Meditate your way through COVID-19

I have always been attracted to meditation, however it was always going to be a thing for when I had more time in my life, when life would be less chaotic or noisy, when I would have the perfect space or the perfect state of mind, fewer parties or hard deadlines.

Well, guess what? It hasn’t happened of course. Now the mother of two young boys, building an ambitious career, teaching, farming and loving the outdoors, my life is not calm, peaceful or less busy, and probably will never be.

The real question that I needed to answer was: how do I do it all with presence and efficiency without stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed?

When a friend of mine told me that meditation was just what I needed, I said thank you but no thank you! I have never been able to sit still emptying my head of all thoughts while I have so much going on!

Later on, I was again advised to meditate  to manifest more synchronicities and be more creative with adapting to the changing situation of my work life. This particular technique that was suggested, convinced me.

It involves stillness but not emptying my head. Rather, it supports focusing my thoughts on four topics in consecutive phases. There are no beliefs to adopt or guru to follow. It is a simple method. While structured, it still allows enough flexibility to make it my own. What attracted me the most was that it is based on brain science and more particularly the activation of certain brain waves that are generally unutilized during the day, creating an imbalance, which results in stress, feelings of disconnection and fatigue^(1,2).

I wish I had known about this when I was a student, because now, as a teacher, it serves me by lowering my stress, grounding with my students and listening to them with more focus and calm.

Whatever your experience with meditation has been thus far, I am here to tell you that it has become the best tool ever  to help me get through this lockdown period. You might be scared, feeling insecure, your mind is overworking all the possible scenarios for the future, you cannot predict what will happen and it is frightening! You wonder if what you are studying is even the right path. If the economy will be back up and running when you graduate. In the midst of a huge crisis, our priorities can become clear, only if we take the time to question our choices and reflect on our lives.  

It took me a few repetitions to begin to enjoy it. At first I would feel restless laying down in my bed wanting to scratch my head or nose and my only progress was measured by how long I could pass this “resistance test”. I learned later that it is actually the biggest obstacle that people have when they start meditating, and it is easily explained by your brain freaking out because it is a new experience. In short, when you are not sending messages to your brain by staying still, because it is unusual, it sends you some scratching messages to make you move again. When your brain starts to understand that you are safe, even if you don’t move, it stops and allows this new experience in, which enable you to activate low frequency brain waves called Alpha, Delta and Theta^(3,4).

Studying online or having to teach remotely is an adaptation to make right now. Are you constantly distracted by social media, notifications and calls?  Do you feel that at the end of the day you haven’t been productive at all? You are now more isolated than ever, walking from your bedroom to your kitchen, to your bedroom again, to your living room. Motivation is low when learning, memorizing, teaching or interacting through a screen with people. Meditation can speed up any learning skills you have to develop right now, enabling you to adapt more quickly, efficiently and with more confidence. It can bring clarity and show you the right path you need to pursue.