Holistic Guide to “Return to Normal” in Pandemic Times

This leads to frustration for everyone.

You might be experiencing a different kind of challenge, too. Something more personal and internal.

If so, this guide is for you. In it, I'll help you understand the larger forces at work and provide recommendations for doable methods to help you feel better. As a holistic life coach, I take a mind-body-spirit approach to solving problems, so that you can take a fully human approach to finding balance in your work and life.

{If you want to skip straight to the guide, click here.}

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• The State of Balance in the world & in you
  • The 5 Elements
  • The 5 Elements & the Pandemic
  • Being human in a pandemic
  • The challenges of returning to the work place
• How to return balance
  • Practical Guide to Going Back to Work
• When your workplace doesn't get it

The State of Balance in the world & in you

In Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India and sister science to yoga, we view human beings as being a part of nature. This means that the energies and patterns we observe in the natural world also exist within us. Our bodies, minds and emotions express them as characteristics of body type, personality, and states of physical and mental health.

Ayurveda loves to simplify complex systems into simple frameworks to more easily understand how these forces play out in our lives. The 5 elements are one such framework that I'd like to share with you to help you better understand your feelings & challenges with going back to normal.

The 5 Elements

According to Ayurveda, 5 elements make up everything in the universe. Kind of like atoms, except that they function on a physical, mental and emotional level.

The 5 elements are:

1. Earth
2. Water
3. Fire
4. Air
5. Ether

Earth: is the energy of stability, groundedness, stamina, well-nourished. In excess it's attachment, stuckness, stubbornness over sentimentality, excess mass, depression, lethargy.

Water: is the energy of grounded flow/movement, creativity, unctuousness, sexual & self-expression. In excess it's inertia, stuckness, ungrounded sexual energy, depression.

Fire: is the energy of manifestation, transformation, of taking action in the world & following through. In excess it's anger, resentment, jealousy, over-work, perfectionism.

Air/wind: is the energy of subtle movement (like the life force). In excess it manifests as too much movement in the mind, body, & speech. Also as anxiety, overwhelm, racing thoughts, and internal or external dryness.

Ether/space: is the energy of our greatest potential & spiritual connection. It's boundlessness, endless possibility. In excess, it manifests as ungroundedness, difficulty in fitting into the world & fear.

{Watch my video introduction of the 5 Elements here.}

What elements do you experience most in your life right now?

The 5 Elements & the Pandemic

The pandemic saw our healthcare, production, distribution and other systems break down. It impacted every human life, affecting work, family, finances, health, careers - pretty much destabilizing everything.

The elements of air and ether embody this experience. Like hurricane force winds, our lives were tossed about, pulling up our roots that once gave us stability and comfort. The uncertainty, fear and anxiety along with it, expanded into the boundlessness of ether (think the emptiness of deep space).

This created a profoundly ungrounded, insecure state, worldwide, which translates as trauma for many, many humans.

Being human in a pandemic

Anytime a human body/mind experiences change, it creates stress. You then require extra energy to adapt to that stress. The greater the stress, the greater the energy needed.

Energy - know as Ojas, or vital life force in Ayurveda - comes in a finite amount. When you use more than you regenerate, you have less energy to live your life. In other words, you have less energy to do the same things you were doing before. They get harder.

Your resilience to stress then goes down, as well as your ability to handle change.

Even if you were at home in quarantine, not working, it was NOT a vacation. You had to adapt to change, sometimes a lot of it or sometimes not as much. Even if the big changes felt far away, it's like knowing that a hurricane is just outside your neighborhood. Your body knows it. Your nervous system knows it. It has an impact even if it hasn't hit you directly.

From the perspective of the 5 Elements, they all got out of balance. The extreme excess of air and ether (anxiety, overwhelm), ripped out the roots of roundedness (earth, water). Fire (the ability to do things) either dampened or became a reactive, nervous, must-stay-moving-to-avoid-total-collapse energy. This can feel deeply unbalancing.

The challenges of returning to the work place

Pandemic isolation was not a vacation. It was an extremely ungrounding, depleting experience for many of us. This leads to exhaustion, overwhelm, anxiety, difficulty in adapting, emotional reactivity, depression, and the list goes on.

With low Ojas and whacked out elements, it can feel really hard to be in this place and be expected to fulfill work duties as if nothing has happened.

We're not robots - even at work. We're human beings. Our emotions and experiences create the foundation of our capabilities as workers.

So, now what? How do you truly return to "normal"? Or a new place of equilibrium?

How to return balance

From the perspective of the 5 Elements, you cultivate earth and water. These are essentially the opposites of fire, air and ether.

Earth and water embody grounding energy, stillness, stability, taking action from a place of structure and support.

How can you translate this energies into what you do &  think?

This is where self-care & self-awareness come in for a starring role. I'm going to share some of my favorite techniques with you. None of them are new (some are 1000's of years old). It's not so much about finding the right one but about choosing the one or two that you can do consistently and integrate into how you live your life.