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SPENCER: One year ago, the world paused

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A year ago, there was a pic or meme on social media that said, “Brace yourselves, this next week brings a time change, a full moon and a Friday the 13th.”

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I am sure many snickered at it, while others thought that indeed the week ahead would be a doozy.

Little did any of us know.

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Little did we know that sometime between the full moon and Friday the 13th, a provincial and federal pandemic lockdown would begin.

In the first 10 days of March, Canadian cases began to climb as the country began importing cases from places that, at that point, were not known hotspots – India, the U.K. and the U.S. Compounding the issue was the now growing body of scientific findings suggesting that the virus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people.

I remember having to close my doors at my business at Indigo Lounge Wellness Centre. A fellow teacher and I offered some free online yoga and meditation classes. With naivety, we thought it would help people out over the next couple of weeks that we would be in lockdown. I remember thinking that life would be back to normal in a month or so.

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The rate of growth in certain parts of Canada showed that our world would not be “back to normal” any time soon.

We all know how we went. Our lives have been immersed in this.

And this week marks the one-year pandemic anniversary for our official lockdown date.

Over the past year, I have some lows – big, big lows. I have had revelations and understandings about myself that I would not have had otherwise. For many people this has proved to present many challenges.

Many expansions and wins have happened too. I went deeper. I developed a more consistent daily mediation practice. Clear, concise and respectful communication has become a key and integral part of happy and healthy relationships.

As we moved from lockdown to coloured zones back to lockdown and back to zones, we have all learned a lesson on adaptability and flexibility to change. Some the lessons were hard and not embraced as easily. In such a weird unprecedented time, that’s okay.

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Mindfulness teaches us to honour what is, as it is, without judgment. Simple observing and witnessing what we are experiencing and then from that place of awareness and acceptance, beginning to develop thoughts or a plan of action, of where we want to move to or grow to, from this place we are currently in.

And since the outer world is seemingly for the most part of out of our control and we can not control other people’s thoughts, feelings and actions, we are wise to understand that the real empowerment comes from comprehending, evaluating and seeking answers to our own thought-feelings and actions by going inward.

So, as we celebrate that we made it through this wild year and approach the one year anniversary of when our world paused, perhaps inquire within to see how you felt, how your grew, where you were able to change, transform, accept, shift, embrace the experiences in your lives, in a mindful and helpful way.

Kelly@indigolounge.ca

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