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Grocery Mindfulness Practice in the Age of Coronavirus

3/27/2020

A few recommendations on shopping:

            Where? At the smallest, cleanest market you know, or the best managed large market.

            When? At off-peak hours if possible.

            How often? As infrequently as possible. (Try to shop for at least two weeks.)

            What should I buy? Enough to feel satisfied so that you will not end up going more often.

           For the elderly, consider delivery or asking a relative or neighbor to shop for you.

           For everyone, the choice of delivery or going to the store yourself is personal. You may be healthier or have cleaner hands than the delivery person, while the physical closeness to others at the store may put you at risk that delivery does not. Check in with neighbors and social media to discuss how the various stores are handling it and if you go, go to the one that is best-managed as far as cleanliness and lines. Note: The social act of shopping makes us feel good, but the grocery store is not the place right now to get that social satisfaction. Call friends, stay connected with neighbors, but try to stay away from the store as much as you can.

This is a challenging time, a scary time for many, but also a special time, full of opportunity. You may never have felt more appreciative or aware of your food. So take your time with this process. It is rich with meaning. Savor it.

Planning Mindfully

            This is not a grab your purse and jump in the car era. Sit down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, with your loved ones if you are living together, and take your time going through these steps.

Make a list including things you need, but also things you want. Perhaps add an intention to comfort yourself.
Now look at the list again and consider substitutes. Be honest. If you know you will want something sweet, make sure it is there. Ask yourself what you would get instead of milk. The more you can plan ahead and ask these questions when you are calm, the better you will do in the store.
Put together a cleanliness kit for your trip to the store. It should include any protective gear you want to wear at the store, mask or gloves, and a way to clean your hands thoroughly after you leave the store. If you do not have wipes, a jug of soapy water and a paper or cloth towel will do it the old-fashioned way.
Set up your kitchen table, other table, or countertop for unpacking. Do this before you go. Divide the space in half by placing a piece of painter’s tape or a towel on half of the table to mark one side as clean.
Set aside a large bucket or clean box. You will use this when you come home.
Eat well before you go.
Use the bathroom so you will not need the public restroom.

Going Shopping

Now is not the time to bring your own bags (germs) to the store.
Consider the timing again. If you meant to get up earlier and it is now a more crowded time, wait for another day. Allow that feeling of I NEED I NEED I NEED to be there without having to act on it.
As you travel to the store, be aware of the instinctual urge to GO GET SUSTENANCE! If you have any anxiety or stress, offer yourself a simple prayer of loving kindness, “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I feel nourished.”
When you arrive, before you get out of your car, or as you look at the store, survey the scene and take a moment to strategize.
If things look crazy busy, turn around and go home, or go to another store. (Feel the disappointment, but go. Leave. That's not the place for you today.
Observe how people are coming and going, and figure out how you are going to move through that space maintaining social distance.
Before going in, take any steps you can to protect yourself.

a. Consider wearing gloves and a mask.
b. Secure hair, glasses, clothing so that you will not be tempted to touch them while in the store.
c. Take a deep breath and repeat your short prayer, “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I feel nourished.”

At the Store

Think before you touch. Make a new rule: “You touch it, you buy it.” Touch as little as possible. Be aware of your hands. Feel your fingertips, your palms, your wrists.
WAIT! One thing that breaks social distance is impatience. Defer to others. Wait your turn.
Waiting in line, you have done all you can, take this moment to practice “stealth” loving kindness for those around you. Look at the people in front of you, behind you, at the register, and say silently, “May you be safe, May you be happy, May you be nourished.”

Leaving

Disinfect your hands as soon upon leaving the store as you can. If the store has disinfectant gel or wipes, use them as you exit. If you brought something from home, use it.
Be aware of your clothes. You are now possibly carrying the virus on your clothes so move calmly. Do not shake off your sweater, or touch your clothes and then your face.
Do not eat anything you bought. You will need to clean the items first. (That’s OK, you ate before you went to the store:)

Unpacking

Go slowly. There is no rush. This is the real opportunity to practice gratitude and mindfulness. Hold each item in your hand. Feel the weight of it. One thing I noticed from doing this was that I wasn't getting as much food as I thought, and certain items seemed not at all a good value for the money. I'll keep that in mind next time I shop.

There are many video tutorials on disinfecting, and common sense always helps. Here is my method.

Leave everything outside or in the car that you can.
Go inside and wash your hands thoroughly.
Take your clean box or bucket, which you set aside before going.
Go outside and remove items from the bags and place them in the bucket. (You may need to take several trips.)
Also before going inside, take away as much packaging as you can. Cereal boxes and other cardboard outer packaging can be removed.
Put the bags and outer packaging directly into recycling bins.
Take groceries inside and place on “dirty” side of table.
Wash your hands again.
Clean each grocery item with disinfectant wipe, or diluted bleach-water solution or lots of soapy hot water
Dry items thoroughly or place outside in the sun.
Clean and disinfect your sorting table.
Clean and disinfect the front doorknob or anything else you touched when you came in before you washed your hands.

Finishing up

Take off all your clothes and put them in the laundry.
Shower or wash face and hands with soapy water.

Even if we do all of these things, there are no guarantees that we or our loved ones won't get sick. Our vulnerability as living beings has perhaps never been more clear. But the process of taking precautions need not be stressful and confusing. We can slow down, take steps, and appreciate the process that at its heart is so loving, because we are doing it out of an intention to keep our selves and our fellow beings safe.
The difference in effort may seem substantial, but in reality we are talking about taking an extra hour or two every two weeks to really take care, and be aware of what we are doing.
After we have performed this simple task of securing our food, we can sit down with another cup of tea, or a precious treat from our wonderful haul, and say together,

“May we all be safe, May we all be happy, May we all feel nourished.”

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See Someone, Say Something: Speaking Up About Social Distancing

3/26/2020

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Here’s the deal, it’s up to us. And by "us" I mean you, and me, and all of us. Every time human beings have pulled themselves back from the brink of disaster, it has been because people came together and took action. We like our heroic leaders. George Washington. Gandhi. But to be effective, a great leader must have followers.

I personally wish we had a different national leader at this moment, while I think my state’s governor is doing a great job. But whatever the leadership at the top, the police, the politicians, even the national guard cannot be everywhere at once during this virulent pandemic. The truth is we will never have government action to match what was done in South Korea. If you’re waiting for that white horse you will have a long wait. So it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to talk to friends, neighbors, and loved ones, and when necessary to call them out on behavior that puts others at risk.

“That’s not the way to cough, you should cough into your elbow.”

“Wash your hands before you do that.”

“You aren’t six feet apart. Please separate yourselves.”

“We can make do with what we have. I don’t want you to go to the store when it’s crowded.”

To most of our ears those statements may sound too imposing, or even rude. But isn’t putting someone’s life in danger rude? Does our respect for American individualism extend to allowing others to put us in danger? If not, we need to speak up.

Looking around for advice on how to do it, I considered following the principle of Non-Violent Communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg, you could rewrite all of the above to be “I” statements, which can help others hear things somewhat more, but in practice, if I said to a stranger, “I’m uncomfortable with you coughing like that. Could you please cough into your elbow?” Well, I have tried that kind of thing, and if you tell a stranger how you feel, they just look terrified and confused, especially if the stranger is a man and you are a woman. “Oh my God! A woman is telling me about her feelings. Ahhhh!”

In an article called “5 Steps to Fearless Confrontation” Kathy Caprino of Forbes Magazine describes some of the challenges on both sides of a confrontation. For the recipient of the negative feedback, those challenges include painful memories of past confrontations, what I’d call getting triggered, and also the pain of knowing that you have disappointed someone. For the confronter, the challenges include mastering one’s emotions when one feels fearful or upset, and for women especially the most dreaded outcome: being seen as mean.

Maybe for me it’s time for me to embrace the cranky old lady archetype. It seems to have taken my local police department about a week to get up to speed in their role in this, and in one glaring absence, at our local farmer’s market, you can bet they received a phone call from me. But in a thornier, more personally painful instance, I am still suffering from the disapproval of two people very close to me for calling one of them out on behavior that increased the risk posed to others. I don’t say in my opinion it posed a risk, I say it did pose a risk. The CDC says so. Science says so. Life is not a media hoax. Viruses can penetrate attitude or personal ideas of invincibility. But being right didn’t make the confrontation go well. I’d say we all failed in all of the ways mentioned. I did not manage my emotions particularly well. I could not avoid these people thinking I am mean, and as far as I can tell, they both took a trip to triggered-ville and may now be suffering from a deeper pain of knowing that they disappointed me.

But in one way, the confrontation was a success. The social outing that I objected to was cancelled. Still, I feel far from victorious, as I fear our attitudes about precautions are still far apart, but at least that particular risk was minimized.

We’re talking about big stuff here. Not only life and death, but about our deeply held definitions of love. If you define love as never ever doing or saying anything that causes someone else to be upset, then you shouldn’t say a thing. But in general, I want more truth and intimacy in these particular relationships, and less superficial, “everything is fine” kind of conversations. Maybe I am in part using this horrible situation to push that longstanding agenda. Maybe the others were using this situation to assert what they feel is their longstanding authority to shut me up.

These things run deep.

Even in confrontations with strangers, these familial personal issues can arise. For example, if you are a woman of a certain age, anyone you ask to social distance may hear their mother’s voice. Or that poor social distancer may remind you of an ex and unconsciously, underneath your fear of the virus, you may be thinking “isn’t that just like him. So selfish!”

Another meme intended to help people deal with the psychological challenges of the pandemic included two lists: things you can control and things you can’t. This is always important to sort out, that is if you want to keep your sanity. And in this meme, “whether other people observe social distancing” was most definitely on the list of things one cannot control. And I agree. But whether or not I choose to challenge those people or confront them with my opinion, that is up to me. But there are costs, as I am seeing all too painfully.

I'd say I model my willingness for confrontation more on rally the troops attitudes of eras gone by, rather than the chillax culture of today. It makes me out of step in a way, but I will strive to march to my own drummer. Because when I look back on this time I want to be able to say I did everything I could to affect a safe environment for myself, my family, my neighbors, and my community. And what needs doing most of all at this moment by the average person is social distancing.

The most immediate, tangible way to help is to socially distance yourself and to encourage others to do so.

But for many, the right thing may be to not confront these people. Even in my case, I am on rocky shores at the moment, and keeping my emotional stability is difficult. After the call to the police, I was upset, and debated whether it had been worth it. In the case of the personal situation, the stakes were so high, I'm glad I spoke up, even as I remain in the dog house. (That's OK. I love dogs.)

If You're Gonna Do It, How Should You Do It?

I appreciate the lists of how to succeed at confrontation. Stay calm, choose the right moment,etc. But frankly there’s no “right” way. To suggest that there is implies that human beings take negative feedback well. They don’t. Nobody wants to hear that their behavior is out of line. Most of the time, we don't tell them, but dance around other people’s feelings not only for their sake, but for ours. We don’t want to deal with their being upset with us. Right now, we shouldn’t prioritize in that way.

If you see someone not observing social distancing, unless you feel the person is a physical threat to you, or speaking up will harm you in some other significant way, say something.

If a shit-storm ensues, don’t apologize, and don't repeat yourself. Just walk away and take care of yourself. And that includes not trying to make them see that you were right, and not continuing the fight in your head and justifying yourself. You did what you thought was right. ‘Nuff said.

Worst case scenario that person now hates your guts. What then? Live with being disliked if that’s the result. The negative reactions may be in your face, but keep in mind there are countless other positive outcomes you may not be able to see directly. You may even have saved a life.

In the end, the real reward for doing what you believe is right is not others’ reaction to you, nor any positive or negative byproducts in your relationships, nor even the outcome of succeeding at your goal. It’s about your relationship with yourself and your own values. It is the knowledge within yourself that you have done what you believed to be the right thing. And there is growth there. And benefit.

Many people are finding that this horribly challenging time has some real silver linings. The birds are singing more. The skies are more clear. And here’s another one: we have an opportunity to examine our values and bring ourselves more honestly and bravely into our relationships with one another. It is because the stakes are so high that we may find ourselves willing to speak up in situations where previously we'd have remained quiet for the sake of not rocking any boats. For some, this is good news.

And as far as maintaining your own social distance, maybe put away some old ideas of trying not to take up too much space. Think of yourself and the people around you as beautiful flowers. After all, every flower needs room to bloom.

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Lisa's Anti-Viral Bag of Tricks

3/24/2020

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From Money to Meditating, Door knobs to Diets,
Here Are All My Tips and Tricks to Get Through These Crazy Days.

1. Cleanliness:

Yes, wash your hands, but also do these simple things. Clean the following in soapy water or with antibacterial wipe or electronics-safe cleaning product at least daily, preferably twice a day. (If you are on the go and can’t rely exclusively on wipes, carry a milk jug or bottle full of soapy water.) Dry after cleaning.

Self
Eye Glasses
Hands including fingernails
Computer
Phone
Purse
Wallet

House (if you are living with others)
Toilet handle
Bathroom faucets
Kitchen faucets
Fridge door
Stove knobs, Microwave, coffee pot.
Door knobs
Favorite Pen

Car
Steering wheel
Door handles
Dash controls

Public
Gas pump (filthy! Carry jug of soapy water if you don’t have plenty of wipes.)
ATM keypad (and cash, so wash after handling cash.)
Grocery story checkout pin pad

Maintain six feet distance. Even with checkout person at grocery. Don’t be shy about asking people to move back. Talk as you move: “I’m going to step six feet away, would you mind also stepping back?”

2.

Body

This is not the time to accept one of those intense 30-day challenges you are being bombarded with online. You are under enormous stress.

So either:
Continue usual workouts but gently,
or if you weren’t active,
Add some gentle walking for two or three periods per day.

Diet

The cycle of comfort foods plays itself out pretty quickly with jagged moods and crashes of energy. This is not a time to overdo, nor to fast or begin new intense diets.

Eat well.
Cooking itself is also a de-stressor for many.

Rest

More than you think you need to, but try to keep a regular schedule.

Hydration

Singers say "Drink heavy, pee light." Drink more water than you think you need to. This will help keep your nasal tract and throat hydrated and help to wash any virus down into the digestive tract. (And that’s good.) A good way to make sure you drink enough water is to drink a huge, 16 oz. glass of water as a “snack” between meals and at bedtime.

Gargle

Studies have shown that gargling with water twice daily cuts down on a common cold developing into an upper respiratory tract infection. It may not prevent the cold itself, nor COVID 19, but remember any illness at the moment could cause great concern and possible isolation.

Spray your nose.

This is a singer’s trick I like. Huff Post says: “Use a saline nose spray several times a day to flush out the bacteria and viruses. Nasal sprays are sterile, take seconds to use, are inexpensive, and have been shown to be safe and effective for preventing and treating cold and flu symptoms. There are smaller versions for kids. Using it three or more times a day is a wonderful and safe preventive measure for everyone in the family."

Supplements and Supportive Methods

Though I won’t recommend specifics for you, if you have things that you know from experience help you to feel well, use them. I use essential oils daily, for example, and it helps me feel well. Vitamin C, Black Elderberry extract, whatever your usual supports are, continue them, or those that you bought and liked, but put in the back of the cabinet, maybe it’s time to pull them out.

This may not the time to spend hundreds of dollars on new vitamins in a panic. It will be difficult to tell if new things are working as your stress level and your body are not exactly normal right now. It may only add to your financial worries if you overspend.

Eating a spoonful of honey twice a day has also been shown to improve immunity, and though it may not prevent this virus, as mentioned, any illness at the moment could cause great concern and possible isolation so preventing a cold right now is also of great importance.

4.

Emotions/Mental Health

Watch your news consumption. I strongly suggest you try to stick with print over TV news, with radio being my second choice. And limit yourself to a certain time of day to check the news and then leave it. Make that time of day as far away from bedtime as you can! Read newspapers, check public TV and public radio websites and government pages. 1st choice read. 2nd choice: listen (to podcasts or radio.) 3rd choice: watch (which will include increasingly panicked faces and upsetting images.)

Meditation and Yoga

I used to think these were nice adjuncts to my life. Helpful, but optional. Now I feel that they are essential for physical health and mental sanity. There’s lots of amazing stuff online right now. Consider visiting a meditation class virtually, or doing a youtube yoga class.

Relationships

I know you love him/her, but it’s time to admit he/she drives you crazy, and maybe you need to keep it short or schedule some private time within the household. Also, everybody is very TRIGGERED right now, so expect people to be at their worst at times. Whatever family dynamics or old grudges were there, the volume will be turned up, so lower expectations and limit exposure.

Personal Pressure

This is not the moment to put on your cape and save the world. Get through it. Help others get through it. That is all.

5.

Anti-Viral Best Friends

Nature (If you are in a big city, watch nature videos. I like Paul Dinning on Youtube, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s live cams.)

Rest

Regular Schedule including a Quiet Period daily.

Pet the dog or cat. (Or look at video of people playing with dogs and cats.)

Walking meditation (Pick a spot where you can walk up and down for about ten or fifteen feet.) Walk mindfully back and forth for a few minutes.

Exercise, in moderation, the way you would if you had a cold or were recovering from an injury. Be gentle.

Cleaning, cooking, stamp collecting, playing piano, or whatever your favorite stress-burner is, do it.
As one friend said, “do what soothes.”

Good luck everybody, you’ll be in my prayers. I hope this list is helpful. Now I’m going to read it myself, and see if I can put all these things into practice for myself and that’ll be my final note, even for parents. You have to secure your own oxygen mask before you can can help others. Think of it as "healthy-selfish".

Much love and all my wishes for health, safety, and happiness for you and your families and friends,

Lisa (clickable image below!)

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Oh To Be Young in the Coronavirus Era!

3/22/2020

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Refraining from action can be a powerful action in itself, but it’s not much in fashion, especially among the younger set.

Rugged individualism, yes. Enthusiastic binging on entertainment, yes. Almost any personal philosophy however indulgent or magnificent has a loud voice in the public sphere. What we don’t talk much about is NOT doing something for the sole purpose of doing good by not doing. Maybe that’s the nature of our society, an inclination to DO which is all that much stronger when coupled with the energy of youth.

But here we are.

We are past the maybes and the I doubt its. This virus is real. This is happening. Millions will die. They will be young, old, strangers, and people we know. And while volunteers are desperately needed, what is most needed from every single one of us is that we stay home and keep our germs to ourselves.

How quickly we accept the need for this self-sacrifice will determine not only how many people die, but also how overwhelmed the hospitals get, and how much people suffer horribly from a lack of care.

The battle cry is getting louder. Stay Home. Save Lives. Stay home!

It’s worth acknowledging that what we are asking young people to sacrifice is not the same as what we are asking of an older person like myself. If I were to pause and reflect on all that I did in any single year of my twenties, this would be a much longer article, and probably a lot more entertaining. Now I wear a homebody badge with pride. But my twenties were (as they should have been) a time for fun, exploration, and forming social connections that are important to this day. The two most important friends in my life, people I speak to daily to navigate this crisis, are friends I made in my twenties.

And here we are asking young people to put that entire process on hold.

Don’t kid yourself. It is not something that can happen online. It is something that has to do with the shared fatigue after a night of drinking, the aroma of a sauce simmering, the flutter of excitement meeting a new person and spontaneously including them on an open-ended adventure. It is the cold boldness of sitting in a coffee shop alone in a strange city. The sweaty stillness of waiting outside the door of a job interview. It’s the shedding of a childhood self in favor of a new person you are not only meeting, but developing.

So it’s a lot to ask. It cannot be compared to any demands of self-sacrifice I experienced in my lifetime, much less my youth.

But there is a comparison to be made between this time and the non-military effort during World War II. Dime store novels, the books that originated the term “pulp” fiction, were made flimsily because even paper was strictly rationed for the war effort. Toys were melted down for scrap. Fat was saved in kitchen cans. Vegetables were grown in “Victory” gardens. In England, they called it “doing their bit.”

In the U.S. there was another phrase in common use, and it was this:

“Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

My father, who is now 86 and sheltering in place along with my mother, who is 85, was a child during World War II, living in Boston and spending summers on the Cape, where kids watched the coastline for U-Boats, and those who failed to comply with “lights out” orders, or in other ways defied the common effort, those people were called out by others with the use of this phrase. Dad says it wasn’t even considered impolite. It was actually a socially acceptable thing to say. A way of reminding people of a basic reality which they were failing to respect, and of the lives being sacrificed on foreign soils (most of them young lives.)

“Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

As a fan of old movies, I am familiar with jam-packed trains, fiercely cheerful USO dances, and pleas to spend 10% of one’s salary on warbonds. Post-war I love the great characters of later noir and mysteries, who are often veterans, hardened and possibly damaged by their service. Gritty and determined, if a bit embittered. Humphrey Bogart as Captain Frank McCloud in Key Largo. Jimmy Stewart as Jeff Jeffries in Rear Window.The scars of war made beautiful have allowed us to absorb the meaning of these great sacrifices.

But this crisis is fresh, and fast-moving. We have no mythos to help us wrap our minds around it, yet. And for that crucial, most socially mobile group, this lack of story can make life itself seem impossible in that most novelistic decades of life, how is it that the music can the story just hit pause?

I don’t know how to solve that. How to convince these precious young people of their own importance in this moment, and perhaps that is the problem. As much fun as I had in my twenties, I wouldn’t go back there for anything. It was a time of confusion, and at times crushing self-doubt. I had no real grasp on how my own choices were shaping my life. In one of life’s odd paradoxes, as my youth and vigor wanes I have come to realize that I am much more powerful than I ever realized. While in my twenties, as self-oriented as I was, I had no deep belief that I really mattered.

Crisis and opportunity are not strangers. Maybe these young people will get busy staying home, and therefor help us avoid the worst case scenario here. Maybe that will also spare themselves the kinds problems I had in my thirties and even my forties because they have come to understand their own personal power sooner.

Young people do everything faster than I did. They open bank accounts, order taxis, change jobs, buy outfits, get in and out of relationships with a swipe or click or text. Maybe with this enforced isolation, a sort of mother-of-all spiritual retreats, they can “get woke” at speed, turning inward and finding a deeper sense of self-worth and value. And perhaps we as a society will all benefit from that transformation. Let us hope.

It is an unfair burden to put on them, and yet isn’t that always the way? The young are the ones who lose their lives in greatest number, and so it is in every war. In this case they may not be among the greatest number of fatalities, but they will lose proms and high school musicals and new, might-have-been romances, and job opportunities, and maybe even the sense that the world remains on its axis.

And yet they must do their part as so must we all. And if any of us see someone step out of line, young or old, we must speak up, and say without shame or rancor, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

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Grocery Mindfulness Practice in the Age of Coronavirus

See Someone, Say Something: Speaking Up About Social Distancing

Lisa's Anti-Viral Bag of Tricks

​From Money to Meditating, Door knobs to Diets, ​Here Are All My Tips and Tricks to Get Through These Crazy Days.

Oh To Be Young in the Coronavirus Era!

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From Money to Meditating, Door knobs to Diets,
Here Are All My Tips and Tricks to Get Through These Crazy Days.