What comes into focus when life slows down?

By Samantha Woo, LCSW, Certified Anxiety Therapist

Posted: April 1, 2020

Many have known both from research and from experience that meditation calms the amygdala, the tiny almond like part of the brain that is responsible for our emotional responses, impulsive, emotional, flight, fight, freeze responses….

It seems that with the world at a “halt”, most are slowed down en masse, while others on the “front lines” are busied to unprecedented levels. Yet, I wonder with all circumstances in the new Covid-19 normal we live in , [whether isolated at home alone, or living on top of one another with a house full of energetic kids, or scurrying in the hospital to save lives,] how can we access some meditative/peace of the slowing, to calm our overactive amygdala?

One theme that kept coming back up today was how in the routine of the new normal, little things stand out more, and slight shifts are more visible and notice-able. And in the grand scheme of things, realizing that those little things are not guaranteed to be there the next moment, made me value them more. It sounds cliched, but after a couple of dreary rainy days, I was grateful for the sun outside the window, as well as the homemade mocha in my hand, and even my adolescent cat whose litter- covered paws scratch at my pen as I try to write in my new gratitude journal. Yes, my chronic problems are still there, both physical and otherwise. But, I get an email daily from a friend who has been updating us on a community member who was hospitalized recently due to Covid-19. She is in an induced coma due to Covid-19. And as I read the daily email, and I remember her, and all the suffering in the hospital, I cannot take a breath without gratitude for the next one.