Waterlilies -- Warwick, MA, sandyrenna.com

For many years my husband, Jim, and I have shared with our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction classes that all change, even good change, is challenging for humans. Psychologists long ago developed a well-documented Perceived Stress Scale on which good challenges like getting married or buying a new home are rated as highly stressful as many negative events and so perhaps we all need to think creatively and compassionately about what we have been through and how it may relate to opening up. And in order to open up myself I know I have to try to address what I understood so far about the effects of the inner experience of living through this past year as it relates to the beginning stages of emerging from the shut- down world we have been living in. Those of you who read my last newsletter know that I wrote about the beloved cherry tree outside my second-floor office that was knocked down in a storm, but refused to die. When I wrote in the Fall, one of my writing companions and muses, a curious robin, often kept me company on a branch outside my window. As I am sitting here today a robin, perhaps fairly recently back from its winter travels, has just appeared as if to say—You go girl!  He seems older though, and, like me, a bit more battered than I remember. Now, a small woodpecker with a bright red cap has flitted onto a branch nearby...and I’m experiencing the chattering that is ensuing, pushing me to get going writing to you.  

During the pandemic, I was wearing slippers a lot since I was not seeing patients in person. One night, looking at one of my feet I realized a bone had shifted in one of them and that it was beginning to become quite painful.  Impulsively, I bought something called a bunion cushion online and experienced myself as beginning to become a bunion patient .... I began practicing Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Bodyscape meditation daily, and miraculously, after a few weeks, something shifted--I don’t know exactly how-- Perhaps from practicing with gratitude for that which was right with my body instead of wrong, the pain lifted, and there was something deeply affirming in knowing that what I had been practicing and teaching all these years was so powerful, that physical as well as mental pain is mysterious in some way, that it doesn’t have to define me or become the central focus of my attention, and that my body, even as it ages, is a gift, still having “so much more right with it than wrong with it”(JKZ). It was a blessing and a real help in terms of maintaining hopefulness in the face of the pain in the world and in my patients’ lives. Ironically, one of my patients, a practitioner of mindfulness, who had lost his wife and lived alone during this pandemic year, began having terrible pain in the Achilles tendon in his leg around the same time. He had just recently been vaccinated and had announced to me that “the shackles were off” when he was suddenly told he would have to wear a boot (and, in his words, “hobble around in it”) for a long time in order for it to heal. He initially became very depressed, feeling his life was closing up again until he remembered Kabat-Zinn’s admonishment that we humans “all too often mistake a small part of ourselves for the whole.” He added that with the shift in his perspective, somehow his depressed mood had completely lifted, and that he even found himself remembering Thich Nhat Hahn’s (the Vietnamese Zen master’s) wonderfully wise remark that “I am enjoying my absence of toothache.”

Many articles have been written about the effects of spending entire days on Zoom. One titled, “Zoom Apnea” was written by Susan Pollak, Ed.D. who teaches a wonderful Harvard course on Mindfulness and Compassion that my husband, Jim, and I attended last winter. Noticing that she herself was barely breathing when on Zoom calls, Susan recalled that over a decade ago, researcher Linda Stone coined the term screen apnea when she discovered that a majority of people (possibly eighty percent) unconsciously hold their breath or breathe shallowly when texting or emailing. Susan adds that “screen apnea can affect our well-being and our ability to work efficiently, and shallow breathing can also trigger a nervous system, fight, flight or freeze response if we stay in this state of breathing for extended periods of time.” She suggests that it cannot only impact sleep, energy, memory and learning, but also exacerbate depression, panic and anxiety, not to mention that over the long-term it can contribute to stress-related diseases, potentially impacting the immune system and inflammation.

Also, movingly addressing the human cost of, and means of healing from having lived through the pandemic, the wonderful Krista Tippet addresses this topic in a not to be missed exchange on What’s Happening in Our Nervous Systems with Christine Runyan, Ph.d. on Krista’s podcast On Being, the audio and the transcript of which I have linked for you here. In it, Tippet movingly describes her first masked meeting with her daughter after a long time apart as the two discuss the psychological cost of having lived isolated from both touch and facial expressions during the past year. Dr. Runyan, a psychologist and MBSR instructor on the staff of UMass Medical School, as well as Co-founder of the Tend Health program, shares her own creative understandings of how to heal.

And now, as we enter into this time of opening up, we are bound to face new challenges every step of the way. Up until this point, a frequent choice has largely been living either masked or unmasked while virtual. Most of us learned early on that even smiling with one’s eyes when one is in person isn’t a skill that is possible for everyone. Either way, there has been a human cost. Even among those of us who are vaccinated and have been told we can go to more places now, many are still uncertain about when, even outdoors, it is safe to take off our masks. What exactly is a safe distance? One of my patients reminded me recently that we had initially even been taught that touching inanimate objects could be dangerous, leaving her afraid to touch paper that came in from the mailbox. Regarding touch, I also can’t help thinking that the surge in ownership of pandemic puppies is a reflection of, for those of us for whom it has been re-assuring, the craving for touch which has been all too absent from too many lives. 

Once again, we had to approach leading our traditional Silent Retreat Day, part of the 8 week-MBSR Course curriculum virtually. This year’s gathering after so much time in isolation was particularly meaningful, and happily, however paradoxical it might sound, tangibly decreased the experiences of isolation which most of us had experienced. Whoever would have thought that after a year of so many externally imposed restrictions and physical stillness that being led through a day of quiet, restorative experiences in which each participant could rest in the nature of their own miraculous being without having to produce, fix or solve anything, could be so restorative. (A favorite way I have often had of referring to the Silent Retreat is actually as an Inner Spa.)

An upside of being “virtual,” is that we could be with our alumni from all over the world, including a psychologist from Germany who has attended our two most recent virtual retreats and spoke about how much her mindfulness practice helped her get through the isolation experienced as Germany tried to get the delivery of vaccines moving. Another participant, who had taken our class a number of times before his move to California, commented on how the universality of the healing wishes expressed in the Lovingkindness meditation was more moving than ever for him. Another alumna, a scientist who took the class four years ago, and was taking it again, spoke about what a relief it was to know that during the Silent Retreat Day we would all be practicing “Custody of the Eyes,” pushing away from the screen and coaxing our gazes downward as we led participants through the day (as we practiced meditation, gentle yoga, a mindful light meal and mindful walking). Her enthusiasm helped me recall the comments and bearing of a close friend of mine who had been through a painful divorce and went to India to live on an Ashram. When I saw her a year later upon her return, her demeanor was completely changed. Renewed and almost radiant, she told me that when she first arrived in India she was frightened of getting deeply in touch with her loneliness which she believed was connected to her own emptiness, but after six months of meditating with her teacher, she had discovered that she wasn’t empty at all. For anyone who might imagine that a Silent Retreat shared by a group practicing mindfulness together online might stir up feelings of loneliness or emptiness, the exact opposite seemed to be true.

As part of the Lovingkindness meditation during the Silent Retreat Day which proved particularly powerful given the backdrop of the pandemic and the universal need for kindness as well as self-compassion, I read a piece called, The Power of 7 Billion, seven billion being the number of human beings living on the planet when the pandemic had begun to spread, and all of whom are exposed to its reality. When we began to exchange at the end of the Retreat, a psychologist who had taken our class 10 years ago spoke about how wonderful it was to be silent through all the practices we led and how much she needed it. By “silent” I couldn't help projecting that she was implying “intentionally away from our screens, and yet together." And as I write this I’m wondering about the expression “virtual retreat.” My experience was that when we were inwardly together, our connection was anything but “virtual.” I experienced it as transcending time, space and the electronic world.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Although Dr. Handlin is a licensed psychologist and has a separate psychology practice, please note that this is an educational course and not psychotherapy. In addition, information contained in this document is informational and not to be construed as medical advice. If you suspect you have medical issues, please pursue appropriate treatment. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a separate educational course for those interested in developing mind-body connections. MBSR is a non-psychological service offered apart from Dr. Handlin's psychology practice and is not meant to substitute for personal or professional psychological advice which must be received from a licensed mental health professional.

Sandy Renna at sandyrenna.com

Tel: 732-549-9100,  www.mindfulnessnj.com