Forging a New Normalcy

I’m still teaching yoga online as I have been doing since last March. This past week, on Tuesday, at lunchtime, I checked my class roster and to my delight, I saw one of my pre-pandemic regulars!  We didn’t have a chance to connect immediately after class so I reached out by email to let her know how happy I was to have her in class again.  Her response really hit home:  it felt like a little bit of normalcy for her.  It was also a little bit of my old normalcy for me, too.

And, it struck me that I wanted to write about my recent realizations concerning “normalcy”.  I am ready to admit that I have a new normal.  I was reluctant to do that for a while because I was attached and clinging to the idea of my pre-pandemic routine and lifestyle.  But, I’m no longer resisting.  

Eleven months ago, life was very hectic.  I was working a full time job with a minimum of ninety minutes driving a day  five days a week.  Plus on Tuesdays, I taught yoga at the studio which is an hour drive from my office.  Admittedly, it was not easy to spend that hour in traffic and then,  during the time it took to change my clothes to transform myself into a relaxed yoga teacher.  We travelled a lot on the weekends and time off from work usually meant going somewhere far away to “get away”.  I travelled frequently enough that I even developed specific packing lists for the different types of trips that we took so that packing could be done easily and efficiently.  I didn’t spend a lot of time at home, really so what was I getting away from exactly?

When I think about that lifestyle, I can see how I was caught in a constant cycle of jacking up my nervous system.  I don’t know that I could have willingly changed this on my own.  As an “Type A” personality, I like to have a lot going on at all times.  “More” and “Too Much” are my comfort zones, usually without regret.  Rarely did I experience deep relaxation even though I was doing my fair share of yoga and meditation.  The relaxation practices I had were not nearly enough to counteract how I was living.

As I sit here writing this, it is the last day of January, 2021.  I went out yesterday and ran some errands for about forty-five minutes.  It was the first time I had been in a car in two weeks and I have hardly been outside of the house because it is too cold for me right now.  It is a bit hermit-like, I admit.  My commute to my full time job is ten steps to the office I’ve constructed in one of our spare bedrooms.  I prepare nearly all of my own meals.  I practice yoga and exercise in our remodeled basement.  I intently study yoga texts and interact with my own teacher most days because one of my primary goals is to keep improving as a yoga teacher.  For entertainment, I engage in some form of crafting on a daily basis:  knitting, sewing, embroidery, crochet, or weaving, usually.  A couple of new, and rather surprising, interests have bubbled up to the surface:  reading Shakespeare and dancing.  It’s been delightful to have the time and space for new interests to emerge, grow and blossom.  This is my new normal.  

My relaxation practices now much better match the level of stress I have in my life.  My nervous system is in much better shape for the time I’ve spent at home over this past year.  Of course, life isn’t perfect — no one’s ever is.  With so much strife in the world, our nervous systems need all the help they can get.  But, my new normal and daily practices do help me immensely to handle it.  

At the same time, my life was bearing out the truth of the importance of slowly down, my yoga studies led me to understanding that yoga, not just the poses but all of the associated practices, is for the purpose of calming and soothing the nervous system.  There are direct and specific ties to each of the aspects of a yoga practice with exactly how our nervous system is positively impacted.  Poses, breath work, chanting, meditation all work in specific ways to have a calming effect. An excellent book on this topic is “One Simple Thing” by Eddie Stern if you’d like to learn more.

Of course, I miss seeing a wider range of people in person.  I don’t know anyone that doesn’t.  Connecting electronically only takes us so far.  But, I know that will come back in time and for the most part, I am patient around that.  I dwell in gratitude around what I can do versus what I can’t. 

I often wonder what will I reintegrate when “everything is on the table” again.  I don’t see myself ever going back all the way to the way things were.  I believe it will be a mix of my old lifestyle with this new one — in some ways by necessity and in others by choice.  A new normalcy will be forged that is yet, again, different than what I have described here.

And, so, I leave you with a question:  What parts of your new normal do you want to remain?

Namaste, Arlene