beautifully, naturally, the best of your abilities will flow out of you.
The practice of Yoga, the body and mind can be maintained at the highest possible level of capability and efficiency.
Yoga means “UNION.”
When you are in Yoga, you need to experience that everything has become one – this is the most profound aim of Yoga.
Yoga aims at enhancing your experience beyond the five senses.
There is a dimension beyond five senses perception.
You can call it “self,” “God,” “divine”- it is up to you.
Even if you are not interested in the quest of divine or self, enhancing your perception can play a vital role in assuring a fundamental level of well-being.
Whatever you are – doctor, police, engineer, homemaker – finally your quality of perception that determines how effective and successful you are and how much you can do on this planet.
The expansion of perception beyond your senses can achieve phenomenal results – opening a magical portal in your life.
I decided to use Yoga as a tool to bring balance within the body, mind, and energy
and did it religiously for 80 days. It inspired my family to do simple practices and
meditation to have sanity in place. I want to offer the readers simple exercises that they learn by clicking the below links and training every day. Isha foundation run by Sadhguru provides a variety of Yoga such as Yoga for success, complete well-being, Isha Kriya meditation, and Simha Kriya for enhancing the respiratory system to fight against the virus.
Learn Upa Yoga: iyg.to/luy
Learn Yoga Namaskar: iyg.to/lyn
Simha Kriya : Iyg.to/shk
Isha Kriya: https://youtu.be/EwQkfoKxRvo
Any form of exercise allows us to release the stress, with complete lockdown, Yoga came in handy. I also used the time to volunteer in a lot of Yoga activities for the International Yoga Day (21st June 2020). I spread awareness among my families, friends, relatives, and
community.
The rates of depression, fear, and anxiety are increasing among teenagers and young adults, so let’s empower them with tools to bring balance and clarity. There are many online materials for all grade levels to keep them busy during the lockdown time from commonsense media.
Also, encourage them to share their emotions and thoughts so that we can rumble with the conspiracies and confabulations our minds create and be in reality.
Citations
Brown, B. (2015). Rising Strong. Penguin Random House. US.
Sadhguru. (2016). Inner Engineering. Penguin random House. India.
