For the last year and a half, with a few weeks exception, I’ve been locked down - like most of us. Which has meant staying home or close to home almost all the time. Tonight at 5pm they are expected to ease restrictions again where I am and I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that they do.
Interestingly though, despite the hardship that has been involved, I’m kind of used to lockdown now (click here to see me in lockdown season 2) and in some respects, it has been a gift to not go anywhere. It has allowed me to pool my energy. Where before I was running around all over town to see everyone and do everything, now I feel myself to be less dispersed, more concentrated. Except for one part - the social media piece. Through social media, I feel myself to be drawn outwards a lot, away from center - into other’s lives and ideas and art. Lately I’ve been turning the volume down on the social media noise however. Deleting the ‘gram for days at a time. Muting some feeds. Limiting the time spent. It’s helping me to feel more in tune with myself and my immediate environment. And when I crave connection outside I turn to it again or reach out to a friend some old fashioned way (send a text!).
I’m reminded of that expression “Keep the home fires burning” and in some ways, it feels like I’ve had more opportunity in these past eighteen months to do that. To tend to my family and home environment. (I’ve also tended to Netflix… thoroughly tended to Netflix. My top watches are here)
And I’ve also had more occasion to tend to myself. Put a few more logs on my own fire.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also had less time. We did move house, during this little spell, which was taxing energetically for sure. And, with two little people at home and in my care between 7am and 7pm every day, I am lucky to wee alone let alone anything else. The most peace and quiet I get is when they are eating toast at 10:30am in the morning and their sweet little faces have vegemite or honey smeared ear to ear or when I deliberately turn a blind eye as they get up to some quiet mischief in the garden. But, in the hours 7pm - 6:59am on a good day (sometimes 8:59am if B gives me the morning off - that’s a great day!), I have been tending to my own self a little more than before. There’s been a shift for me in the way I approach my life and it’s something to do with this, being close to myself and my home. It’s also of course, something to do with the fact that I haven’t been ‘working’... I have of course been working some but I haven’t been keeping someone else’s business in my mind and pouring all my energy into it at the cost of my own family and practice. (I have to acknowledge my privilege here of not being the sole earner in our family that enabled me to be able to make the decision to be able to leave my old job when it became clear that I couldn’t in fact continue and care for my children at home at the same time.) But since being home, I’ve also been changing my relationship to rest and giving myself permission to do less and be more even when I am with the kids. I’m more conscious of my energy.
I remember when I used to train new yoga teachers I’d always tell them - in the beginning you might want to say Yes to any opportunity that comes your way but watch your energy. If you feel depleted, it can be helpful to teach in one community lots, (rather than lots of communities only infrequently) and get to know everyone and then you don’t have to expend so much energy to communicate or be understood as you develop your own language between you all, and as the trust grows and you grow together week by week.
So there’s this same idea there, of energy conservation and also greater growth that happens when you stay in one location more than move around all the time . There was once a magazine article, in some toxic diet culture promoting glossy, that talked about the benefits of fidgeting for weight loss. Because fidgeting, moving frenetically is energy intensive - it’ll burn calories! So perhaps the inverse principle might work for reserving energy.
And this theme as I said, of tending to myself has been flowing through into my practice. I’ve been thinking of my movement as a way of tending to myself physically but also my mat time and med time as keeping the flame of remembrance of my true nature alive in me. Like a warm feeling of being at home in both my own heart and in the whole Universe that I am a part of.
The whole premise of Hatha yoga is that you need to build prana to pierce the energy centers and reach enlightenment. And in the Shakta tradition, as one beloved teacher Rose Baudin says, you won’t meet the Goddess if you’re too busy. But you know, save for a pandemic and a stay at home order, I wasn’t ever going to slow down for long enough for me to realise that I needed to slow down.
So I’m counting my blessings, as well as counting down the minutes till the next announcement but when it comes, I’ll probably just celebrate by staying at home and watching Netflix. But it’ll be by choice!