My rupture from Covid

 

Rupture. Disruption. Disorientation. Heavy. Confused. Uncertain.

These are all the words that emerge from my consciousness, as I piece together the fractals of experience over the last few weeks.

Today, I was going to talk about silence and stillness. I’ve just spent a week in a big orange tent, winter camping and hunting in Yukon’s Sifton Range. It was a self-imposed rupture from the anxiety-producing news.

I was going to talk about how wilderness camping has a Zen or Benedictine retreat like feel. There’s conscious work- me chopping ice with a too-heavy maul. Unstucking the skidoos in thigh-deep snow. Chopping down dead trees to fire the wood stove, in -20 C.

I was going to talk about how my week was the epitome of northern social distancing, and how the silence and separation helped me reground my nervous system. It offered a welcome reprieve from my heightened cautiousness that had slowly taken root in my daily behaviors.

It wasn’t until my body had been sufficiently worked in, through long gritty days of physical endurance, that my mind began to relax.

The entry into the back country caused a rupture- that brought a familiar contentment.

When the familiar falls away

There are a few parallels between wilderness living, and this larger rupture we’re experiencing with Covid-19.

The infinitesimal virus, and its global panic, marks a rupture of such proportions, that it’s great Global Sabbatical from consumption and productivity.

For those of us new to war, tyranny, mass migration, colonization, or decimation of land and resources- sudden restrictions and degrees of quarantine destabilize our privilege (or perhaps amplify it), fuel our insecurities, fears, and work our developmental edges.

From work, school, business, and public service lives, the rhythms and contours of our everyday life feel awkward, confusing, and disorienting. All that’s familiar has fallen away within a span of weeks.

In my household- we’ve lost our familiar rituals of community ski festivals, Pino Basketball league on Sundays, the Duff’s Skagway ½ Marathon, my kids’ orchestra, Arctic Winter Games, film nights, larger social gatherings, travel plans, and house concerts.

In other families, we’ve lost grandparents, weddings, graduations, being present at the time of death, front-line support, and safety.

While we have no way of knowing exactly how long it will be, or whether things will ever ‘return to normal’- as leaders of social and environmental change making- what do we lean on when the familiar falls away?

The Intelligence of Feeling Fully

 

We get close in on what’s real, present, and radically uncomfortable. We attend to what’s emerging through the thicket of our unconscious selves.

As you settle, what can you feel within yourself? What’s truly present as you navigate the beginnings of this long pilgrimage into the unknown?

Whether you’ve managed to anchor your smooth rhythm or chaotically fumble through with kids, dogs, grandparents, and overlapping Zoom calls in a tiny space- what do you feel? What is real and present to you? And can you bear it’s raw and hungry truth?

This is the intelligence of feeling fully. Our leaders who rise, both at work and at home, in community and for community- are able to sink into the emerging present of full feeling.

The ‘shoulds’, the plans, the complaints, and the angry snips….the worry, concern, and fret about finances, health, and family bring vibrations of energy, expression and intelligence.

Listen for it all. And feel it fully.

This is what we have, when everything familiar falls away.

So make space for emotion. For sensation. For the raw intelligence of our bodies and souls in a collective rupture from our ordinary normal lives.

Make space for grief, for disorientation, for slow, for ineffective, for wobble, and awkward.

Make space for you, and me, and us- together in a topography that feels weird and frustrating, endless and uncertain.

Make space for your team, your organization, your communities. Because it is only in and through, when what we’re long for- can be born.

Practice for You: Welcome the Contours of Emotion

 

For many of us, sensation and emotions can be teased apart, and for others- this distinction feels confusing. Whether you are an astute observer of your inner world, or new to this level of awareness- there is always much to learn.

2x/day, when you are feeling overwhelmed, confused, wobbly, or awkward [or any other uncomfortable emotional experience] try this:

 

1. Close your eyes and feel into any sensation in your body (tightness, tingling, constriction, tension…).

2. Bring your awareness to this sensation, with curiosity and focus. Notice if the sensation shifts or changes as you ‘watch’ it.

3. When you feel the uncomfortable sensation begin to dissipate, give it a ‘name’. It might have an emotional overtone (worry, anxiety, anger, frustration, fear, confusion…).

4. Then, welcome it. Say it over a few times. ‘Welcome Fear’…’Welcome Anger’….

5. Then, let go. Let go of your desire to feel something else. Let go of your desire to control how you experience the world.

The purpose of this practice is to become intimate with our inner experience and to embrace it with curiosity, rather than resist.

 

Then- I’d love to hear from you! Join the conversation below. How are you experiencing this rupture from the familiar? What are you feeling? How are you letting yourself just BE with whatever arises? And if you’ve got resistance, that’s welcome too.

 

We are in THIS unfolding together.

Xo

Jennifer