Circumstances, common sense, and intelligence all dictate physically distancing ourselves from one another just now. But there's no health dividend from putting 'tender sympathies' on lockdown.
Twelve years after the publication of "Origin of the Species," British naturalist Charles Darwin peered still further into the intricacies of human evolution. In a treatise about the origin of man, he wrote that as humanity advances — and small tribes unite with larger communities — reason compels us to extend "social instincts and sympathies" even to those unknown to us.
"This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed,
seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies
becoming more tender and more widely diffused,
until they are extended to all sentient beings."
Tender sympathy quarantined is compassion denied.
‘Sympathies More Tender’
Most of us know about the wisdom of self care, particularly in times of extreme strain when sympathetic nervous systems rev up and get stuck in overdrive. If you are taking time for self care — and I hope you are — what might happen if you reimagined your definition of "self"?
If any of the reports from wisdom traditions contain so much as a mustard-seed-sized grain of truth, when we abandon the notion that "others" are separate from self — everyone wins.
In his book, A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives, Thupten Jinpa suggests a practice to graduate from theory to lived experience. He calls it "Just Like Me."
It's simple, practical, and relevant. Whether you bring to mind someone you love, someone you don't know well, or even someone who manages to scrape on your very last nerve, you cop to a simple truth about your shared humanity.
"Just like me, this person is riding on a roller coaster of emotion in these times."
"Just like me, this person wants to be happy, safe, and healthy."
"Just like me, this person is searching for how to not be immobilized by fear."
And so on. The practice asks no more of you than to fess up to a truth. It's not a surefire enlightenment scheme or a shortcut to instant inner peace. However, assuming that what the Dalai Lama says and science suggests is true, stress levels go down when we activate compassion and empathy.
Hello elevated oxytocin neurotransmitters, our old friends.
It's an easy practice to customize on the fly. Just like me, this person is feeling uneasy about standing in line at the grocery store. Just like me, this person is wondering why everybody thinks they need a year's supply of toilet paper all of a sudden. Like that.
Here's one version (mine) of it to get the hang of it. If it seems to have value, set yourself free to tailor the practice to suit the circumstances in your life.
Live Classes, Not Yoga, on Pause
No surprise here, but all in-person classes and workshops at Sun & Moon Yoga Studio are paused for the time being.
In the interim, the studio has launched a YouTube channel for videos and livestream classes, all of which are available for replay any time. These offerings are free, but the studio is inviting any and all who are able to make a free will offering for these online classes. Sun & Moon has done a remarkable job launching this new offering while managing all the complex logistics of a sudden pivot. I recommend, big time, checking it out.
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There's no shortage of health and wellness advice out there, so I won't pile on too much, other than to echo the mostly no-brainer stuff: take care of yourselves, find some way to offer immediate and tangible support to the most vulnerable in your community, get good sleep, and don't dally about reaching out for help when you need it.
Oh, and notice if you're putting the thumb on your mental health scale in an unhealthy way by listening exclusively to the loud voice for fear and forgetting about the quieter, whispered voice for love. Be mindful of what you're taking in.
Finally, don't let up on the practices that nourish you.
I'd love to know how you're faring and hear about what you've been doing to ride through these times. What creative way have you discovered to serve your community? Who's painted a face on a volleyball and started talking to it?
I took up the banjo. The unstoppable fiddlin' yoga-man, Dr. Baxter Bell, nudged me to get it out of the closet so it could do more than collect dust. Doctor's orders and all that. Thanks for lighting a fire under my sit bones, Baxter, so I spend less time on Twitter in favor of mental breaks pickin' and learning slides and hammer-ons.
It turns out that creating a brand new rhythm, when all the old ones have ground to a sudden halt, has merit. Even if the sound is many, many miles from Grammy-worthy.
What are you doing for yourself — and for capital-s Self — in these times? I'd love to know.
