Covid Crazy and Connection
As COVID-19 cases climb like the front side of a thrill-seeker’s favourite roller coaster, so does my anxiety. How do I know this?
On our walk, my dog crazy-barks at someone bringing eggs to my neighbor (really?). Yes she has some high anxiety but usually she reserves her “get the hell away from us” bark for teenagers on skate boards, cross country skiers and balaclava wearing humans. Egg deliverers are now threats to our safety.
A man behind me in line at the grocery store checkout steps RIGHT UP BESIDE ME before I have started to walk away. He’s either in a huge hurry, totally distracted, or living on another planet. In my mind I am screaming “What are you doing??!!” Instead my eyes communicate a clear message so that he mumbles oh sorry and I walk away.
In the parking lot I notice every person who has not learned the art of effective masking. OVER THE NOSE PEOPLE!
I recall I have not done my meditation today. This goes up on my to-do list.
Some days this pandemic turns me into some kind of hypervigilant lunatic. Usually, I’m pretty relaxed but the news, the projections, the antimaskers, the discussions, the need to keep our distance, and especially the illnesses and deaths are getting to me. Especially the deaths, because I know that many of COVID’s victims die without friends or family by their side because of hospital restrictions. This thought is deeply disturbing to me.
What I want is to appreciate that the half-maskers are at least trying, instead of allowing Little Miss Judgement a front row seat in my brain. I want to extend the calm energy my dog needs so that she can go back to watching for the old threats on skateboards and skis. I want to be gracious with strangers, offer kindness instead of dagger eyes when I am startled. I want to reach out, extend and connect instead of contracting in fear.
Extend and connect, instead of contracting in fear. These are recurring lessons as a student of Aikido. When we were doing partner work way, way back in the good old days, we practiced physically connecting with our partner. Not a strangle hold, not a floppy flimsy hold– a clear, firm grasp. Connection. Then, we add some movement and work on staying connected. It’s harder in motion, it takes concentration and energy to keep the body awareness and structure needed to maintain connection with your partner.
Life’s like that too, it’s harder to keep connected when we are moving. Life has lots of moving parts.
The body contracts in fight, flight, or freeze. Check it out, next time you are caught off guard and want to punch someone in the face or run screaming from the room. If you’re slightly less dramatic, I invite you to check out your smaller reactions to a nasty look, a dismissive comment, an eye roll or challenging question. See if you can stop and notice what is happening in your body. Do you feel tension or contraction anywhere – jaw, shoulders, back, torso or other? Or do you feel openness and expansion somewhere? It’s normal to tense up; it’s the body’s natural reaction to threat, and when someone is disagreeing with our great idea or adding complications to our beautiful plan, or stepping too close in a pandemic, it can feel like a threat.
It takes a lot of practice to unlearn contraction and learn to stay open, to greet a challenge or perceived threat with expansion and connection. But when you do, in Aikido it’s powerful and in life it is too. Expansion and openness allow for a very different view of the world than contraction does. In openness I can access curiosity instead of judgement. My nervous system stays calm. I see more possibilities. My dog enjoys her walk more and I can connect with strangers with a bit of warmth and compassion during this crazy time.