I spent Friday evening in a Feldenkrais workshop on presence - presence with yourself, presence with others, and being present with both at the same time while keeping boundaries clear. The original plan was for a full weekend workshop, but obviously that didn’t happen, so the trainer, Donna Blank, offered a short online version. In the beginning of Donna’s work, she asks you to close your eyes, feel your contact and support from your chair and the floor, and look for a “felt sense” of the experience of just being there - sensory cues that tell you how you are rather than thoughts or emotions. It turns out, for me, that this is a very scary thing to do while dealing with quarantine.
Upon getting quiet and beginning to ground myself, I very quickly started crying. All of my deep-seated grief about what is happening rose up in me, whether it had been acknowledged before or not. My felt sense told me my breath was very restricted, my jaw was clenching, my belly was tight, and tears were falling that I had no control over stopping.
I could have lost myself in that grief, which might have lead to panic. I could have said, screw this, I don’t want to be present with these awful feelings and gone numb. (I have had both panic and numbness in the past 8 weeks, as I expect we all have.) Instead, I chose to follow Donna’s instructions to continually go between feeling the ground and feeling my felt sense, to be able to stay in that grief without losing myself. The kind option was to give my grief some space to be heard without letting it take over, and then let it fade into the background again after being acknowledged.
This takes practice. This is not easy. Every time I’m with a client, every time I teach a class, I am practicing this skill of being present with myself enough to acknowledge what is happening for me, without letting it get in the way of my client or class. Every time you listen closely to someone who is hurting, without letting your own experience or feelings take over the conversation, without waiting for your chance to talk, you are practicing this.
You can practice this sort of kindness with yourself. I just listened to a talk by another Feldenkrais trainer, Alan Questel, who asks the question in his work, “Are you moving in a way that you like how it feels?” ie. are you being kind to yourself? He specified that liking how something feels doesn’t necessarily mean it feels good or easy - it might feel extremely challenging, but can it be challenging without throwing you into frustration or panic or anger?
How can you get through quarantine in a way that’s kind to yourself? Maybe you’re gardening. Maybe you’re doing art, or have a meditation practice. Maybe you’re exercising. Maybe you’re letting yourself rest as much as you can.