The pandemic has provided time and space for a lot of learning in the stillness of being quarantined. At the start of the pandemic, I was and still am a devoted yogi. After a decade, the practices and poses still provide me with so much peace and solace from the chaos of the world.
Whenever anyone would ask about if I did meditation, I would always say that yoga was my form of meditation. I still stand by that with a revised statement: yoga is my active form of meditation.
The meditation routine I’ve come to do nightly, is one that invokes calm and stillness both in the mind and the body. It allows my nervous system to settle from the day, and get ready for a good night’s sleep.
I started this practice because I was using the application for it’s sleep stories. After a very stressful day, I decided to try one of the meditations devoted to specific emotions, and was impressed by the way it was able to calm my system from such great arousal.
After such great success, I opted to do one of the daily meditations, and was again impressed with its calming results. After a week of doing the daily meditation every night, and seeing a marked improvement in the lessening of my reactivity in my day-to-day life, I was hooked. Almost 7 months later, and the lessening of reactivity continues to improve. My nervous system’s baseline is calmer and settles more easily.
The biggest takeaway I’ve learned from my consistent meditation practice during quarantine is that it’s okay, and is necessary to rest and be still, even with the societal pressure of over-scheduling and always being busy. I hope this is a lesson we continue to prioritize as a society, even after the pandemic lifts.