HEALTHY LIVING
USING TO BEAT THE
COVID BLUES BY CATHIE K.
D
ue to the Covid-19 pandemic, this past year has been one of the most challenging years in our collective lifetimes. The past twelve months of being quarantined, unable to see or hug loved ones, having little or no contact with others except your “quaran-team,” has caused many to experience something akin to the “winter blues.” (If you are a native Floridian and don’t know the sadness and depression that can occur when you don’t see the sun for days or months on end, consider yourself lucky!) IJY Connects was curious as to how everyone has coped and asked its members, “How has yoga, and other types of fitness (or any healthy activity), helped you get through the pandemic?” (Writer’s note: We realize that it’s not “over” yet, but with vaccinations and masking, we are creating a new normal.) Compiled below are the thoughts of some of our members, led by some professional and personal insight from Dr. Brooke Stuart, who practices what she preaches!
DR. BROOKE STUART:
Working through this time has to do with people making a choice: Am I going to grow through this, or am I going to be a victim of it? There are very real experiences that make up that victim mentality — but at the end of the day, we have to be open to see the light within it and within ourselves… not just the light at the end of the tunnel. When people shift into a growth mentality or are experiencing a chaotic time, fitness, among other fundamentals, can become a way to ground and anchor, making their own experience more clear. Whether they lost their job, knew someone who had Covid, or were feeling lonely, isolated, or afraid to live their everyday lives…this is where I find that wellness and tools, such as meditation, were so helpful to anchor this transformation and growth-oriented experience. It’s not just about their choice to change, but these empowered choices also fueled supporting themselves. What they basically ended up doing is investing in the choices that invested in and supported them…this is 8 IT'S JUST YOGA MAGAZINE | CENTRAL FLORIDA | SPRING/SUMMER 2021
self-love in action. I am going to grow, and I am going to make the choices that affirm that. Obviously, some people already had great routines, but within the pandemic, so many of them were broken… the pandemic broke their design. So, even their routines that they relied upon were stripped, like the rug was swept out from underneath them. So their prior everyday routines required a pivot, some flexibility and some resilience. Intuitively, during the pandemic, people who wanted to self-regulate and stabilize were drawn to wellness versus destabilizing activities. Fitness and wellness, being outside, organizing your home, taking time to meditate — these were all practical tools that they could choose and, on some level, at first it might have felt like a survival mechanism, until it turned into something that was deeply gratifying. Writer’s Note: Dr. Stuart was not immune to experiencing the same feelings as her clients. When everything was “shut down” in mid-March, Dr. Stuart spent the next four
