Embracing Impermanence
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” —Victor Frankl
As I prepared for our Restorative Yoga Class last night, as part of Healthy Kerry Health & Wellbeing Festival the title of the workshop I created was “Restorative Yoga & Guided Relaxation for Transitioning through Changing Times”.
When I choose a class title, theme or intension I plan for it by researching & reflecting on what it means to me. Last week seems like the best kind of preparation. Being back teaching classes in person has taken some adjustment - we wore masks, limited numbers, contact tracing, booking processes, hand sanitiser, additional cleaning, rooms rearranged, a lot of communication with students, risk assessments etc. BUT we did it and it felt wonderful to be back doing what I love and sharing a space face to face with my amazing Students. The business I have worked so hard on for over 3 years was allowed to breath again and start to slowly rebuild.
Then last Monday, BOOM! I felt the rug once again pulled from under my feet and level 3 restrictions came into force on Tuesday 12am. Necessary but not easy to accept. I found myself in a bit of a state of disbelief, followed by being really pissed off and had an overwhelming urge to stomp my feet and yell. Then saying things like, it’s only for a few weeks, right? That heralded the arrival of anger, on its train, whistle blasting letting all near by know of its arrival. Anger bid me farewell and made way for the blues, I sort of hid away all week, head down, lets just get through this. I withdrew, I’m not still fully back.
I felt grief, for where we are, the worry raised it head again about family, friends, health, work etc. My sense of purpose slipping. Miraculously, a guardian Angel arrived at my door, in the form of a old friend, we’d not seen each other in a while. I wasn’t answering my phone, she persisted and called by.
Her simple concern “how are you doing?” created a segue for the torrent of emotions to swell up and burst its banks as I sobbed in the armchair about how shit it all felt. How sad I felt and unfair the world seems right now.
The days have passed since, the world has continued to turn and live on and all those bad things I imagined haven’t happened. It is, as it is, so I now need to accept that and move forward. I began to see glimmers of hope today, a little spark of motivation, a familiar buzz as I began to brain-storm new ways to innovate, explore & create for Ebb & Flow.
This is my journey through what is known as the Change Curve.
As I prepped for class yesterday, I remembered this theory I had learned many moons ago in a corporate job. It was a model that often shared with Managers when rolling out new projects, organisational changes and even redundancies. The Change Curve was originally designed as the 5 stages of Grief by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. The Change Curve helps us to understand our own feelings & those of others. It’s sort of a framework for checking in with where we are at in times of change & uncertainty.
A curve is not linear, we don’t start at A & end at B. We can move over and back, spending longer in once part of the curve than others. We try not to judge or have expectations that we all arrive in the same place at the same time either.
Compassion is key – for ourselves & others as we all have different levels of fear, confusion, grief and all handle them differently. There is no blueprint for how to behave at such a strange time. Telling yourself or others to shake it off and move on, though well meant, isn’t helpful. Place your hand on your heart, feel that emotion, name it if you can and then it can start to move through you. “I cried last night, I feel sad, I’m having a hard time”. Allow yourself the time to feel that. Fighting it doesn’t help because our body is producing these feelings, let them happen, it’s oddly empowering to own those feelings, they are yours, they are normal.
We have been living through an unprecedented global crisis, our lives halted and we’ve had to try adapt to a whole new world.
I’ve added in a few links below that might help explain the Change Curve in greater detail and invite you to consider where you feel you might be on this curve right now. Reflecting on my week and mapping it to this Curve, I feel calmer, knowing that “All things shall pass” and moving back and forth along this curve will happen, I will move through it each time and reaching out to others is vitally important both to help support them and to ask for help. I summed a rather length workshop title last night with the phrase “Embracing Impermanence”. The key take away here is that all things are temporary. This is not a permanent state, so slow down, allow yourself the time and space to feel, seek help and in your own time, you will move forward.
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