Mount Sinai to Begin the Transfer of COVID-19 Antibodies into Critically Ill Patients

March 26, 2020

During this time of upheaval and self-isolation due to the coronavirus, it is very helpful, even essential, for all of us to stretch ourselves toward the Universe. How do we do this? Today we will practice GAZING or SEEING WITH NEW EYES!

More podcasts at: https://heathersdrawing.podbean.com/

A pandemic is fertile ground for those who suffer from anxiety—here’s a short guide on how to manage it.

The Guardian|getpocket.com

• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

A couple gazes over Lake Washington in Kirkland, Washington. As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, officials have advised social distancing from crowds to avoid contracting Covid-19. Photo by John Moore / Getty Images.

When news of the coronavirus broke at the end of last year, and as the stories from the outbreak became more alarming over time, I found myself wondering how health anxiety sufferers were coping.

You see, I used to be one. In late 2015, I suffered a post-traumatic stress disorder relapse which led to debilitating anxiety, much of which was health-related. During that period, I was paralyzed by the thought of becoming ill and dying. I was constantly checking for symptoms and signs of disease online and I was fixated on the health of my loved ones.

After treatment, including trauma-focused CBT, I almost completely recovered. But I remember vividly how it felt to be in an all-consuming state of panic. For many months, it ruled my entire existence. Approximately 40 million American adults – roughly 18 percent of the population – have an anxiety disorder, while in the UK there were 8.2 million cases of anxiety in 2013. There are few statistics about health anxiety, but it can affect those who have an existing anxiety disorder or those who have experienced a life event such as bereavement, birth trauma or an accident. In times like these, where a global pandemic is taking up most of the media conversation, it can be even more difficult to stay calm.

Here is some advice that may give some comfort to those of you who are struggling.

1) Avoid the (Health-Related) News

We all want to keep up to date, but when you have health anxiety the need to check and read the latest updates can become compulsive, feeding the anxiety. Try having a news detox, or allocating yourself a time limit for reading or watching news. If you’re really worried about missing something crucial, you can always tell friends and family to contact you in the event of an emergency situation in order to keep you informed.

2) Try Not to Seek Constant Reassurance

Seeking reassurance can make you feel calmer for a little while, but in my experience, it is always temporary. Your brain creates a feedback cycle where you become increasingly reliant on reassurance, which only serves to reinforce the anxiety. It’s natural to want your loved ones to tell you things will be OK, but when you start needing that reassurance several times a day it’s time to take a step back.

3) Introduce an Absolute Ban on Googling Symptoms

Dr Google is not, and never will be, your friend, especially not when you are a sufferer of health anxiety. Nor will message-boards and forums. Try to remember that people visit these places when they have reason to be concerned. Once you start understanding it’s a skewed lens, you’ll be better able to put things in perspective

4) Try a Countering Technique

This is a CBT exercise which involves giving a persistent thought the courtroom treatment, by confronting it with a rational counter-statement. For example, if your persistent thought is something like “Everyone I love will die from this virus” you can counter it with factual statements such as “Actually, most people who get Covid-19 are likely to make a full recovery, and that’s assuming mum, dad and my little sister will even catch it at all.” As my mother always says: “Just because you think something, doesn’t make it true.”

5) Do Some Exercise

Even if it’s just star jumps in your bedroom, or shaking your body parts like you’re in the warm-up section of a hippie acting class, exercise will help get the adrenaline out of your system and channel the panic elsewhere.

6) Breathing and Grounding Exercises

From guided yogic breathing to using a strong smell (I favored lavender oil), grounding exercises can help bring you back to reality. I also found bending over to touch my toes and then very slowly standing up starting at the base of my spine to be beneficial, as it centers me.You can look for examples online, but sometimes, something as simple as sitting on the floor can help.

7) Allocate Yourself a Daily ‘Worry Period’

Give yourself half an hour to worry about this to your heart’s content, and then you have to go and do something else.

8) Treat Yourself

Anything that will give you a little boost can help. It doesn’t need to involve spending money: you can also cook yourself something nice, have a hot bath, or listen to a song you love.

9) Remember That Your Anxious State Isn’t Permanent

When you are in it, anxiety always feels as though it will never end, but it will. It’s hard to remember this, but do try. I genuinely thought that I would never recover, and now even though we are in a public health crisis, I feel calm and have things in perspective. It’s a worrying time, and many of us, myself included, will have loved ones who might be showing symptoms, but the tendency to jump to the worst-case scenario very rarely reflects reality. Be kind to yourself. It may be a bit cheesy, but this too shall pass.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist and author. Her novel The Tyranny of Lost Things was published in 2018.

This article was originally published on March 16, 2020, by The Guardian, and is republished here with permission.

What my therapist said when she closed her office because of coronavirus.

BY AYU SUTRIASA  MAR 24, 2020 (Yesmagazine.org)

Hello sweet one. I see how much you care about the world, about your communities, about all of us surviving plagues and capitalism and a world on fire.

That clench in your throat, the knot in your gut, the tightness in your breath — this is how our bodies try to hold the world’s anguish. We write the wrongness into our bodies, a beautiful and devastating lament.

Just because your body can hold all the tragedy, the panic, the tension, that it is holding right now, that doesn’t mean that you must go on holding it, all, forever. The loving grandmother in you knows this to be true.

Set it down. Somewhere nearby, so you can pick it up again when you need to, but just for a moment, relinquish your illusions of control. Allow yourself to See the many-headed Truth monster: it might not all be okay. It might end in flames and death and horror, no matter what you do. Take a moment to acknowledge how fucking awful and sad that Truth is. And how not even the worst possible scenario would take away from your inherent worthiness.

Simultaneously, it is True that human beings have always fought for one another, cared for one another fiercely, and carried the world’s anguish in our bodies. And there are small Truths, like that we cannot control the future, no matter how much we wish we could. (Don’t worry when the Truths contradict one another, real Truths often do.)

No matter what, whether it turns out okay in the end or not, you carry the Divine within you. You are Enough, not because of the things you do but because of who you are fundamentally. Intrinsically. Always and without exception. Take a breath or two to allow yourself to Know this.

And when we pick up the anxiety again, let us aim for flexibility. Movement space for breath to get in and out of your rib cage, gentleness for the things we can’t do, and Integrity giving us the strength and resolve to turn our sometimes-excruciating caring into solidarity, mutual aid, and direct action.

We are each one person, breathing this one breath, with common Divinity.

We can do this. Together.

Note: This poem was an email response from my therapist when she closed her office because of coronavirus. The author has given permission for YES! to publish it, but wishes to remain anonymous. —Ayu Sutriasa

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AYU SUTRIASA is the digital editor for YES! CONNECT:  LinkedIn

By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

“Our origins are of the earth,” Rachel Carson wrote in contemplating science and our spiritual bond with nature.“And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.” By channeling this elemental human response in immensely lyrical prose about the science of the natural world — a testament to Susan Sontag’s assertion that “information will never replace illumination” — Carson awakened the modern environmental conscience and pioneered a new aesthetic of writing and thinking about the poetic truths radiating from the facts of physical reality.

Few science writers in the decades since have ascended to the top of the hierarchy of explanation, elucidation, and enchantment, which Carson crowned. Among them was the great physician, etymologist, poet, and essayist Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3, 1993), who explores that delicate relationship between humanity and the rest of nature in a splendid essay titled “Seven Wonders,” found in his timelessly rewarding 1983 collection Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (public library).

Lewis Thomas (Photograph: NYU archives)

With an eye to the consciousness-reconfiguring cosmic perspective which twentieth-century space exploration unlatched, Thomas writes:

We named the place we live in the world long ago, from the Indo-European root wiros, which meant man. We now live in the whole universe, that stupefying piece of expanding geometry. Our suburbs are the local solar system, into which, sooner or later, we will spread life, and then, likely, beyond into the galaxy. Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvelous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway.

Illustration by Oliver Jeffers from Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth

Building on Carson’s far-reaching ecological legacy, Thomas adds:

[Earth] is a living system, an immense organism, still developing, regulating itself, making its own oxygen, maintaining its own temperature, keeping all its infinite living parts connected and interdependent, including us. It is the strangest of all places, and there is everything in the world to learn about it. It can keep us awake and jubilant with questions for millennia ahead, if we can learn not to meddle and not to destroy. Our great hope is in being such a young species, thinking in language only a short while, still learning, still growing up.

We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing things and they will do it forever, coded for that way. We are coded differently, not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the hell let’s give it a try. We are in for one surprise after another if we keep at it and keep alive. We can build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never thought before, music never heard before.

In a lovely counterpoint to today’s fashionably glib view of our potential and our shared future, Thomas echoes John Cage’s insistence that “it is essential that we be convinced of the goodness of human nature” and concludes:

Provided we do not kill ourselves off, and provided we can connect ourselves by the affection and respect for which I believe our genes are also coded, there is no end to what we might do on or off this planet.

At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future.

Illustration from Beastly Verse by JooHee Yoon

Complement this particular portion of Thomas’s wholly magnificent Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with Rachel Carson’s courageous letter of dissent against the destruction of nature and Henry Beston — who influenced Carson — on relearning to be nurtured by nature and how our relationship to the Earth reveals us to ourselves, then revisit Lewis Thomas on how we grow from ignorance to knowledge.

“WE KNOW THIS IS TEMPORARY, BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL THAT WAY, AND WE REALIZE THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT.”

BY VICTOR TANGERMANN / March 25, 2020 (futurism.com)

IT’S A SUNNY DAY OUTSIDE. I look out the window. The way the yard behind my apartment looks — peaceful, quiet — almost makes it seem like it’s just another Wednesday morning. But it’s not. There’s a lump in my throat. It’s not a fever, or a cough. It’s something I just can’t put my finger on. It’s not anxiety; it’s something more pervasive.

The coronavirus pandemic has invaded almost every aspect of our lives, from the way we work, to the way we interact with strangers on sidewalks. The fact that nobody has any answers doesn’t help. Nobody knows how long this will last. Nobody knows if their loved ones will be safe. Nobody knows if their job is safe.

It’s a pervasive feeling, it won’t go away, and — even as someone paid to write every day — it’s impossible to characterize with words, despite my best efforts.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. In an excellent, must-read interview with the Harvard Business Review, author and leading expert on grief David Kessler argues that what we’re collectively feeling is grief. And not just one kind of grief.

Kessler’s description of that unnerving feeling hits close to home — and might just help you cope just a little bit better with a very shitty situation.

“We feel the world has changed, and it has,” Kessler told HBR. “We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed.”

And we’re not alone in that. “The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection,” he added, “is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

One kind of grief we’re feeling he characterizes as “anticipatory grief,” according to Kessler, as in, when someone tests positive, or even, the concern that they will, and that their outcome may be dire. One word for that anticipatory grief is “unhealthy.” And another, he points out, is “anxiety,” physical pain that can manifest itself through grief:

“Our mind begins to show us images. […] Our goal is not to ignore those images or to try to make them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to try and force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking.”

The fact that the enemy’s invisible is not helping, either, he explains, and it breaks our sense of safety.

So how do we move on? How do we process this collective grief? Rather than rattling off the stages of grief — you might be familiar with them already — Kessler suggests it’s not something that’s linear. Denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance don’t just hit you one-by-one.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to process this unnerving feeling. “To calm yourself, you want to come into the present,” Kessler advised. “This will be familiar advice to anyone who has meditated or practiced mindfulness but people are always surprised at how prosaic this can be.”

You should also let go of what you can’t control. “What your neighbor is doing is out of your control. What is in your control is staying six feet away from them and washing your hands. Focus on that.” He also urges focusing on emotions you can control, like patience, with other people as stressed as you are. Or doing that which is within your control: Talking to people. Naming your emotions. It gives you, according to Kessler, a therapeutic sense of recognition and release:

And if it all feels like too much, talk it out. “When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you,” says Kessler. “Emotions need motion.”

” If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us,” concludes Kessler. “Then we’re not victims.”

If you have the misconception that your life will be perfect, you will always be shocked by its up and down nature. If you expect your life to be up and down, your mind will be much more peaceful.    –Lama Yeshe, Make Your Mind An Ocean (Contributed by Sue Beck, H.W., M.)

YouTube MoviesYouTube Movies Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama has helped create some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Rick Hall brought black and white together to create music for the generations. He is responsible for creating the “Muscle Shoals sound” and The Swampers, the house band at FAME Studios that eventually left to start its own successful studio known as Muscle Shoals Sound. Gregg Allman and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals’ magnetism, mystery and why it remains influential today.

A poem by Mike Zonta, H.W., M.

O, my Corona
You embrace me too tight.
I need to inspire
not expire.

A lower form of intelligence
always responds to a higher form,
Our Sadah once said.

If I am the higher, let me just say:

You are holding us all too tight!

If you kill your hosts, your hosts will kill you.
It’s the Golden Rule or something like that.

Being is not a competition. It’s a right.

You are like the panicked buyer
hoarding toilet paper as if it were more valuable
than life.

You are as panicked as we are, if a virus can be panicked.

You are on a worldwide procreation orgy, getting as much as you can for as long as you can, panicked that it will all run out (’cause it will).

You have us all obedient as slaves,
standing in line, 6 feet apart.

Don’t come too close, don’t trust the stranger, don’t touch your face. And, God, don’t touch anybody else’s face.

They might have it.

We all might have it.

We all do have it.

But your orgy will end.
And the world will return to normal once again.

The mob will retreat and we’ll all smile at each other a little sheepishly, having forgotten who we are.

And we’ll tell our grandchildren about the great Corona.

My great Corona.

By William Fennie, H.W., M.

“This is a moment for Americans to show their best qualities”

Governments around the world are acting to contain the spread of COVID-19. The virus has claimed many lives already, and many of the stories emerging from early-hit zones, like Italy, are heartbreaking.

The Prosperos perspective on this crisis, and situations like it, comes from our fundamental teaching that all is Mind and Mind is the unfolding of Divine Intention. Behind the appearance of a possibly terrifying threat there can be only one reality which is ever whole, ever sound, ever complete. The threat is a challenge that motivates deeper thought on many fronts, not simply questions of how best to respond to the medical emergency.

The solution to this crisis is in Mind; it is Mind that will find the vaccine; it is Mind that is responding to contain and ameliorate the impact; and it is Mind from which all of our capacity for caregiving has developed.

Over millenia we have been faced with innumerable crises and we have always risen to the occasion – not ignoring the glaring historical examples of individuals who could not make that leap.

The Prosperos is confident that this challenge, too, will be met; that it will call forth genius and acts of astonishing courage; and we encourage our students to practice the tools of Translation and Releasing the Hidden Splendour, whereby we penetrate the sense evidence of material claims and release the hidden Divine Intention which is the one and only substance of life. There is no doubt that such work produces new insights in Mind, not simply for the practitioner but for ALL.

More at: https://theprosperos.org/covid_response