It was a transformative year we’ll never forget, and the history books won’t either! As the New Year rolls around, many of us take a moment to reflect on the passing year — and find that this past year gives us lots to reflect upon! The pandemic, the social convulsions, the everyday changes. We adapted; we fought the adaptations. We surrendered; we raged. We looked for silver linings; we got depressed.
Sounds a lot like yin and yang to this health care provider! So let’s take a look at 2020 though the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and see if we can find some useful insights.
Let’s start with yin and yang, the theoretical foundation of TCM. Yin and yang are the endless opposites that compose the world: light-dark, wet-dry, male-female. The list is endless. But let’s pick one pair that was significantly altered in 2020. Yin is stillness. Yang is activity. Americans live in a very yang (and therefore out-of-balance) culture. Activity is hugely valued over stillness. What did you DO today? I didn’t get anything DONE. Working overtime is expected in many fields of employment. And then shutdown happened for all but “essential workers” (and we’ll get to them in a moment). I remember a day, way back in March, when I thought, “Wow, almost everyone in the world is at home today”. When has that happened in my lifetime? Never.
There was a stillness. No traffic jams. No aircraft flying overhead. Empty airports. Empty streets. Wildlife loved it. The lagoon in Venice turned blue from the cessation of pollution. You could see Catalina Island from L.A. and Beijing had blue skies for the first time in decades. We missed the social gatherings, but also learned to love the spaciousness of fewer social commitments. Our habits were broken. Which ones do we want back?
Insight: We need a balance of yin and yang, activity and stillness, for planetary and personal health. Many people are looking at that fact as we move forward. Perhaps I can work more from home? Can I use my car less? Maybe I don’t need to jam my social calendar in order to feel loved and important? How can I rearrange my priorities to reflect a commitment to personal and planetary health?
“Essential Workers” became a buzz phrase in 2020 that most of us had never used before. Suddenly we became aware of all the people we never think about who keep the wheels of our lives turning. Power company employees. Garbage collectors. Postal workers. Agricultural workers. The beleaguered health care workers. Grocery store clerks, caregivers of all kinds, truckers. We can’t talk about “essential workers” without talking about entitlement — because these are the people we take for granted without thinking about them or their needs. Except now we saw that these people still had to go to work every day, exposing themselves and their families to a dangerous virus, while the luckier among us got to stay safely at home.
Who are the essential workers of the body? The organs. Those hard-working citizens of your body that you almost never think about until a malfunction occurs. We just assume they’ll do their jobs no matter what we throw at them and frankly, we often abuse them without a second thought.
Insight: Stop taking your body for granted! Stop acting like an entitled trust-funder and give your essential workers the gratitude and protection they deserve! The number one personal thing each of us can do in response to the presence of Covid-19 in our world is get rid of our co-morbidities. This is the year to improve our diet, drop the weight, commit to the exercise, the meditation. Our essential workers will thank us by working better than ever. They love their jobs, but they don’t love mistreatment, same as the essential workers in society.
The word “pandemic” means an epidemic that affects the whole world. It’s useful to remember this when we think the media reports are overblown. Take a look at Britain, at Brazil, at India, at the Los Angeles hospitals. It’s bad alright, and we’re citizens of the world, not just our little locale.
Lesson: In TCM, everything is connected to everything. It is a very “pan” medicine! Your body is a world which lives within a larger world within a larger world . . . to infinity. What this means is that everything affects everything regardless of what your blood panel shows. If your lungs are compromised, everything in the body is affected. Same with heart, the kidneys, etc. The pandemic is telling us to be a little more aware of our choices and their consequences — on our own body, on the environment, and on the welfare of others.
This is a good thing. I can’t think of a time in my life when the longing — worldwide! — for connection with others was so strong. The pandemic has made us long for the old venues of connection: parties, concerts, cultural rituals, meal-sharing, sports events. TCM says you ARE connected. You can’t NOT be connected. It is inherent in your being. The problem comes when we make choices as though we were separate. Traditional Chinese Medicine can help point to a healthy way of living the truth of our connection both within our bodies and our communities.