ENLIGHTEN UP! a blogSelf-awareness stories: lighting our way to clarity, contentment and resilience in a complicated world.
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 From January through March, I was busy teaching yoga, writing a book, and sending proposals to agents and publishers for my non-fiction book, Enlighten Up! I was keeping busy, visiting friends, going to art openings, reading books, posting online, eating out, hanging with family – you know, normal life.
Then BAM! Up popped the pandemic, forcing me to take a ride on the CORONA-coaster. That left me, like many of you, COVER-whelmed, dealing with CORONA-phobia, and adjusting to the three W’s - Wear a mask, Wash your hands and Watch your distance. All my classes were cancelled. One of the studios I worked for, teaching restorative and yin yoga sadly closed permanently. I thought I was going to have an extended restful stay-cation and sabbatical from work and volunteering. Boy, was I wrong! The pandemic hit pretty hard, pretty early in Connecticut, largely because the southern part of the state borders New York, which really got slammed. Because I felt healthy and safe, and because I have a deep interest in making sure everyone has access to basics like food, I gave my government $1,200 relief payment, plus more of my own savings, to World Central Kitchen, No Kid Hungry, Feeding America and my local Foodshare program. Connecticut, The Nutmeg State, is largely populated by reasonable people who listen to science. In the past seven months, I’ve seen only one or two folks not wearing masks or social distancing. As a result we are now slowly and safely opening back up. Then there is the other pandemic of racial and social injustice that re-appeared in front of our eyes in the news, and on our digital devices. I say re-appeared because it has never really gone away. I found myself attending a rally, writing about it, performing a piece in a local theater group’s online presentation, titled Say Our Names. I joined a group of yogis holding weekly zoom meetings on how best to help with the DEI (Diversity, Equity Inclusion), and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous People Of Color) movements. So far we’ve come up with four pillars to serve as a foundation for whatever we eventually build. The four pillars are:
Also, I signed the Yogins United letter to Get Out The Vote. The effort urges all citizens to actively participate by taking one or more of three important action steps: VOTE: Go to Vote.org to check regularly that you are properly registered to vote, sign up for an absentee ballot, and get 3 friends to do the same. VOICE: Go to Vote Forward, Engaged Buddhist or Dharma Vote and sign up to write letters to voters in swing states. This method of peer-to-peer engagement is proven effective and prefers letter writing to cold-calling and texting in this election cycle. VOLUNTEER: Go to All Voting Is Local and sign up to be a poll worker. Help safeguard our electoral process and protect voters in marginalized communities from rampant voter suppression. Somehow I got myself drafted to participate in creating material for IAYT’s (International Association of Yoga Therapists) ethics training videos for the accreditation process. The goal is to create four one-hour videos, each one worth 1 CE (Continuing Education credit). Then there is the personal. Definitely it was and still is a strange time, but as an introvert who is sensitive to OPE, other people’s energy, I was just fine with being home alone in spite of the lockdown, shut down and need to occasionally quarantine. I tried yoga classes on Zoom but abandoned that pretty quickly for my own yoga and meditation practice. Yoga on Zoom was not for me, but meetings that that moved from in person to virtual were another matter. I actually found myself enjoying them. In social groups it’s hard for an introvert to listen or be heard over the chatter especially when we’re trying to get our own thoughts in order. From the comfort of my couch, (no bra, no shoes but yes, I wear pants) I know I’m seen and it’s easier to be heard. I wrote like crazy; finished my book, moved past the rejections from the agents and traditional publishers, found a hybrid publisher that I liked and signed a contract. That’s working well and my book, Enlighten Up! The Five Layers of Self-Awareness, will be released later this year. It’s a personal growth book that presents a contemporary (and often light-hearted) look at the Kosha model of being human. It offers personal stories along with goals and accessible practices that can be done by anyone. Since I had time on my hands, I used some of it to de-clutter and re-organize my spaces. I am a recovering perfectionist; dis-organization and clutter makes my skin crawl. During the process, I discovered boxes filled with stuff I wrote years ago. Honestly I don’t remember writing a lot of it but I liked it. I uncovered an unfinished novel and a bunch of short stories. So, I finished the novel, polished the short stories and wrote a few more. As I re-read them and began the job of editing and re-writing, I noticed that they all involved the importance of self-awareness and how that can improve a life, change a habit and help the characters manage difficult feelings and touchy situations. I guess that really is my brand! That’s what I did and am still doing to stay sane during my pandemic stay-cation. Hope you are finding ways to stay resilient and sane during yours. My self-awareness newsletter is published six times a year. It features informative, inspiring and entertaining tips for finding clarity, contentment, and resilience in a complicated world. Sign up here.
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 “You are enough. You are so enough. It is unbelievable how enough you are.”
- - - Quote from Mary Setrakian made famous by Sierra Boggess In 1980, I was thirty-seven years old, divorced, a single parent with a full-time job in broadcasting and twenty-one credits toward a master's degree in communications. Picture that with the caption: "Middle class, African-American woman/feminist, tries to do it all and prove herself competent, capable, connected and enough to be a credit to the race. That is a heavy burden, and it weighed heavily on me. The cues I was getting from society and my family fed the directive to do it all, but inside I felt crazy. Beneath my struggling and juggling, I was constipated and stressed. I developed TMJ (temporal mandibular joint dysfunction). There was not enough time, not enough energy, and not enough of me, to go around and do all that was expected of me and all that I expected of myself. It felt like I was being ripped in half. I needed to find an answer to the question, “What does it mean to BE enough?” I figured out that if I could recognize or create an internal sense of contentment, I would be able to manage my existential angst and be enough, at least to myself. Some people find self-esteem and actualization in church, some in the creative process, and others in sports. I found mine in yoga. The physicality of it appealed to me enormously. It felt like dancing. I loved to dance. It relaxed me. I needed to relax. It was a perfect fit. I was hooked. I bought books and tapes and I practiced alone, waiting for enlightenment and bliss. Over time, I “enlightened up” a few degrees. I got that I could not “do it all” without risking my health and sanity. I gave up business suits and heels along with several committee and board positions—and watched external validation from a number of people and organizations melt away like cold butter on a hot summer sidewalk. Did I need that validation anymore? Could I be a credit to the race on my own terms, in my own voice and still be me? I didn’t know, but I felt myself inching closer to a resolution. It was at a yoga weekend in New York’s Catskill Mountains when the idea of being enough shifted from an intellectual concept to a cellular understanding. It was during a sweat-popping practice. "Hang in there," said the teacher, "Breathe. Feel your power. Let me hear some deep sighs." I struggled to hold up my body on one foot and one hand in a side arm balance. I sighed and hung in through alternate leg lifts. Glued to the ground from chin to pelvis, I inhaled both my legs off the ground and felt them float up into locust pose. I ached with the effort, but I groaned and sighed and squeezed and held on just a bit longer than I thought I could. At last Savasana! Relaxation! "Welcome the benefits of the universe,” the instructor said. Her voice was soft, soothing and musical. “Feel yourself melt into the ground. Breathe deeply. Inhale through the head; roll the breath down the body. Exhale it out through the toes. Relax." Being away from home and family, with work responsibilities on hold, I found myself, in that moment, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, floating somewhere between here and there at the same time. Grace, bliss, surrender and contentment! It’s been a long process. When I look back, I realize that it took 37 years for the threads of external directives, striving and feeling not enough, to tie themselves into knots big enough to feel. Does it matter that it took another 37 years to untie those knots and let the threads dissolve? Nope. In the end, the only thing that matters is that I’ve found the discipline to work through the knots moment-by-moment, bit-by-bit, and thread-by-thread. Today, I am a lot better at managing stress. I haven't been constipated in years. My TMJ bite plate sits unused on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. My yoga practice is much gentler and more contemplative these days and is as important to me as breathing. I no longer think that enlightenment will come suddenly, bliss me out and whisk away my struggles. I rejoice in the fact that underneath the African, underneath the American and underneath the woman, is a being, who can occasionally and surprisingly "be here now." In those moments, I can rest amid the chaos and be present in my life with its problems and joys. I can experience it, and me at the same time. I am competent, capable, connected and authentic, a credit to universal consciousness in all its forms. And that is enough. |
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October 2020
AuthorBETH GIBBS started her yoga practice in 1968, four months after her son was born and she’s been practicing ever since. She currently teaches all levels therapeutic yoga classes for adults, and specialty classes for seniors in the Hartford, Connecticut area. Beth is a certified yoga therapist through the International Association of Yoga Therapists and is guest faculty at the Kripalu School of Integrative Yoga Therapy. She writes for the blogs, Yoga for Healthy Aging, and Accessible Yoga. Her master’s degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA is in Yoga Therapy and Mind/Body Health. Categories |
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