STRATEGIES FOR RESPODING TO AN UNCERTAIN TIME

Here are 5 basic concepts you can use to respond intentionally to what this current situation evokes in us: 

1. Replace "Quarantine" with "Cocoon" : I am inviting us to see this as a gift of pause that if welcomed can be a real source of renewal and transformation. What would it be like to focus on what you would like to do with this time and how you would like to emerge? If you were a chrysalis in a cocoon for two weeks what would you want to fill that space with? 

2. Differentiate Between Past and Present: When confronted with fear or pain the brain reaches into its cache of past experiences + traumas to respond with the survival strategies that worked at the time. One side effect of this is that the brain (and so the body) temporarily feels that it is in that old context. Although they are tempting, it can be very regulating to help our system decipher between the old wounds that come with old beliefs and impulses and the current situation as it confronts us today. Questions like "How is this familiar to me?" can be helpful in starting that inquiry. 

3. Find Security in The Body: Assessing for safety is one of the most regulating things you can do for your nervous system, start by asking--"am I or any of my closest loved ones under immediate life-threatening danger?" If the answer is "no" then regulating your nervous system becomes the most valuable thing you can possibly do for yourself so that you have access to all of your brain when you do decide to respond to whats at hand. One way to do this is take three breaths, then feel your feet and your back and take three to five breaths into those places. Sense if there is any shift in spaciousness or feeling of calm inside--unrelated to the happenings of the outside world. 

4. Fear of Uncertainty is Compulsive not Inevitable: The brain is predictive, it does this in an effort to keep us safe. For most of us, there were gaps in feeling fully cared for or secure over our lives and so our brain has wired in anxiety patterns that attach fear and worry to the blank space of the future. We do this to try to prevent the repetition of past pain, which ironically we guarantee by projecting the past on to the future before it even happens and reacting to it as if it already did. What if we could be curious  about the fear that arises amidst the uncertainty as well as towards this uncertainty itself?  Is it possible to stay with what is actually occurring instead of what we fear will occur? This tends to be far less overwhelming and empowers us to respond with our full creative potential. 

5. Connect with Something Outside Yourself: It is easy to get swept up into the tunnel vision of our primal defenses that want to be reactive and become the situation instead of being the responders to it. If we can make connections with community, with fun or play, with the creative projects we have been putting off—this can give us the deep nourishment we need to not just survive but use this experience as a resource for growth in our and the collective evolution.. We will also be more likely to find the sacred balance of being empowered in the truth that our actions impact all of humanity (in a very concrete way right now, but always) and the vital remembering that we are held in the fabric of something much greater. This connection can be our most powerful resource and is always available to us if we are willing to turn towards it.