Life as Medicine: A Home Practice: March 27, 2020: Reno, Nevada

Trying not to look freaked out. Trying not to BE freaked out.

Since the very day I heard the word pandemic, I, or rather, my nervous system has been on high alert. I’m sort of an anxious sort anyway, I’m also interested in rejuvenation, healing, and radiant health. This too, kicked into high gear.

We were out of tour, right in the hot spots, and it seems only moments ahead of mass infection. None of our band or crew or stages where we’d been performing got sick (a blessing I daily still give gratitude for). Our last show was in New Hampshire on May 15, late in the covid game by crowd gathering standards. I’d already begun my own personal lockdown in terms of my body. I was in fight, flight, freeze and fold and remained this way the entire five day drive back to our house in Reno, Nevada.

After a long hot shower and a good night’s sleep in clean sheets, I stepped on my mat at dawn to begin to unravel. Yoga has been my steady companion for almost two decades. We’ve been through divorce, sobriety, financial collapse, and general anxiety disorder. We’ve navigated tight spots with enough degree of acceptance that joy, as a general rule, has become my primary alignment.

I spent my first five days on my mat just sitting there and breathing. My body so numb to life it wouldn’t open. So I sat. Breath in. Breath out. That’s it. Yoga in its essence is edgy. It demands curiosity . It requires you to be in the here and now (YS 1.1 atha yoga anushanam). All of this has been my primary learning for the past five years of a tour life. Along with world events, this learning took a turn for the serious. Touring has been mere child’s play.

Breath in. Breathe out. That’s a good as the yoga got for me and it was good enough.

I can take all my vitamins. I can sun salute for hours. I can quit eating sugar. All this and more are paramount to unfreezing but what became most helpful was the day that I realized that life itself was the medicine and acceptance is the salve.

Health, Love, and Rock and Roll