Island Senior: Coping With Coronavirus II, Staying Home, Staying Healthy

Island Senior is a reg­u­lar col­umn on the San Juan Update writ­ten by Peg­gy Sue McRae…

Qigong at home with Stephanie Prima - Peggy Sue McRae photo

How is every­body doing? As an intro­vert who already works at home hav­ing to stay home has not changed my lifestyle very much. Yet, it is dif­fer­ent. I am aware now that I touch my face way too much and the dai­ly news can be down­right scary.

We islanders gen­er­al­ly know that we are lucky in the best of times. We live in a beau­ti­ful place and belong to a car­ing, cre­ative, and tal­ent­ed com­mu­ni­ty. In chal­leng­ing times these assets come into sharp­er focus. If we are spend­ing more time alone that we’d like to right now, if we’ve had to can­cel cher­ished plans, we can take com­fort in the beau­ty that sur­rounds us and put our faith in our friends and neighbors.

In the best of times we are reas­sured by our excel­lent health and safe­ty per­son­nel who when put to the test rise to the occa­sion with ded­i­ca­tion, fore­sight, and cre­ativ­i­ty. Our gro­cery store employ­ees and oth­er essen­tial work­ers deserve our deep­est grat­i­tude and respect for mak­ing sure that our most basic needs are met.

It may not seem like you are doing much by stay­ing home but in fact stay­ing home is the most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant thing most of us can do right now. By slow­ing down the spread of the virus you are pro­tect­ing your own health as well as the health of oth­ers includ­ing our health­care pro­fes­sion­als and hope­ful­ly we can pre­vent our med­ical facil­i­ties from being overwhelmed.

As we move into April squestered in our homes I’m set­ting a few mod­est goals for myself. 1)  Fig­ure out how to use Zoom before the Mullis Cen­ter book­club meets via Zoom on April 13. Zoom is the tech­nol­o­gy for these times. We are read­ing The High­est Tide by Jim Lynch if you would like to join us with Zoom. 2) Take a Qigong class from Stephanie Pri­ma who gen­er­ous­ly offered self-care tips to keep our stress lev­els down and immune sys­tems for­ti­fied includ­ing a free 50 minute Qigong class on Youtube. She says, “Move your body every day. Move­ment acts as the pump for the lym­phat­ic sys­tem, which flush­es tox­ins out of the body.” And 3) Keep up my week­ly email check-ins with my sisters.

Stay home. Stay healthy. Reach out to your friends and fam­i­ly. If you need help do not be afraid to ask. We may be hun­kered down in sep­a­rate hous­es but we are all in this together.

Link to: Free Mind­ful­ness and Qigong Train­ing for COVID-19

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