By Dorothea Biba Naouai, RN, CYT, BCST
As we stumble back into some semblance of active life - work transition, school hybrid, maybe a timed museum visit or a cautious meal at an outdoor café - can we orient to the health in the shared body of our world?
Continuing to practice the recommended safety measures of face coverings and distance, can we yet see this turn as an invitation? This pandemic has been a powerful unifying force, even as it has separated us. Many of our interactions have been stripped of artifice, relieved of the burdens of social protocol.
Can we also see the protective masks as underscoring the windows of the soul? Each time I go to the grocery store, I am encouraged to see a world in the eyes of my cashier - curiosity, fatigue, vulnerability, recognition; a mirror.
Can we take the opportunity to vote as an urgent calling just now to raise our individual voices in the name of freedom, liberty and justice? For all. For George and Breanna and countless others.
My meditation has become an erratic collage of jumping thoughts; inspiration and fear interspersed with return to the breath. But the breath has a different felt sense and meaning for me now.There is corporeal fragility in it, and also a kind of deep and familiar prayer, a return to source. I might be at my seat, in front of my puja, but I might instead be riding shotgun in to work with my husband, or sitting in the overgrown garden, enveloped by the green, or locking eyes with someone during a zoom meeting, with nothing left to say.
On this particular morning, I am woken up by a high three-quarter moon, bathing our bedroom in her cool, ethereal light. The sky is filled with low-hanging stars despite the street lamps and house lights of my suburban neighborhood. The trill of late-summer crickets reverberates like a slow and steady heartbeat, drowning out the distant hum of cars on the highway. The breeze that comes through the open window has autumn at its edges.
At the end of my meditation, I open my arms and raise them up. I bring palms together above my head and draw them in, first at the crown, then the forehead, then the heart. I rest with hands together at the heart until I am sure of the connection. Then I fold my body forward, arms outstretched, and rest my forehead on the ground. Namaste. Thank you.
Dorothea Biba Naouai is a BCST and RN, specializing in the beginning and the end of life. Please visit her at : www.bibawellness.com
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