Moving Forward with Confidence
How do we support ourselves to move forward from this global pandemic?
When Covid first hit our global shores, I was in London and like everyone else, I wondered what on earth was going on. A month in I got a phone call from a funder I had been speaking to before we went into a full lockdown about my Life Skills for Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme. Light Education Training delivers in primary and secondary to whole classes in order to normalise mental health and help young people and adults to acknowledge how they are feeling and how to be able to communicate those feelings in a healthy way, with the explicit learning of neuroscience and connection to the body. The funders, Lars Windhorst Foundation, wanted to help students. But as we had no access, I suggested we provide wellbeing support on zoom to teachers and parents, which would in turn support the young people.
Fortunately, I was quite used to working on Zoom and had the skills to set this up. Over the next months and as schools started to glimpse a return to school, we wrote
this programme, “Same Sea – Different Boats.” I heard the phrasing on a radio show and felt it captured more authentically the experience than ‘we are in it together,’
which just didn’t feel anywhere near an adequate summary of the situation. Someone who is in a domestic violence home is most certainly in a different experience than
someone who is in a house with a garden and positive relationships.
Amazingly, we put together the entire site from concept to going live within four days. That includes all the visual illustrations and the videos by the physiotherapist and the Sitting Yoga audios. All are designed for the teacher who doesn’t stop to drink water because they are too swamped – you know who you are… We looked at what fear does to the brain, how we could gain perspective and how we can bring connection to the body to anchor us in these unchartered waters.
I was delivering the first part which is solely for teachers and giving them the space to reflect on how the pandemic has been. They are desperate to have a space to talk and
share, to make the symbols of their boats, to see others, to make and express. All are key tools for wellbeing and processing experience so that we are not traumatised or left with triggers in our unconscious that then act out in other ways.
The key feeling I am seeing and hearing from around the world is how exhausted and depleted everyone is. It has been a very long two years of constant change. There can
be a tendency in humans to want to move on without reflecting and ‘forget about it,’ but this causes us to not be very conscious or healthy in our adaptations to survive. If
we trust ourselves to go there, we actually feel an easing of tension. The sharing is key to being authentic and transparent.
So where to from here? Everywhere in the world is at a slightly different stage and we don’t know exactly anything, which is in itself stressful. The formula we have found that works is:
• Come together. Zoom is actually a great tool as you ycan go into break out rooms (as you all likely know) and have a one-on-one conversation. Sharing on the chat box enables more people to participate.
• Take time to notice, reflect, write, draw and express. It’s not about art – it’s about moving a pen on paper, which does something marvellous to our brains. It helps us process and make sense of what happened.
• Create a narrative telling how this happened here, this is how I felt about it and this is how you felt about it.
• Acknowledge feelings – all of them: sad, angry, scared, happy, etc.
• Commit to one thing that your body loves and do it daily. For example, take a 15 minute walk, a lovely hot face cloth at the end of the day when you’re getting ready for bed – things that make your body go, “Ahhhhh…that was lovely.”
• See what you can control and what you can’t. Map it out – you gain perspective.
• Appreciation, active appreciation, rewires the brain to be more positive.
• Don’t toughen up. Speak and share.
The power of outing your thoughts from your head, when you share what is actually swirling around and someone hears that, the noise lessens – you’re not drowning anymore, you’ve got a buoy and a light beacon has been released. The tension and stress demons can’t hold their grip with quite the same intensity.
Taking responsibility for your quality of being, breathing and moving are all the foundations of how we can feel good within. Then what’s next isn’t something we are bracing ourselves for – we feel anchored within ourselves and are steady no matter what the water around us is doing or how big the waves are.