Calling for help in grief

Grief comes in waves, and rarely when you want it to show up. You may feel confused, tired, listless, sad, or otherwise weighed down by grief. When grief is nearby asking for attention, a simple tool to tend to it is prayer.

Grief came for me during a busy work week. As I rushed to get things prepared for a bilingual training, I found out that my 95 year old aunt was sick with COVID-19. Good news: my aunt made a full recovery, thank you Medicade and the thoughtful health care professionals. The downside is that I still went through the throws of grief. 

Prayer is a means of surrendering, while recognizing your power, so the night she headed into the hospital, I got on my knees and prayed. When things get hard, it can be useful to return to old spiritual practices. For me, that’s returning to old Christian prayers, but with new clarity. 

Dear Holy flame, God, goddess, loving spirit.
Thank you for the gift of my Aunt Naomi’s life. . .

These days my prayers are more queer. I value contradictions, polarities, and paradox. I focused on celebrating my aunt’s life and health, even as she was sick, because what you pay attention to grows.

Queer elders I say thank you. Those of you who survived the early years of the AIDS epidemic, thank you for teaching me that widespread terror has a vibration, a feel, a resonance that can pull us in. And thank you for teaching me to set boundaries that allow me to feel grief and not get stuck. 

As you’re faced with losses, call on your people who have survived great loss so you can feel the feeling without getting lost. Call on them by name, by memory, or by the feeling sense that they have existed. And ask them what wisdom they have to share.

Listen closely and you may hear them whisper.

Breathe
I am here. I am well.
I am here. I am well.
I am here. I am well.

Tending to tenderness

Being present with people, includes being present with a range of emotions. When providing presence is your daily practice, it can leave you feeling tender when you get time to be with yourself. Here’s a method I find useful to slow down and tend to my tenderness.

During an evening workshop my shoulders kept creeping up, a clear sign that the stress of teaching from morning to night was catching up with me. In the chaos that followed COVID-19, I had been holding people’s grief, sadness, and confusion for days. So I committed to try an old practice for release: take a bath.

That night, I chose sleep over a bath, but the next day I switched my schedule to make it happen. After meditating, eating, and attending an early morning meeting, I had 30 minutes clear. So instead of continuing on my computer, I change the rhythm. It was time to take a bath.

My grandmother and great-grandmother were both house cleaners, so I start with an honoring of them. I started scrubbing the tub clean, giving gratitude for my home and my ancestors who taught me to tend to the details. 

When the water began to collect in the tub basin, the energy in the room shifted. The sound of water filled my ears, and I breathed deep. With each exhale I released the mind chatter full of self-criticism about my slowing down. 

I slow down for my family members who cleaned tubs and never got to bath in one. The water’s buoyancy reminded me that I don’t need to carry everything, nor is it my responsibility to carry everything, so I let go a little bit more. 

I turned on music, climbed into the tub, and felt myself enveloped in love. Afterward, I moisturize before jumping back into work. A way to have the feel of the bath carry with me. 

During high stress times, your routines may fall off schedule, and care may slip to the background. However these are exactly the times when your care routine is needed. So when your schedule feels up in the air, start to take bold choices with your care.

Many days, just doing one aspect of this bath time ritual can serve as a grounded anchor. Pausing to thank your ancestors, moving to music, and moisturizing can all slow you down. How are you tending to your tenderness today?

Beauty Inspires Action

Take a moment to see what’s around you right now, and try to find one thing that you think is beautiful. Beauty is best noticed when it is self-defined - so really look for what feels beautiful to you.

There’s a coleus plant by my desk. I got this plant in the middle of winter as it was set to die, and years later its bright pinks remind me that we can survive in harsh conditions. It became the first house plant to live for years in my home. That is beautiful.

Beauty is a mix of present appearances and the memories that are evokes when we look at something. Beauty can speak to your past, future, and present at the same time - reminding you that the present moment is built up of all three places in time. 

The seeds burst open
And the sprouts climb up
Despite the cold, it is time
To grow tall

Beauty can feel hard to find when your living conditions are not what you would wish. In times outside a pandemic, your work life or family may require you to travel to places where you have less control over your surroundings. Traveling can be exciting, but it is also destabilizing because you are in a new environment where you haven’t had much of a role in setting up the space or the tone. 

In those moments where your environment feels unfamiliar or disorienting, take the time to build in something beautiful. It can be as simple as a bedside altar. Make sure you include something that reminds you of the beauty in your past, present, and future.

Find yourself something that inspires you to be.
Let it be beautiful for you to see
The beauty that lives inside you every day,
So that you remember to express yourself in your own way.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

What is your home space looking like these days? Tending to your physical home allows your body to relax and be. Your physical home can become a reflection of your inner state. When you are surrounded by what you experience as beautiful, it becomes easier to share your beauty with the world. 

Beauty inspires actions. So let your actions be grounded in beauty.

What’s something beautiful around you now? Comment below.

3 Change Process Principles

Finding balance in a new schedule may take you longer than you hope. Transitions take a lot of energy, so hold your plans lightly and remember to offer yourself compassion. COVID-19 has people entering a massive transition, so here are three key principles to help navigate change processes in individuals, groups, organizations, societies, and this moment.

Your initial plans will need to change as you adapt to a new reality.

After you make plans to change something major, you may notice that your critical voice chimes in to critique when your efforts aren't going as planned. That’s the judge who like things consistent in your life, even those things that don’t serve you in the long run. And while much this judge offers is not helpful, you may feel a ring of truth in its voice. 

When I found out that I would be housebound during a pandemic, I tried to get myself excited about jumping into a physical exercise schedule to best use my time. But by the second day of this new schedule, my whole body wanted to crash and sleep. This extra sleep was not in my plan, and my judge voice kept saying how I should be doing my exercises and highlighting my failure.

So I paused, meditated, and reflected on what I had been doing. My body needed to adjust internally to this new reality, so of course I needed more sleep than usual. Shifting plans to tend to what arises, allowed me to get rest and a couple weeks later begin exercising regularly.

A similar process happened as I was coaching an business to integrate equity and inclusion. When I was facilitating a change team meeting, one white executive shouted in anger when things weren’t going as quickly as planned. So I paused the meeting to ask people how others thought things were going. 

Change team members spoke up and challenged the executive's anger and urgency, which had silenced staff members for years. They did some unexpected internal work and changed the executive's staff role, which increased trust of their process among the organization.  

When you tend to what’s emerging, it may feel like you’re going off course. But adapting to shifting circumstances will help you navigate change and achieve your goal more effectively than you initially expected. 

Highlight what is staying the same 

Major changes in your routine take a lot of energy, and can leave you feeling tired and irritable more quickly than you expect. You are asking your body to move to a new rhythm, and the human body needs a moment to catch up.

A different way to orient during massive change is a scale. 

 |————————————— |

Continuous                        New

Write down 5 activities that you want to take on to help you transition. Then mark down which of those activities feel like they are continuing something you are currently doing, and which feel new.

When I was coaching a youth worker who was starting a business, and she was overwhelmed by the prospect of taking on new work. So we worked to identify what could stay the same in this transition: keeping a second job for consistent income and daily time with her family. This helped her slow down and transition her whole life to the new business, instead of jumping in and feeling destabilized.

If you go quickly into a new way of being, it’s can destabilize you internally. Keeping some thing things the same can provide anchors for you to be able to perceive and celebrate change.

Track the small details to see change

Before you see the full results of the change you are pursuing, lots of small things will change. Tracking these small details provides hope that your greater goal will be achieved.

As people challenged South African apartheid, the system did not crumble right away. However, every time states and organizations divested from South African, it increased the momentum toward change. If people ignored these smaller changes, it would have been harder to notice that the system was crumbling.

This is true for internal processes as well. My pandemic exercise plan did not begin as I initially envisions. It started with 5 minutes of stretching a couple times a week, then a half hour once a week, and now is a daily exercise routine.

When you stop only measuring your success by your final goal, you allow yourself to build up momentum to achieve a goal. So what’s the 1 small thing you are doing toward achieving your goals today?

Share in the comments below.

Trust your word

When you’re living amidst uncertainty, clarity can be hard to find. One method that can get you back on a clear path is letting your yes’s be yes so your no’s can be no. This reduces your internal uncertainty, and when practiced regularly reveals which direction you desire to pursue.

I saw this when I was coaching a teacher who felt a transition coming in her life - internally she was curious about new horizons and externally new offers kept coming her way. However, she couldn’t figure out which options to pursue, so she experimented.

For 6 months she taught short courses with different groups, even the ones she wasn’t sure about, and by the end she knew one thing: “Some places sparkle when I teach, and others just don’t. And I want to be where I and others sparkle.” This is the kind of clarity that helps you hone next steps.

We took her insight, and generated a short list of evaluation questions that she could use to determine what kind of work would be most life giving for her in her next stage. These included: “Does it make me sparkle?”; “How does the idea of it make me feel?”; “Is this in alignment with what I want to offer?”. Based on these answers she would give the gig a yes or no and stick with her choice, and within a month she was clear about how to pursue the next phase of life. 

When you are living through a moment of collective uncertainty and transition, finding your internal clarity keeps you grounded. Without grounding, you are more easily tossed around in the chaos that accompanies collective uncertainty. Even temporary clarity will help.

I have found myself going back and forth more often, and this same teacher remembered of the power of letting my yes’s mean yes and letting my no’s mean now. Now I’ve used these as an anchor, and it has me energized and focused.

Give it a try this week with small and large decisions for a week, and see how your focus changes. This is a practice in setting boundaries, which can increase your feeling of safety. So trust your your word, and watch what is able to manifest.

Cut Paper

One way to ignite your creativity is to work in a different medium or format. This is how energizers and retreats enliven groups, because a different medium has new challenges and possibilities which invite unexpected thinking. As an individual, you can spark your creativity through bringing in a different medium.

For example, I worked with a union staffer member who regularly had mental blocks that made it difficult for her to think creatively at her job. The union would give her many urgent tasks, but none sparked her creative thinking. Her mental blocks eventually increased and she found it hard to think about her team and the curriculums they would design together.

So I asked her, what part of her felt less present as she did her job. “At my core, I’m a dancer.” So inviting her to leave her computer and dance more often was a key that opened up her thinking.

We integrated dance-movement prompts into our sessions, which sparked her creativity. She then integrated movement prompts into her daily workflow. Quickly her mental blocks started to dissipate and she got clear about how to take action inside the union.

When you bring an artistic medium into a process that felt devoid of one beforehand, you activate new parts of your brain. That is the spark of creative thinking.

In this moment, where many people are adapting to teaching online, integrate a creative medium into your planning process to increase your creative thinking. 

On Saturday, April 11, join me for Cut Paper - a design lab for online courses. I’ll introduce you to an artistic method I use for creating course agendas, alongside a mix of self-care activities. In Cut Paper you will work on your classes, get feedback, and renewed through nurturing activities.

Register here.

Whether or not you’re able to join, take a dance break today and add a bit more art to your workflow.

Unloading collective shock

In a moment of collective shock, people look for places to unload their stories and connect with others as a strategy to not hold their burden alone. You may be the recipient of stories like this during COVID-19 - the friend who stays on the phone longer or the stranger in the parking lot who lingers to talk. As you listen to others stories, notice that you may take on some of their stress, so it is important for you to keep releasing stress that you pick up from listening.

When I was in Ferguson, listening to unexpected stories became a daily activity. Once a young man hopped into my car on the way to a rally and said. “Man, this stuff is wild.” I was surprised to hear this on a calm day from a man who had been on the front lines of the Ferguson protests only a month prior. As I drove, I listened to the man share that his girlfriend was now pregnant and they were considering an abortion, and we spent the day going in an out of conversations about his feelings and options.

Two days later, another young man hops in the car. When I ask how are you, he responds “This is hard stuff. I didn’t think having kids would be so hard. And being at home without a job now, I’m with my girl all the time. Something’s got to change.”

This pattern of deep sharing is something that happens for people who are emerging from or in the midst of intense moments. In Ferguson, I saw this as people opened their lives up to me with ease, something that might take months or years if I was organizing in a different situation. However, listening to these stories daily months took a toll on me.

In high stress, people need place to vent with others who can hold their reality. In everyday life, this may be a best friend, a therapist, or a self-help group, but when the stress of the world ratchets up, then you may experience more people sharing with you than expected. 

These moments can lead to secondary trauma, the trauma that stick with you after hearing about someone else traumatic experience.  When you notice the secondary trauma then get ground to release the stress, these moments increase your capacity to hold strong emotions. 

This type of sharing is usually unconscious, but it does reveal humans capacity to connect across great differences. When you're willing to stay present with people in intense moments, you will receive some of the best training for holding strong emotions. But unless you return to being grounded, these lessons will be hard to utilize when you’re in a meeting or more formal setting trying to hold the details of a stranger’s life.

So what do you do when you have been unexpectedly enlisted as listener and truth holder? Before you leave a conversation, get grounded and release together. Here’s a simple practice that you can use to help yourself and the other person. 

Look at the person and take a deep breath. Feel the ground beneath your body, holding you up. As you breathe out, release the stressors into the earth.  The earth can hold more than any one person, so with each breath out release the stress from the details of the stories you’ve heard, your past wounds that have been activated, and the lack of clarity about next steps. 

With each breath in, feel the earth’s stability as it holds you and renews your spirit. Take as many breathes as you need to feel more grounded.

This is a practice to return to with another person or on your own. Comment below with the unexpected places you’ve been listening and holding space for others.

Rest: a gateway to effective action

Rest can be difficult to prioritize when the knowledge of the stakes of inaction drive your efforts for justice. But in your efforts to transform the world don't forget that action and rest are in a dynamic cycle that together maximize your effectiveness. Here’s some lessons I’ve learned about rest that have helped me and others use rest as a way to increase access and effectiveness.

One evening as I prepared to board a bus New York City for yet another activist training my spiritual mentor, Kevin Greene, asked me: “Do you want to be a martyr?” The question stopped me in my tracks. 

I had been going hard to organize, train, and doing all I could to support movements for change. I was taught to expect long hours in social justice work, but my mentor reminded me, “It is a choice to work the way you do.” 

What is your pace for doing social justice work? When you get conscious about your pace, you can make clear choice to maximize your effectiveness and avoid traps that lead to burnout.

Martin Luther King Jr. worked round the clock for justice, but strained his family relationships by rarely prioritizing them. As an organizer, I’ve seen brilliant strategists whose faces are drained of color from exhaustion because the movement “needed them." Pushing ourselves so hard is a choice, but even if we do it for good reasons there is a cost.

In my trainings, I was taught to give people an environment that is similar to the pressures of daily life to help them fully practice the skills they want to learn. I loved this kind of training as it made me a stronger, more flexible trainer, but these long hours also led to me feeling so worn down after training that I needed to take a day or two to recover.

So for a weeklong training of activists, my co-trainer and I decided to do something radical, we ran an intensive workshop with only 8 hours of training a day. The result was shocking: people were grateful, left more rejuvenated, and still increased their well of skills and resources. 

I remember when one Black trans organizer said, “Now I can invite my people to these workshops because the hours give us enough time to rest, heal, and show up ready for the next day.” When we integrate time to tend to other priorities into our workshop designs, we also make space for people who can’t be organizing 24/7 to join.

How are you making time for rest into these times of physical distancing alongside rapid response? Rest is a radical possibility that you are invited to embrace as part of the cycle of taking action.

Ways into stillness

Finding stillness when your world is moving rapidly takes extra effort, but it’s important because stillness helps clarify your actions, alongside its benefits of calming your nervous system. Here are three slowing techniques that I’ve found effective for slowing yourself down to be in stillness amidst major change. 

These tips are best done in conjunction with each other because there’s no one way to get to stillness. So let’s start with the basics.

Slowness technique 1: Meditation. 

I learned to meditate during a sabbatical I took after leaving my university job, and meditation felt luxurious and easier than I expected. But when my sabbatical ended and I started a new job as a community organizer, finding time to meditate got a lot harder. Very quickly meditation became a nice activity to do in my spare time.

Within a few months of my new job, we began planning a large direct action alongside a youth environmental conference. As my organizer brain clicked into high gear, I started accelerating internally - working longer days, jumping from task-to-task, and filling my internal buzz with more information.

I was only a month into preparations when my right lung completely collapsed. When I left the hospital 2 days later, I was instructed to stay home, rest, and do no work for at least a month. At first I was so shocked that I didn’t know what to do.

After a couple days the pain meds wore off, and I was restless. I wanted to do something, but even meditating felt hard. My mind was racing and I couldn’t get back to the internal calm I found during my sabbatical.

Slowing technique 2: Read fiction.

I called a friend to connect across my boredom, and my friend asked what fiction I was reading. I was surprised, no fiction was in my plan. I had a stack of social movement books that I thought could help me during this time, but my friend shot back, “How can you organize for a future if you aren’t reading fiction to fuel your imagination?”

Just thinking about reading fiction brought me to a pause. So I got a couple fiction books from the library around the corner, and dove in. Reading fiction was a gateway to slowing down again. The fiction lets your logical brain take a backseat, then your imagination runs wild until you're tired. 

Slowing technique 3: Lay down

When I finished a series of chapters, I would let myself drift off into a nap. Napping felt so rejuvenating, afterward I would be ready to read or talk, but my pace was slowed, so often I would just sit. This was new for me, to sit with no book in hand, no show queued up, and no specific goal in mind, but it unlocked something in my brain from childhood. 

We ask children to lay down for a nap, even if they aren’t tired, and they often rest. This same practice can work for adults, if you can’t fall asleep for a nap, you can let your body relax by just laying down.

And after a couple days of being slowed down, meditating felt more available. And since that time, fiction, naps, and meditation have all become part of my toolkit for staying still. This year I even gave myself permission to have 2 naps a day - which has helped me navigate my overwhelm during crisis periods.

Which of these practices might you use to slow down? And comment to share what other practices you use.

The cycle of rest and action

Regular physical activity will boost your immune system, and rest is required for your body to be at peak health. These two truths live in a dynamic relationship. And it may seem like a conundrum, but when you cycle between rest and action you maximize your health and efforts  and impact in the world.

Felt the tension between these two as I arrived in NYC for my first travel training of 2020. I was ending a quiet period of life where I had tended to my home life, meanwhile COVID-19 was spreading rapidly through North America. 

My head was spinning as I considered canceling the training that brought me to NYC.  I thought, "I’m doing the wrong thing. I should be out in the world doing more after so much quiet.” But after conversations with my colleagues, it was clear that I needed to cancel the training because people wouldn’t be in a mindset to learn. 

When I returned home from my trip to NYC, my brain was buzzing. I thought more action was needed, so I scrambled around to get groceries, call friends and colleagues, and keep my business alive with all the cancelled in-person trainings. But none of these stopped the voice in my head saying that I was not doing enough.

After a couple days, I hit a wall. My efforts to do more were moving at a glacial pace that did not match the speed at which I felt the world moving. So I gave up, crawled into bed, and turned off my alarms.

The next morning, I let my dog, Isis, out into the backyard and when my barefoot touched the grass, I breathed in sharply as the texture of the cold earth penetrated my awareness. With my senses piqued, I began a simple reset for my system.

“I forgive myself for not pursue the option of continuing the training. And I welcome the unexpectedness that fills my days ahead.” 

That day, the refrain of self-criticism in my head stopped and I felt a calm. I had to forgive myself for not staying in action mode and welcome rest, which is especially hard for me as an organizer.

The work of forgiveness lives in the heart chakra. So when you have trouble accepting yourself, turn to your heart. This is where I find myself returning when I need to release old beliefs that are no longer be serving me. 

Practices that wake up your senses can alert you to what needs attention in your system. Most mornings, I go into my backyard barefoot and feel the consistency of the ground that doesn’t change much day to day. It let’s me know do I need more rest or action in my life today. 

The cycle between rest and action is one that benefits from some tending. There are seasons in life when one takes dominance in our awareness, however, taking the time to cycle between the two will create the most dynamic relationship with your world.

In this moment where is your tendency, more toward rest or action? What about your current balance between rest and action serves you? What’s one way you want to add more of a mix into your life today?

When you lean too much into one area, your body may force you into the other mode. So take your health into your conscious hands and take a nap or move around.

Getting Grounded this Spring

“I feel grounded.”

That’s what people keep saying after we do coaching sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic. And I’m so glad to get people there, because when we’re grounded we’re more able to act with clarity amidst chaos.

It feels like I’ve been preparing for these high chaos moments since my return from Ferguson in 2014. My online facilitation skills are on point after years of honing with Training for Change. And being at home, matches a desire I’ve felt for years. 

I firmly believe that we were born for times like these. Instead of getting lost in the swirl of possibilities, we have the ability to stay focused amidst high chaos. And I'm glad to help social justice leaders stay grounded in their power through this moment.

This Healing Spring, I am holding space for a group of social justice leaders want to move firmly from their power during these times. I believe we have all the wisdom needed to solve impossible problems, and we benefit from help to stay grounded and on course toward our goals. 

Check out Flying High, a 4-month program for social justice leaders of color, we’ll get rooted in purpose and act from our power. Apply yourself, or pass it along to someone you think could benefit.

With love,
Matthew

Unconscious Adjustments

Panic can increase the volume on your self-critical voice, making it challenging to try the many self-care practices you have at your disposal. However what’s not working may be a signal to notice what your body needs.

As the pandemic spread, I told myself that I wanted to have a disciplined sleep schedule to maximize my working hours, going to sleep earlier and then wake up earlier. But instead I kept staying up late, and feeling guilty about not achieving my new goal. 

To refocus away from the shame, I used some deep breathing and I realized that what I craved was connection and relaxation as I adapted to the life in a pandemic. So staying up late wasn’t bad, instead it was helping me get what I actually needed, more connection.

Your body is a wise teacher, that holds the knowledge about what you need right now. A crisis can make your thoughts spiral, and a quick body-centering reset can help make the next choice more clear. Let’s try together.

Take a deep breath. Deep into your belly. 

Put a hand there to feel it expand.

Then squeeze all the air out. 

Repeat 2 more times and let yourself release the stress and panic.

Now reflect on a behavior that you’ve been trying to do, but hasn’t worked out yet. Ask: What have I done instead? And how is this alternate behavior supporting me? 

When you take a deep breath, it’s a quick reset for your body, that can bring your awareness back to the present moment. So use your breath as a resource, and instead of jumping to think about action steps, reflect on what is working.

Humans are more able to do what has been working then try something new. Amidst a lots of change in the world, let go of the judgement voice, and notice what you’re doing that is serving you. Focusing on what you do well is a way to care for your self.

Choose what to amplify

Are you wondering how to make sense of this moment when responses to disease are widely varied? There are two main types of natural responses: fear and care. You will likely vacillate between both, but when you notice the signals that one is more dominant, then you can better navigate this moment.

I felt the fear and panic while walking through the main train station in New York City. It was quiet. Eerily quiet. It’s not the early morning or holiday quiet because there were plenty of people walking around, but they were barely speaking.

I heard a woman yell, “Don’t cough on me.” And afterward the silence felt more pronounced as people’s eyes dart around not wanting to get caught worrying. 

We’re in a pandemic, and people don’t know what to do. Which is rising anxiety that could fracture communities. But the other crisis response allows for something to happen.

People are reaching out for help. My phone screen is loaded with questions and thoughtful responses, as people reach out to create an environment of care with advice work working online, natural health remedies, and education about what is happening. 

People are talking about their differences out loud and getting respect - an equity facilitator’s dream. People are sharing about their families different health and economic needs, while also helping each other think through solutions. As people self-quarantine, they also say out loud how they are respecting other people’s choices to leave home.

How are you seeing life go on during this pandemic? Are you absorbed in the fear and tension, or are you watching the beautiful community responses. When you choose to focus on people helping each other, you are more likely to amplify that behavior when you interact with others. 

Comment below with one way you are seeing people come together to support each other during this time. Let’s help each other reduce stress and stay present.

Reacting to a pandemic

When you and your community are panicking about disease going around, there are simple things you can do to support community action. We’re living in a time when disease outbreaks are becoming more common as germs survive and mutate through warm winters. So whether you’re responding to coronavirus scares or H1N1, now is the time to learn how to be during a pandemic.

As a theatre maker, I study people and how they react to to different stimuli, which gives clues on how to survive amidst a panic. So let’s start by helping you notice your reaction, using a french theatre exercise called La Gamme, or the scale. It’s a scale of responses to an external crisis. What level are you at in the scale? 

Level 1: You have a sense that a something unexpected may be happening but you barely react.

Level 2: You notice something unexpected happening, can’t figure out how it affects you, and then go back to your daily life.

Level 3: It’s clear something unexpected is happening and you start you start trying to figure out how to respond.

Level 4: The problem feels closer and you start rushing to respond.

Level 5: The problem feels eminent, so you stop everything to try and protect yourself.

The first step to community action is noticing your individual level reaction. This will change, but until you notice your own, it will be hard to act in a way that is in alignment with your own needs. 

Next as preparation for collective action, notice what levels your community is in. When you and your community members are at different reaction levels, it can feel like you’re living in different worlds. One person is going about life as normal while others are bunkering down at home. Both are natural responses, but the dissonance between levels increases the tension between people making it harder to work together effectively. 

When people are panicked, they often stressed looking for a sense of normalcy. You may want people to be at the same level of reaction as you, but people will have their own unique reaction timelines that we need to honor to get through panicked moments. So trying to drag someone to another stage of reaction makes it harder for them to get grounded, because they are just coming to grips with their current reality. 

To be a loving friend or colleague, the biggest gift can be to witness someone in their stage of panic before moving to collective action. To be ready for this, you need start de-escalating yourself internally. 

Yoga, meditation, and other breathing techniques can calm you internally so you can make more clear choices. Then from your centered space, start reconnecting with community by helping people feel witnessed in their panic as you work on problem solving together. 

To get through, we’re gonna have to live in our range of reactions as our environment changes quickly. So let's breathe deep and get present so we can ride this out.

Stopping amidst the Sickness

How are you at staying grounded amidst the chaos of today? When things get chaotic, getting grounded will help you stop reacting and start taking strategic action. I have some body-based ways to help you ground.

First, let’s do a quick test to see how grounded you are now. Take a breath and read the next stanza. While reading, just notice when you want to turn away out.

Global health officials are scrambling to contain the outbreak of disease, but they are not sure when the spread will stop. Meanwhile, schools are closing and businesses are having people work from home for an unknown period of time. Conferences and retreats are being cancelled, as countries close borders to stop the spread of disease. You should self-quarantine, if you think you may be at risk, and make sure you have enough food to be quarantined at home for at least 3 weeks. No one knows how long quarantines may last, so prepare to keep your family safe.

Now, after reading this series of headlines, how is your grounding? Put your hand on your heart and tap a finger to bring your heartbeat more into your awareness. What is the quality of your heartbeat? 

A quick heartbeat is a signal that your body is in an alert state, aka stress, which makes you more vulnerable to sickness and disease. So try a grounding practice that steadies your heart rate instead of reading another news article.

To tend to the body, yoga has poses that increase circulation and reduce stress. I’ve been following a sequence that Joan, my yoga teacher, learned to stay healthy when H1N1 was going around India. Most poses have my head below my waist, or upside-down, which flips my reality.

When your head is below your waist, the definition of being upside-down, your brain has to work harder to make sense of what your eyes are seeing. In this process, other stressors fall away, and your pulse slows. Because you then see the world differently, you have a grounded and fuller picture of the present moment.

Humans can easily get distracted by the larger world, which can lead to ungrounded decisions. So let’s take a moment to be together and look at the world differently, based on your ability.

Get upside-down by bending over at the waist, getting in a headstand, leaning forward in your chair, or hanging your head over the side of a bed. If upside-down doesn’t work for you, try to do something backwards: flip your computer screen, move backwards, do something sustained that shifts your sense of equilibrium or normalcy. 

You can get grounded by increasing your awareness of the present moment. With so much destabilizing people, tend to your own grounding today. Then you’ll be better equipped to help friends and family who are panicked amidst the chaos.

Amplify What Works

There are nonlinear ways you can increase your productivity and effectiveness. To try them you may need to release some assumptions about how work can and cannot happen. The first step is to identify a renewing practice that is creating balance in your life.

When you are balanced, it can feel like you are floating on a cloud of good feelings. But there’s a secret to balance, balance requires a million tiny adjustments. One place I aim for balance is between my home life and work life.

I’m tending to my home by painting walls, hanging pictures, and planting a garden. I’m keeping strong boundaries and not letting work bleed into all parts of my day, which is hard since I love what I do. But if I put energy into care for my home now, I will be better able to tend to work when things get busy. 

To strengthen your ability to be balanced practice the switch between indulging work life then indulging home life. One way I indulge my home life before a big work trip is by cleaning my house. When my home is clean, I return to a place where I feel able to rest and soon build on what happened during my trip. 

What’s a practice you’ve been trying that helps you find balance and boost your productivity? Make a plan to amplify what works! You may create routines and rituals, but be gentle with yourself because each day brings it’s own challenges that require adjustments to stay balanced. 

A third way emerges from conflict

When you love what your doing other people can feel your passion when they interact with you. This kind of love draws people in because it’s the work you’re here to do. I’m writing about the work that excites you when you wake up, the actions that you dream about doing, and the passion projects that you feel just one step away from pursuing fully.   

When I had a job in the LGBTQ movement, I was excited about my daily tasks and formal work. But I loved the conversations I would have with students because I could see the talks transform the trajectory of student's lives. Now these conversations weren’t a part of my job description, but I carved out time in my day to make sure I was doing them.

Then in an annual review, I got feedback that I needed to sit at my desk more and have fewer conversations around campus. I felt angry and deflated, because my conversations were creating changes among students, faculty, and staff, however because of how my position was funded, it was important for me to be visibly sitting in the LGBTQ center. 

I felt deflated because if I did the work that I loved I could lose the funding for my job. After vacillating back and forth about the right thing to do, I started looking for a third path forward. 

I ended up designing new programs that brought students and allies to me in the LGBTQ Center, where I could have conversations and be visible to passersby.  This ended up increasing our credibility and funding, while strengthening our efforts to make change.

Looking for a third way can help you get unstuck from feeling like there is no good answer. When facilitating conflicts, I actually look for polarities where things get stuck between two sides, because once the polarity is clear, a third voice that can help people move forward is likely to emerge. You just need to be willing to listen for it. 

I find third ways often have benefits that I didn’t expect. For my situation at the LGBTQ Center, I started thinking more strategically about why I would leave my desk. And the main reason became building networks of support for communities who didn’t feel safe coming to the LGBTQ Center. These networks had to last without my consistent presence, so I got more efficient at helping people feel connected with each other.

What’s a bind you find yourself in? Take a second to get both sides of the conundrum clear. Now give yourself a little compassion for finding yourself in that space and ask what else might be possible? This is the beginning of finding a third way.

Showing what you hide

When you are supporting someone to learn about themselves, there are external signals that can help you know what needs attention. External signals include when someone verbally says yes while they shake their head no, or when someone’s shoulders tighten as they speak about a topic. But did you know that clothing can be an external signal about an internal need?

A young organizer came to me for coaching, and during our sessions she would share information that she felt like she couldn’t share at work. Coaching can be a place of release, but this seemed like something deeper. She said she didn’t feel like she could express herself fully and be heard, so I looked for external signals to figure out how to proceed.

This organizer was always wearing a scarf around her neck, but I noticed that when she would get flustered while trying to express herself she would fiddle with her scarf. So one day, I asked her about it.

Me: “I hear you talking about how you can’t fully express yourself at work. Do you notice that when you want to share fully during these sessions you move your scarf around?”

Her: “Well I guess it does happen sometimes here and at work.”

Me: “Might you want to try speaking without your scarf covering your neck?”

She quickly shed the scarf and the tone of her voice immediately changed. She spoke with a passion and clarity I had yet to hear from her. After that session she decided to practice taking off her scarf to support her free expression, and she reported feeling more free in her speech at work and in her daily life.

Now this attention to clothing comes from the world of theatrical clown. A clown usually reflects parts of a performer that they rarely show to the world, and in being a clown, performers are asked to vulnerably show what they hide from the world. In support of their full expression, the clown's costume is used to amplify central characteristics of a clown, highlighting the parts that the performer may usually hide.

Your clothing can reflect the parts of you that you usually share with the world. What’s an aspect of you that you want to share more with the world? How might you highlight it with your clothing? 

Think about it like a superhero costume, something that you put on to help you live into your full range of ability. I have my white clothes that remind me to carry the attention of a healer into my facilitation. A colleague uses glitter to remind them of the sparkle they can bring to a group. What’s the power you want to highlight today?

Continuing after failure

If you want to thrive in social justice work, find ways to connect what you do with what gives you energy. Having that nourishment will make it easier for you to sustain your efforts when things inevitably get difficult. 

Change work can be a challenge, so after 30 minutes of email, I stop and move my body. This energizes my thinking, and I’m able to fly through email more efficiently than before I took the quick break. What do you love to do that gives you energy?

When you have an energizing practice, use it! But when you start using it, don’t be surprised if you forget it and fall back into old patterns. Adding a new practice to your workflow will create friction because you are changing a well ingrained pattern of behavior.

After I started integrating movement breaks into my workflow, I still would push myself to sit down at my computer for hours to finish writing deadlines. Soon I would stop the movement breaks and any other breaks, believing that sitting until at the computer until 4am was the discipline I needed. 

Gluing myself to the computer was an old method that left me so  exhausted that I couldn’t appreciate the fruits of my labor. But I was used to it. So now when the old behavior kicks in, I take a breath, offer myself some compassion, and look away from the computer.

To integrate a new behavior takes practice, which includes some failure. Both failure and success are central to developing a practice, because perfection is a myth. Embracing the failures will actually help you celebrate the successes because you’re respecting yourself throughout your process.

What’s a practice that you are trying to integrate into your life? How are you treating yourself when you fail or feel like you haven’t done your best? How can you respect yourself when things haven’t gone how you hoped they would go?

Radical acceptance is the way to get back into your practice. Every superhero fails, but accepting failure without submitting to despair helps you get back up and make the changes you are striving to reach. 

What’s one way you can offer yourself some compassion as you get back up after your next failure?

Pausing to stop unconscious actions

Being on the go requires focus to balance the many things that are asking for your attention. So let’s take a moment now to support your focus.

Breathe
Notice where you are in this moment.
What are you hearing? 
Where is your breath moving inside your body?
Pause to be and notice how you are feeling now.

Return to these questions as often as is useful. A quick moment of internal reflection can carry exponential power in the world because tending to your internal state helps clarify what next actions will best serve you and those around you.

For instance, after some months apart, I was driving to meet my mother, which as meant a level of stress because my relationship with her isn’t what I dreamed it could be. However, I’ve been working to be present in our current relationship. So when she called me because she was lost a few blocks from the restaurant, instead of jumping in to fix things, I paused, took a breathe, and noticed how I was feeling in the moment. Suddenly I could look at the situation with a little more ease.

During lunch with my mom, I was calm because I tended to my internal state. So I kept trying it these little reflection moments. When my in-laws arrived at my house that afternoon, I took a breath. As tech problems emerged during an evening class I was teaching, I noticed how I was feeling before I tried to fix things.

A pause is an invitation to gather data that helps you move forward with a full picture aka strategic thinking. Today I invite you to take a breath and just notice what’s happening for you internally. It may be a doorway to feeling chaos or calm, but whatever the feeling it was there already. This difference is now your internal state won’t be unconsciously guiding your choices.