This is part of the Article series “Secret Emergency Essentials as we face Covid-19” a series of creative and spiritual transmissions and reflections by artist-shaman Maria Mar on the secret essentials no one is talking about that can help you stay at your best as we all face Covid-10.
Essential No. 1 was the poetry transmission “River of Tranquility While we Face Covid 19” You can register here for the series: https://aw9fbcb.aweberpages.com/p/24dc0103-42d8-423d-a4c6-5bd82b866b4a
I woke up with a terrible pain in my throat. My thyroid glands were swollen.
“Oh, God do I have Covid?”
It was late March in New York. This was not a paranoid question. All around me people were being infected. Hundreds of people died from Covid every day and the death count was rising.
I started to panic. I have a history of hypertension, which seems to be one of the factors that makes COVID more dangerous.
Though I usually keep my blood pressure well through many lifestyle options, so that I don’t have to use medication; if presented with a health crisis, god knows what could happen… and now it was next to impossible to get a prescription.
“Oh no! Now I’m going to have all these horrible symptoms and if my blood pressure rises, then COVID could attack my kidneys and I will need to go to a hospital and they are all so overwhelmed not to mention filled with infected people!”
The more I panicked, the bigger the pain. My thyroid glands swelled up so badly I resemble a pelican with a blow fish in its beak… and the pain kept rising! I started feeling hot.
“Oh no, I have a fever! That’s another symptom. Now I’m going to start downhill in a handful of days!”
The Voice of Doom is not our Friend
Just then I caught myself.
I was allowing fear to sequester my personal power. Fear was shutting down my capacity to think clearly and respond from a creative, effective and empowered place.
I started doing deep breathing, releasing stress and calming my nervous system.
In less than 15 minutes my thyroid inflammation was down and my throat did not hurt anymore. I felt serene. My body cooled down.
And I realized what was happening:
- I had barely sleep for three days, going to bed at 5AM and sleeping erratically and probably with nightmares in-between.
- I had not taken care of myself, focused single-mindedly on helping others.
- I had stopped practicing Qigong.
Why was I neglecting the very lifestyle that has kept me healthy?
“This crisis is too big. Too many people are suffering. I can’t just sit and watch. I must do something.,” was my inner dialogue.
This inner voice triggered the fear story of my Wounded Child, who ran to her mother to heal her when she had migraines, fearing what would happen if mom died.
This inner voice created a false sense of urgency, rose my stress levels, and triggered a compulsive need to do something.
When I say “false sense of urgency” I’m not minimizing the urgency of the real situation. It was and still is critical. A national crisis. A state-wide emergency. A world disaster of historical proportions.
But how was my lack of rest, self-care or busyness a solution to this crisis? How did my self-neglect help? Quite the contrary. It had the effect of incapacitating me so that I was no good to anyone, starting with myself.
In focusing on doing and on others, I was kept from worrying about myself. True. But I was also sequestered from my own presence, joy and personal tools for healing.
- I had stopped doing my daily healing journey.
- Having fallen and injured my knee in January, I was still healing it in March, and I had neglected my therapeutic exercises.
- I was working long hours, until 10 or 11PM, without doing my hourly mindfulness break.
- I was not using my musical instruments that bring me to a place of deep relaxation.
- I was not doing any of my qigong practices and as I was in 100% quarantine, I could not go out to walk among the trees, my other favorite calming and healing practice.
- And as many other people around the world, I was facing high anxiety, even danger.
- Which made it difficult to sleep and rest.
- And increased the level of stress even more.
And I should have known better.
I first developed hypertension two decades ago when I found myself homeless because of a home disaster and in my attempts to find a way out I overworked, pushing myself beyond my human limits.
By the way, the only thing I accomplished was developing hypertension!
How to Make a Bad Scenario Even Worse
I wondered then what could have happened if I continued to stress myself without using the tools I have to support my body’s self-healing power.
The scenario was not pretty.
- First, because stress not only causes many of the symptoms that we can confuse with COVID, such as swelling and pain in the throat, headaches and chest restriction.
- Second, because stress diminishes the capacity of our immune system. In fact, when people get a kidney transplant, they are often given stress hormones to inhibit their immune system so that they will not reject the kidney.
So I would have been weakening my body’s self-healing capacity just when I most needed it!
As Bad as not Wearing a Mask
And that, my friend, is the reason why facing COVID without self-care is as bad as not wearing a mask when you go out.
A mask…
- Protects you by catching the virus in its net, so that you don’t catch it from others. It’s a safety net.
- It also protects others by not allowing your own saliva to impact them, transmitting the virus.
In the same manner, self-care
- Protects you by keeping your immune system in optimal conditions, reducing stress, calming your nervous system, supporting your kidneys, heart and lungs and uplifting your energy frequency so you stay strong, calm and positive.
- It also protects others by reducing stress-related reactions that can negatively impact relationships, by allowing you to be fully present for others and by giving you the strength, clarity and love to support others.
Self-care empowers you to cultivate the optimal Inner Environment that you need when your External Environment is toxic and stressful.
When I read the bestselling book The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton, a pioneer in epigenetics –I had a life-changing realization.
My cells and the intelligence of my body are not responding to the facts in my external environment. Not exactly. They are responding to my interpretation of those facts.
If the environment is dangerous for my health, but I optimize my physical, energetic and emotional capacity and create an inner and home environment that support my self-healing capacity and optimal frame of mind; my body’s intelligence will respond by co-creating an optimal immune system to give me a good chance to develop immunity, have a mild reaction or be in the best condition to heal in case I get sick.
But if I focus –as I was doing at this moment—in the symptoms, the danger, the virus and the worst scenario, then I am sending my brain, cells and whole body instructions to get sick.
If –on top of that—I do nothing to improve my inner ecology so that my body’s self-healing power is optimize, then I am actually working for the other side –the virus!
This does not mean that if I “think positive” then I won’t get the virus. Denial and avoidance do nothing but expose you to danger.
What it means is that in the face of a challenging or even dangerous health environment I have two choices:
- To create an Inner Environment where all my cells, my immune system and all my organs and emotions are creating optimal healing synergy – or
- To add salt to injury by creating an Inner Environment that screams “Fight, fight, fight to death!” to all my body, so that it then generates stress hormones, has the Amygdala sequestering the energy of my organs and even my brain to mount a premature war against a COVID virus that I actually may not have at all… and in the process exhaust myself, create immune deficient conditions, diminish my immune strength and leave myself weakened if I DO get the virus.
Self-neglect weakens us in all dimensions, diminishing our ability to respond creatively and effectively to the coronavirus.
Self-care empowers us to create the optimal physical, emotional and energetic Inner Environment –and often home environment—that can support us and others during this critical time.
Which choice will you make?
Let me know below.
Resources
Resource 1
The Inlakesh Ceremonial Circle
Join the Inlakesh Ceremonial Circle to connect globally to others in a light-hearted way, enjoy an oasis of serenity and renewal, awaken your creativity to find solutions instead of getting stuck in problems, enhance and heal your energy system to strengthen your body and transmute your emotions so that you can thrive instead of just surviving during the Covid Chrysalis.
It offers you:
- A ceremonial space for inspiration, spiritual support and calming your nervous system
- A Talking Circle for self-expression in a loving, supportive environment
- Energy Practices and shamanic rituals where you can access your spiritual guidance, soul wisdom and holistic self to respond to this great tragedy from a place of love, kindness, greatness and empowerment.
- Deep heart dives that help you transform stagnant or destructive grieving into health grieving.
- Music, song, storytelling and poetry to uplift, inspire and activate your creativity, allowing you to employ your imagination, talents and skills to come up with innovative solutions and become part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
This ceremonial circle is led by artist-storyteller-shaman Maria Mar with a support team of brilliant, loving healers, artists and facilitators: Deborah Brodey, sound-healer and spiritual guide and Teresa Bitner, coach for grieving, change and resilience.
Join us every last Sunday of the month at 2PM EST. Sign up here: https://dreamalchemist.com/inlakesh
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Resource 2
Radical Self-care with Deborah Brodey
As healers, changemakers, creatives or artists, we need to be fully resourced. We need to give from our overflow –not from our self-reserves of energy—so that we can be who we came here to be and share our gifts with the world without burning out.
Join Deborah Brodey, transformation guide, sound healer and yoga teacher on a 7-week journey of Radical Self Nourishment (RSN) to own your power, reclaim your energy, claim your worthiness to receive and cultivate more joy, magic and playfulness.
RSN could be the key to unlock your greatest potential to be of profound service. The course begins April 29, 2020. I invite you to learn more here: https://rsn.deborahbrodey.com/7-week-e-course/
Get the The COVID Chrysalis: The Secret Essentials to Turn this Emergency into an Emergence.
